We are delighted to welcome OISE Master of Teaching student Yasmin Owis to the team.

Yasmin has been working with the team to choose excerpts from our latest set of video interviews to upload onto our website.  She will also participate in four-day writing workshop with the rest of the team later this month.  During the workshop, the team will be writing some new monologues for our set of Out at School verbatim play scripts and a set of academic paper proposals for the 2019 American Educational Research Association conference, which will be held in Toronto next April.
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The LGBTQ Families Speak Out team is excited to announce that we will be performing our verbatim theatre play ​Out at School at the Nuit Rose in Toronto the evening of June 16, 2018.  The play will be directed by Jenny Salisbury and include performances by Toronto actors Mary Ellen MacLean and Lori Nancy Kalamanski as well as members of the research team.  Details on time and place will follow.

The LGBTQ Families Speak Out project is delighted to welcome University of Toronto student Edil Ga'al to our team.  Edil is a Political Science and Equity Studies student at U of T who is graduating with her BA degree in June.  Edit will be involved in all aspects of the LGBTQ Families Speak Out project, and is funded by a University of Toronto Excellence Award grant.  Welcome Edil!

The LGBTQ Families Speak Out research team is looking forward to travelling to Sudbury next week to attend the 2018 Rainbow Health Conference and interview LGBTQ families about their experiences in Sudbury schools.  

We're bringing a new banner to our exhibit table at the conference and will be doing quick 5-minute interviews about people's experiences at school.  If you're attending the conference come by to our table and say hi.

Much thanks and appreciation go to benjamin lee hicks for their beautiful design of our new banner.

The LGBTQ Families Speak Out research team will be travelling to Sudbury, Ontario, for the Rainbow Health Conference from March 22-24, 2018.  While we're there we're hoping to interview LGBTQ families in Sudbury about their experiences at school.  If you're interested in participating please let us know at info@lbtbqfamiliesspeakout.ca

We are happy to announce that two new research projects have emerged out of The LGBTQ Families Speak Out Project. PhD Candidate Pamela Baer will be working with youth from LGBTQ+ families during March Break 2018 to create an original theatre performance, and PhD Candidate Austen Koecher will be using the video interviews with Teacher Candidates at OISE. Read more about these two projects below.

Pamela Baer is looking for young people (aged 12-18) from LGBTTQQ2SIA families to create a new play about their experiences in school and in their community. This theatre creation program is a workshop series that will take place during march break 2018. Alongside guest artists, participants and researchers will work to create a series of short performances and skits. We will draw on poetry, music, puppetry, improvisation, and other creative techniques to connect, create, and share our stories. For more information go to: www.collectivelycreating.weebly.com
If you are interested in participating please contact Pamela Baer at pamela.baer@mail.utoronto.ca

Austen Koecher is using our video interviews in graduate teacher education classes to consider what happens when teacher education students engage with video interviews about the experiences of gender and/or sexual minority families in schools. She is also investigating the learning that occurs in discussions and reflections that result from teacher education students’ engagement with the video interviews, and how the use of the video interviews may contribute to conditions for teacher education student insights into or engagement with the educational experiences of gender and/or sexual minority families.

Goldstein, T., Koecher, A., Baer, P., and hicks, b. l.  (2017).  Transitioning in elementary school: Parent advocacy and teacher allyship.  Teaching Education.  Advance online publication. DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2017.1372410.  

We are happy to announce that the first academic journal article based on our LGBTQ Families Speak Out research has been published. The article discusses the ways that teachers and parents worked to support a child transitioning at school.

The article can be found at: Teaching Education Journal

This week Tara has been reading Mary and Donald Collins’ collaborative memoir At the Broken Places: A Mother and Trans Son Pick up the Pieces.  In their memoir, Mary and Donald describe their conflicting points of view about Donald’s medical decisions to align his body with his gender identity.  While Mary supported Donald’s desire and his right to realize himself as a person, she didn’t agree with the ways he chose to physically alter his body.  The memoir allows both Mary and Donald to explain how they felt during the conflict and how they have tried to reconnect and establish a relationship with each other.  Kate Bornstein, author of A Queer and Pleasant Danger and Gender Outlaw describes the memoir as the best, most thorough narrative of trans experience he’s read.

The research team is excited to be participating in two panels at the Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE) and the Canadian Association of Canadian Research (CATR) conferences at Congress at the end of May.

​The Experiences of LGBTQ Families in Ontario Schools
We will be presenting findings from our first set of interviews undertaken in the Greater Toronto Area.
CSSE: Canadian Critical Pedagogy Association 
Sunday May 28, 2017: 8:15-9:30 am
Ryerson University

​Out at School: ​A Verbatim Theatre Project
We will be discussing our process of devising a verbatim theatre performance from the interviews we are gathering.
CSSE: ARTS
Tuesday May 30, 2017: 9:45-11:00 am
Ryerson University

​Creating Verbatim Theatre: ​A Praxis Discussion
We will be discussing our process of moving from an interview transcript to a verbatim play script using one of the interviews from our project as a case-study.
CATR
Tuesday May 30, 2017: 2:45-4:00 pm
1087 Queen Street West