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Gracefully Unexpected, Deeply Present And Positively Disruptive: Love And Queerness In Classroom Community., Benjamin Lee Hicks

Occasional Paper Series

During the winter of 2011, I was moving through some of the more overtly physical phases of gender transition. At the time, I was also a grade 6 teacher in a public elementary school. My presence as a visibly transitioning person in that environment was never intended to be a coming out; it was a choosing in… and there is a difference. I was “out” because I was visibly different, and I was visible because that difference was not expected. I - as a teacher of young children who identifies as a non-binary person, as genderqueer, as trans, and …