Last year, I was inspired to apply for an opportunity by UPrep’s Queer Student Union. The students often discuss the necessity of more LGBTQ representation in UPrep’s curriculum. In response to their request for more representation in the Upper School history classes, I applied for and was accepted to participate in the LGBTQ+ Histories of the United States Summer Institute for Teachers. This hybrid summer institute is put on by the American Social History Project at The City University of New York (CUNY) and funded in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

So, this July, I spent one week learning remotely and one week onsite at the New York City–based CUNY Graduate Center learning about LGBTQ history and how to implement this history in the classroom. We completed assigned readings and listened online to guest scholars during week one. In NYC, our cohort of 30 educators met with different guest scholars daily, participating in conversations and workshops.

Guest scholars included archivists and historians from the New York City Library and the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Founder Deborah Edel gave us a tour of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which contains the world’s largest collection of materials by and about lesbians. She stressed the ephemeral nature of history when it’s not preserved. We visited the AIDS Memorial Park during a historian-led walking tour of Greenwich Village, and this visit was a quiet reminder of the stakes of this history.

Every educator created a lesson plan during the institute. The goal was that each lesson could be used by any teacher, and the institute plans to eventually put the lessons on the American Social History Project website. I created a lesson about how Indigenous people have a multitude of gender expressions. At the beginning of this lesson, the students are asked, “How do you think Europeans and Indigenous people clashed when they first met?”

The obvious answers are: They clashed over who could use the land and the idea of land ownership. They disagreed about how people should dress or eat. But students don’t always think about the differences in how Europeans and Indigenous people understand gender. We have evidence of Europeans commenting on Indigenous people occupying social roles beyond simply “man” or “woman.”

Students will look at these documents and discuss what the Europeans were observing and think about how Europeans reacted to what they saw. How does the 16th-century European religious perspective feed their reactions? Students will learn primary source analysis and critical thinking skills alongside discovering the breadth of gender expressions of Indigenous people. I’m excited to teach this lesson in my UPrep U.S. History class.

I’m also looking forward to bringing my main takeaways from these two weeks to the UPrep community. I learned that queer history is everywhere, and it just takes a little bit of effort to bring it forward. I also discovered that this history doesn’t need to be taught only within a dynamic of oppression and resistance, which is what I tend to default to when teaching about difficult moments in our history. I can also teach it from the perspective of queer joy, where the students can see moments of happiness and individual expression.

I want to teach students that queer people have always been here, and they have found ways to not just survive, but thrive. There are lots of post-World War II examples of this. That’s when gay neighborhoods and the drag ball scene started emerging. We have drag performance stories as far back as the Civil War—drag performances have always been a part of entertainment for both queer and straight communities. We also have documentation of women living with their women in partnerships in socially acceptable ways during the nineteenth century called Boston marriages.

I also learned a lot from my cohort. We spoke after sessions about our students, our courses, and the personal importance this history had to us. I listened to them as they shared about teaching environments so much different from mine. A lot of the teachers were from public schools, and some of them were from states where it’s dangerous to teach queer history, whether that’s because their administration, the parent/guardian community, or the state government, and they could lose their jobs. Hearing their strength and determination to teach queer history anyway was inspiring and made me thankful for the independence I have here at UPrep.

I’d encourage all educators to apply for institutes like this one. There are NEH summer institutes like this all over the country, and you don’t have to be teaching in the humanities field. My cohort included math, science, PE, and health teachers. I hope more people from our community apply to programs like this. I’m glad I work within a nurturing community that values leading a life of learning for students, staff, and faculty.

READ HOW UPREP COMMUNITY MEMBERS LEAD A LIFE OF LEARNING.