English Teachers Chat

In our second episode of English Teachers Chat, Daniel Valentin interviews Dr. Tony Sinanis, author of Hacking Leadership. Together, they discuss some of their favorite LGBTQ books. Links to all the books discussed: Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang George by Alex Gino Pet by Akwaeke Emezi Other books mentioned: Hacking Leadership by Joe Sanfelippo and Tony Sinanis Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro Music from the podcast c/o Kevin MacLead. You kind find more of his royalty free music at incompetech.filmmusic.io/ Daniel Valentin teaches American Wilderness, Ethics, and English 9 at Horace Greeley High School. He is currently reading The Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay  and listening to Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. He wants his students to feel empowered through books. Follow him  @DaValentinCCSD

October is LGBTQ history month. This is the perfect opportunity to expose our students to LGBTQ texts. For me, this is essential. As a student, the closest I could find to LGBTQ characters were Tom from The Glass Menagerie , the random David Sedaris piece and Michael Thomas Ford's books (which as a teenager I was way too young to be reading about). Now, there's a number of LGBT characters and representation in literature, but if you're an educator, where do you start? What I'm hoping is that my students will see queer texts not as queer texts, but simply texts. Often times (and not to generalize, but here I go anyway) my straight male students will avoid anything with even a hint of gay subtext. The more I talk to my students, it's clear that there is still an internalized insecurity. What they read might say something about themselves. In truth, a book is a book, queer characters or not. The easiest way to break the ice with that stereotype is that I always tel...