Hello Lovely Humans!
We figured that we’d get on board with this tradition of reminding everyone what we’ve done in the past year, but with a little bit of a twist. We know that we’ve been a little quieter in the past couple of months so you haven’t heard from us recently, but please know that we are still doing the work and hopefully helping to create a path for others to come and do more.
Because we are still new at doing this, we wanted to showcase what we’ve been doing the past 18 months, and share what we have planned for the remainder of the school year. This is more of a 2021-2023 letter because as a teacher, we think most effectively in “school years” rather than the typical Gregorian calendar years!
Presentations
The incredible bulk of what we do has been (and will probably continue to be) centered around presenting at various conferences in an effort to share what gender equity and affirming spaces for transgender students can look like in a classroom and school setting. We have had the opportunity to cover a lot of ground because we started doing this work while everything was still virtual, and now that almost everything has effectively opened up we are still trying to find ways to continue sharing what we can.
Over the past 18 months, we have been able to present in 15 different states, at 3 conferences with a national reach, and at 1 international summit. The bulk of our presentations have been for music educators; but we have been able to expand our reach beyond just the music room and share at union events, administrator conferences, a local equity summit, a national equity symposium, and an international teaching event. We have even branched out and had the opportunity to speak to pre-service music educators, which was an incredible experience!
Here are the music education conferences that we have spoken at, starting with our first one in July of 2021! There are some associations that we have been honored to present at during multiple events, and we continue to be grateful to continue our relationships in those states.
Delaware Music Educators Association
Florida Music Educators Association
Iowa Music Educators Association
Maryland Music Educators Association*
Massachusetts Music Educators Association
National Association for Music Education
New Hampshire Music Educators Association
New Jersey Performing Arts Center
New York State School Music Association*
Northern New Jersey Orff
Ohio Music Educators Association
South Dakota Music Educators Association
Vermont Music Educators Association
Virginia Music Educators Association*
Washington Music Educators Association
We have presented for the NEA affiliates in Maryland (MSEA) and Virginia (VEA)*, the Fairfax County Public Schools Equity Symposium, and the first ever Principal’s Desk Conference! We were also deeply honored to present at the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity: Educational Equity Summit and the International Teaching and Education Summit. In total, we have given 35 different conference presentations over the past 2 school years!
School Board Citizen Comments
Ær is very active in their local community and has spoken at their local school board on 4 separate occasions: all in defense of the rights of transgender students to exist as they are in public school settings. Each of their school board speeches will be posted on our blog (some point soon, we hope)! They also feel strongly that everyone should have their voice heard and is happy and willing to give pointers when creating a speech or statement to an elected body.
Educational Projects
Over the summer, we were hired to create a curriculum and virtual course by the Pride and Joy Foundation! We created a six-class course for GSA and diversity club leaders. The course and the additional guidebook we created for the foundation are still available for anyone to take on their website.
Activism
If you have been following along, you know that the topic of trans rights and particularly the rights of transgender young people in public school settings has been heavily discussed and policies have been implemented all over the country to make it more difficult for young transgender people to exist as themselves. Both of us do everything we can to speak up and out when these injustices happen, and we encourage all people to do the same! Ær was even interviewed on the news when the governor of Virginia released a new model policy that all but eradicates the rights of transgender students in the commonwealth.
Publications
We had two pieces published by the National Association for Music Education this year! Transgender Inclusivity in Schools: Easy, Necessary, and Life-Saving was published in the Music in a Minuet blog on the NAfME website, and A Teacher Speaks: A Case for Increasing Inclusion in Music Classrooms was featured in the October 2022 Teaching Music Magazine.
Coming Up
While we have been ridiculously busy, that isn’t expected to change in 2023. We have been accepted to present at many states Music Educators Associations between January and the end of the school year, and we are sure that this list will continue to grow as we find out more!
Florida Music Educators Association
Missouri Music Educators Association
Minnesota Music Educators Association
New Jersey Music Educators Association
West Virginia Music Educators Association
Pennsylvania Music Educators Association
We also have a longer-term publishing project that is still in the “baby stages” so even though we won’t say much more about it, yet it is definitely in our pipeline!
If you are thinking that you didn’t see your state on the list, or that you’d like to invite us to present at your university or event, please reach out and let us know! We know we can’t possibly be everywhere, but we want to share what we can with anyone who is ready to hear it.
We would love to do more than what we have been doing, but there is a financial aspect to what we can do or not too. Many conferences require presenters to pay registration fees, and most conferences and associations don’t do anything to cover the cost of travel or lodging either. Conferences and Summits are often put together on a “pay to play” basis which means that everyone potentially misses out: presenters with important information to share are kept out, educators who want to learn are kept out, and dialogue that could happen is never allowed to exist. In 2023, maybe we can all work together to get the gatekeeping out of professional development conferences!
If you’d like to help us out, whether you’ve been able to attend a session and learn from us, or if you’d like to but we haven’t been in your state, consider helping out in a financial way:
Our paypal is paygenderintersections@gmail.com, and we have a bonfire site (the link is on our website) with some t-shirts and totes.
We love and appreciate all of you, and we hope that a future exists where we no longer have to go state-to-state begging teachers to treat the trans students in their care with the respect that each human being inherently deserves.
Ær and Nicholas
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