 Awesome. Well, welcome everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to get to virtually meet you all sort of as much as any of us get to do these days. I'm really excited to talk about this work. The session is called creating and curating LGBTQ inclusive open materials. It's a little bit of a mouthful. My name is Sabia Prescott. I'm a policy analyst based in Washington DC, but located in Pennsylvania in the US. And this is really the bulk of the work that I get to do that I really have a personal and professional investment. So, like I said, I'm really great, grateful to have you all here today and to talk a little bit about it. I'm going to figure out about advances. So it's a little bit of an overview for how we'll, we'll spend our time together today. First I'll do introductions tell you a little bit more about who I am and then what this work is and what it looks like for me and for our, our communities who work on it. And then I'd love to hear from you all as well just to know a little bit about who's here and what brings you to this session into this work. So we'll talk a little bit about what LGBTQ inclusion is right what it looks like what it, how I define it in my own work, but also again I'd love to know how that sort of maps on to your own understandings and your own experience we'll talk about that a little bit. And then what does it have to do with open education right the bridge between LGBTQ inclusion in the classroom and learning environments and then open education are not it's not always sort of an obvious connection to a lot of people but I think it actually does make a lot of sense so I'll sort of make that case. And then, and then again we can see, you know how how that feels with folks and if that sort of maps on to your own experiences. So we'll share a little bit with you about the framework that I use when I'm looking at materials specifically open materials that you can adapt and and edit and then share back out and sort of what questions I ask of the content and of the creators when I'm thinking about how to make things more inclusive so we'll really get into those exact questions. And then finally we'll workshop a little bit with with actual examples from actual open texts to see what that really looks and feels like when it's in practice. So I'm really excited about because like I said a couple minutes ago maybe before some of you joined. I typically give this talk in about 30 minutes. And so we don't get to really get into it and practice it together. So I'm really excited about that part and hopefully you are too. Like I said my name is Sabia Prescott my pronouns are she and her. I'm an education policy analyst at a nonprofit think tank based in Washington DC in the US. A lot of our work is around policy analysis mostly at the federal and state level in the US so my work is primarily domestic focused within the US context, although if any of you are not based in the US I'm really really interested to hear what this looks like for you, or, or, you know what it looks like in your own context. I think a lot of it is translatable to a lot of different contexts so that's also where we're sort of thinking forward at the moment. So within the, within the sort of education policy team at New America, I sit in an even smaller team called teaching learning and tech. And within that sort of smaller team. We talk a lot about open resources and culturally responsive teaching or inclusive and representative teaching in education. And so right now in this particular moment in 2020 right as so many people are focused on digital learning and remote instruction are really thinking about how to sort of marry all of these things together right what is seizing this moment of digital learning and remote learning. What does that look like in terms of making what we're doing more inclusive and more representative. And then in doing that how can we really utilize open resources. So it's kind of a moment in our own work where we're thinking about all these different things that people have sort of thought of as separate things before right that have sort of existed in silos and we're thinking about how to bring them together. If it makes sense to bring them together. We think it does, but it doesn't mean it's not without challenges so it's a lot of figuring all that out. I do have the slides listed in under the presentation for for for this presentation on the only global website in case you want to access it and I'm actually going to go back here for a moment because I should have mentioned it. If you would like the slides to follow along. There's a, there's a link here at the very top called tiny URL.com slash LGBTQ o EG. So if you'd like to access them. So I'd love to hear from all of you all, particularly your name where you are geographically. What it is that you do and then sort of what questions you have going into this workshop. I would love to think about the best way to facilitate this sort of smoothly there aren't that many of us so maybe if I could just ask you to share those things in the order that I see you, we can just move through it that makes sense to folks. And the first person that I see on here is Ellie. Hey, um, my name's Ellie and I use she her pronouns. I'm here in Golden Colorado. I'm currently a library student. And I'm working as an OER graduate student at our graduate assistant at a health sciences library. And I'm just really intrigued by this topic. But I am a former high school educator and I always tried to make things as inclusive as possible. That's part of what intrigues me about OER. And, and yeah, I just am excited to see you bridge the gap between the LGBTQ community and OER. So, awesome. Thanks for sharing. The next person I see on here is Nicole. Hi. Also feel if you if you would rather not turn on video feel free to not do that. Face to face my name is Nicole Carrier. I work at Norquist College in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and we have snow lots and lots of snow. I'm a I'm an editor and the college is copyright officer and I work in curriculum development. I'm not I don't. I'm just getting into the OER game. And my role is to edit curriculum as it passes through our department but a project I've been working on recently actually for the last couple of years and it's going to be unveiled at a seminar next week at a college conference is that inclusive language guidelines for the college that I my original intent was that we use them for our curriculum. But I'm also hoping hoping that they gain a wider application throughout the college. We have a very diverse student population we have students from 183 countries. And, and I think that's in a student population of just under 20,000 students so. And we talk it when we talk about inclusion, it, it often centers on culture and ethnicity and gender issues are kind of under the radar a little bit. So I wanted to create some language guidelines that that sort of widened the dialogue a little bit and so I'm here this kind of a fact finding mission for me because all information is good. Awesome thank you for being here. The next person I see is Laura. Laura red wine here, Liz and I were just talking about where I'm from right now at Salem, Oregon, but I was from San Diego for most of my life. And I love both places, and the digital world is where I am now. I teach graphic design, and I also have a small graphic design business and work with a health company while company that does health events. And now they're all virtual so that's kind of interesting. So, I am realizing especially now that I am teaching online. And when I have my students introduce themselves. They're visual but they describe who they are and I'm finding that I don't admittedly I don't understand the terms the gender identities. And I'm embarrassed to say that but that's why I'm here right I'm here to learn and understand and I want to intentionally include some projects and and information that make make a much better holistic inclusive project and class. So, thank you for having me. Thank you so much for being here and for being here to learn, I really appreciate it. Awesome. I'm sorry, go ahead. The next person. I just said awesome savvy. Thank you. There's a little bit of a lag on my head is probably my internet. Thank you so much for being here. The next person I see is Ksenia. Did I pronounce that right. Yes, sorry, I'm having challenges with my technology looks like hi. Again, yes. Okay, thank you. My name is Ksenia shaman. I am located on in Vancouver BC in Canada on that seat of territory of many people I'm sorry I wasn't prepared to speak. I usually have it all noted down because I can't remember. Muscle and Squamish and soil. This is terrible. I really need to practice you see. I think there's some things that we fail to speak sometimes we write them but when you have to see them out loud you don't know how to practice that. What do I do I work for the Canada School of Public Service it's a federal government organization that provides training to public service employees, and I'm in the open learning area that's working on open educational resources. I'm so passionate about inclusion in various forms and I think this topic is very important and I try to attend and learn as much as I can in terms of events to be a better ally. So thank you for putting that together. What questions do I have. I am looking to find out better strategies and better questions to ask which I did go through your slides before the session and I think that's exactly what you're sharing which is amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. The last person I don't see a name but I do see an awesome jellyfish background. Okay, hi, I am, I'm Maggie Frankel. I'm a OER librarian in San Francisco, California. I also teach library information technology and I'm a graduate student and then equity and social justice and education program. And I am the LGBT person but also I'm the liaison at my college for like the library liaison for LGBT studies because we do have an LGBT studies program and so I'm just excited to be here I know it's K to 12 oriented but I'm down with that. Alright, thanks. Awesome. Thank you all for sharing and for being here and it's really intriguing to me that so many of us come from, from sort of different professional backgrounds and encouraging and in a lot of ways because I think that really everyone should care about this my own opinion right so it's it's cool to see so many different folks here. And thank you for sharing. So before I sort of launch into I'm going to spend sort of a fair amount of time speaking to you but I also want to sort of check in in between those things and, and like I said have a little bit of a discussion and see if, you know, if there are any moments of where what I'm saying isn't exactly your experience or, or you have some different thoughts on it because I think that's really useful to this conversation. So in order for us to sort of be on the same page and have some shared language for having those conversations, like to offer just a couple of definitions that I use in my own work, which is to say that I did not come up with these. They are not copyrighted, they are not the one and true definitions for any of these things but rather sort of the way that these things are talked about in many of my networks with many of the students and the teachers that we speak with. And in my own professional sort of communities who do this work. And so for the sake of us sort of approaching this conversation from the same point. So I want to offer them to you now. The first one LGBTQ right is an acronym that's maybe the only one that does have kind of a clear, clear and definite definition. It stands for lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer. You might have seen a different versions of this LGBTQIA QS to Q plus. All of those things really are meant to be an umbrella term for people of sexual and gender minorities. Andy is next this is a big one that we talk about in this work a lot, and is often a starting point in this, especially when we're talking about when we're speaking with, I'm sorry teachers, because I think gender identity and sexuality are conflated a lot still primarily among people who are new to this, and we certainly want people who are new to this to to come into it right. And so this is I think is a useful thing to start with so gender identity is just the gender that you are right. There are a lot of different genders I don't need to list them here. And at any point you can there are lots of definitions of those on the internet. One sort of long list I have linked at the end of this slide deck if you'd like to use that one. But it's really just the gender that you are, and that you exist as in the world. Gender presentation can be a little bit different. It's really just the way you present yourself to the world right the way you express yourself socially linguistically sort of visually the way you dress. I present as the way that you're seeing on this screen right now which is not sort of traditionally feminine even though I do identify as a cisgender woman. It's people do not read me typically as sort of what they think of traditionally as a feminine person. But that is my gender presentation right. And sexuality are the genders that you're attracted to right that could be one gender. It could be many genders it could be the one that is the same as yours or different from yours. So that's my sexuality. Non binary or or people non binary people rather are people who identify outside of the gender binary right either both male or female or neither male or female or both or sometimes different ones. It's really people who just don't subscribe to the gender binary transgender people are people whose gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth right when I was born. I'm a female and I now identify as a woman that makes me cisgender right which is the opposite of transgender. If if today I identified as a gender that was not aligned with what we typically think of as female. That would make me transgender or non binary. I'm a transgender and non binary at the same time. In case those words are coming up and that seems a little confusing. Those two are not opposite and they're not always mutually exclusive someone can be both. And lastly pronouns right pronouns are exactly what they sound like exactly what you're thinking about grammatically right the pronouns that someone uses when they're referring to you. As I said that my pronouns were she and her. And that's just the way that people should refer to me when they're talking about me the same way that you offer your name, so that people can refer to you by your name when they're talking about you, offering pronouns can be useful as well. A common non binary pronoun is they and them, although not everyone who uses they and them is not binary right. This is not sort of exactly tied to gender. It's just whatever pronouns are right for that person that they tell you. So those are the link, those are just sort of the sets of language that we use to describe this. So as I'm using this, those words rather during this during this conversation. That's really what I'm thinking about again they're not hard and fast they're not true for every single person, but the sort of working definitions for how I use them in my work. I mean LGBT inclusion right, what, what is it. What does it look like. What does it feel like how do you know it when you see it specifically we think about it in terms of materials and texts a lot I should say we as in myself and the people on my team who do this work with me. We think about it in terms of materials right instructional materials textbooks videos. We think about it in terms of worksheets and things that students would come across in class. And so how we think of them are materials that allow everyone, but especially those with marginalized identities which includes LGBTQ students to see themselves reflected and represented. I don't mean that everything has to be LGBTQ focused all the time forever right as I mentioned in a few slides from now, but just that they are there right that LGBTQ people and identities and histories and challenges are, are present in the texts, if it's history then then it's there, if it's, you know, ELA if it's English and language arts, then authors are there. That they're represented in a positive light to write that it's not just sort of a narrative of struggle and marginalization every time that it occurs but rather that it's celebrated. And so, again when we think about it we think about sort of three different types of inclusion in materials. The first one is LGBTQ specific content right so think about history, or again English language arts. If you're teaching a history lesson about, you know, San Francisco in the 60s then probably Harvey milk would come up. If you're teaching about Stonewall then certainly LGBTQ identities would come up right. There's, there's this content that is specifically about and for and hopefully by LGBTQ people. The second one is kind of the opposite right non LGBTQ specific content so for example think about math. I think math is something that most people don't think about when they think about inclusion but a lot of math problems in textbooks for primary and secondary sort of level students have word problems right. And in those word problems are a lot of assumptions are a lot of language that is sometimes offering biases or or particular assumptions both about the people in the word problems and about the reader reading the word problems. And so it's pretty rare that you read a math word problem in history textbook that has say two female names in it right if it's if it's talking about someone's parents and a math word problem it's almost always a name that you read and assume is sort of a men's name and that a male, a name that you read and assume is a woman's name. And there's really a whole host of other other sort of assumptions in there that we'll talk about in a little bit. But that's a good example of where, where and when it's possible to make content inclusive when even when it's not sort of specifically focused on LGBTQ people. And then the last one is sort of this idea of querying concepts right which is a fundamental part of queer theory, which is a whole sort of field of academia but essentially means taking something that is thought to be known or given right, and questioning it, considering a fact that is worth contemplating further in elementary and secondary school take biology, for example right. There are a lot of concepts and biology that are thought of as sort of fundamental truths right of human existence and of our species and of what is natural and was not natural. These things are sort of built on assumptions we use to construct truth of human sex and gender, and to sort of consider those things and interrogate them and interrogate our own assumptions and biases about them and how we came to these ideas that we think of as as fundamental truths is querying it right is querying biology. And there are other subjects as well where that sort of thing comes up. But those are the three sort of types of inclusion that that we think about most often in this work. And so just like it's important to think about what exactly inclusion is, I think it's really important to think about what it's not also what I think queer inclusion is not is mapping queer experiences on to the default sort of mainstream right. There are certainly examples again we'll talk about them later later in the slides, where it can be really useful to replace names, or to just replace pronouns and sometimes sort of creating more linguistic inclusion is as simple as that, but sometimes it's not right. Sometimes it's not very useful to just take a sort of tired or extremely overtly heterosexual scenario that appears on something like a math word problem, and just insert names that that's kind of sound like you're, you assume they're the same gender. Sometimes that's actually counterintuitive to what's going on. And so one is overcompensating to make everything LGBTQ inclusive more focused right. This is one that we see a lot. It's, it's, it's not necessary, right to to create inclusion is not to say that you have to take all content everywhere and make sure that LGBTQ people are like front and center and it always it's not necessarily that it's just where what certainly when the content ought to include LGBTQ people, for example when they're sort of the protagonist in the story or in the history historical event. Then of course but not not all content. You know that's not the case for all content so where it is appropriate and where it makes sense is one thing, but it's not to say that all content has to change drastically. And then the last one LGBTQ inclusive materials that are not intersectional right intersectional being this idea that are overlapping systems of oppression that are sort of born out of someone holding multiple marginalized identities that they experienced the world in varying ways based on the identities that we hold. We see this a lot in in YA lit in in young adult literature and in children's books. There are more and more children's books these days that include LGBTQ characters and protagonists which is great. That's really exciting to see right, but a lot of them, a lot, a lot of them feature the most privileged people within this marginalized community right and for LGBTQ people that's cisgender white sort of self fluent gay men, right, and there's that's, that's it that's that's by and large like what exists in textbooks, when in reality, LGBTQ people exist in every other demographic of the population right. There is no one LGBTQ experience or story or something like that. And that's all that we see in textbooks or in stories or in whatever it is, then that's what that's what we think it is. That's what we think as the LGBTQ experience and the story and we read that one story and we think that's it and that's fine. But that leaves out really a whole host of other experiences and stories and narratives and so there's a danger there in not sort of lifting up voice intersectional voices and experiences. Before I move on to the next slide I just want to take a quick pause and see if anyone has any questions or thoughts or sort of anything they want to raise about that before I move on. I've definitely noticed what you've noticed in the, in the YA literature where it's either yet super privileged about super privileged white kids the other thing I've noticed is they tend to like some of them, some of the young people tend to just kind of, I want to say like gay wash a character, or like, you know, they an author just, you know, just just fits in an LGBT character just to, you know, make it convenient and like I can tell. That's definitely true. I've had a lot on like Netflix shows recently have a lot of. It's still kind of the same trope of like straight characters in romcom and but they just have like a gay best friend. And it's like someone's just checked that box someone on their marketing team has said you're good. It's the same thing with like their black best friend. It's whatever it is. And, and it's, it's, you can definitely tell you're right. You can tell when that story was not designed for that character. I, I sort of soapbox it is not difficult to get me to is love Simon. And I think that that's a great story. It's a sweet story. It's great to see LGBTQ young characters on a TV show. And for people whose experiences that that is then it's probably very realistic. But it's it in 2019 or whenever that movie was released if you're not familiar it's a story about a young, a young white gay boy who lives in a wealthy suburb and he has some difficulty coming out to his parents and then he does and they're accepting. And that's great. It's not that we don't need that story but but you know when when that is the movie about young people coming out then that is the story about young people coming out and it just doesn't look like that for so many people. And I think books are are sort of verging on the same the same danger there. All right, so what does this have to do with open educational resources. This is a question that I get a lot because I think people like want to have wanted to have something to do with it because they're interested in both of these things. And I'm here to tell you that they do have something in common. And here's, here's what I think it is the benefit to using we are, as we say a lot to leveraging open resources for LGBTQ inclusion, are that anyone can access and use we are right the point is that they're open. And there are these things that everyone has access to. And therefore, we want to make them more inclusive, and especially with we are being sort of this realm of fewer gatekeepers in terms of authors. That's a really useful thing because there are not a lot of queer textbook writers, which would be very clear to you if you look up any textbook that has queer content in it or any explanation of queer identities and read them. It becomes very obvious that someone who is not queer or trans wrote that. And so to be able to get more queer and trans authors into this space is a need a clear need and we are offers the possibility of doing that. We are can also be adapted and updated to reflect evolving understanding of LGBTQ identities right those language pieces that we talked about at the beginning. Those definitions if this if we were talking in this meeting 3020 two years ago, right, we may not have used those same definitions are understandings of queer identities and of queer people change over time they are updated. They are updated constantly. And it's really helpful to have an adaptable text that is able to evolve along with our understanding of queer identities. And that's something that of course is, this is not the case in traditional proprietary textbooks, which again are often 30 or 20 years and so sort of writing this content, even if we were to do that now into proprietary textbooks that students are then going to use for 20 years in a classroom is probably not as useful as something that can be updated regularly. And then lastly, we are just becoming more widely used particularly this year, at least in the US, more and more teachers are relying on open resources, because students are not in the classroom. Whether it's because those digital technologies that they're now being asked to use are too expensive or it's because you know they can't physically get the textbooks that they were using out to students who are learning from home. More and more people are relying on open resources and so it's important that those resources are inclusive in our high quality. And in this context, I'm using high quality to meet inclusive. That's a big ask that we sort of put out there every time we speak on this work is that those two things should be synonymous right if something is not inclusive and representative and reflective of the students learning from it. It's a very good resource right with it can't really by definition be effective. So again I was paused to see if anyone sort of has any immediate reactions or thoughts or questions to any of that. Like I said, and we'll keep saying it is it is entirely my take on this so if you have a different one I'd love to hear hearing nothing. I will move on. And I think that's a good point. And I think that's a good point. So we're going to talk about the TQ materials and open right. What is it? What does it actually look like in order to be able to do this. This next slide is repeat. I think yes it is. as I'm going to talk about in the very next slide, is a process, right? The very first thing that people sort of launch into it, again, when I give this talk, which is sometimes only 20 minutes long, and we don't actually get into the part where we do it, is, you know, people asking, okay, this sounds great, like it all sounds great, being inclusive and queer kids and great, but how do we do it, right? What does it actually look like if I'm sitting down with other teachers or with students even, or with my administration, with librarians, hopefully? What does it look like when we're doing this? And my answer is always that it's a process. It has to be done together. It has to involve all of the stakeholders. Very ideally, it will involve student voice in it, because students know what they want to learn, right? They know mostly who they are or what things are out there for them to learn, and they want to see that in the texts that they're learning in school. They want to be engaged. We have to do it by learning all of us all the time. Someone at the beginning of this mentioned that sort of an embarrassment of not knowing everything, and I'm here to say, please don't be embarrassed. It's a learning process for all of us, certainly myself included, all of the time. I think that I have a pretty good handle on this as my organization's resident queer person and the person talking about this most of the time. And then I go to talk to students, right, who are like 16 and 17, and they have like words that I've never heard of. It wasn't that long ago that I was in high school, but it really reminds me always that there's always more learning to do, in part because our language does change and our understanding changes, because like I said, there are an infinite number of queer experiences and identities out there. And it's just we don't all know all of them. Thirdly, it has to be done with attention, right? This is not something that is just kind of inevitably going to be better if we don't take an active role in it. It has to be done intentionally and thoughtfully over time. And it's something that takes a while and can be hard and can be really uncomfortable, but it does require that. And then lastly, it happens constantly. It's an ongoing process. It's something that maybe your your classroom or a group of people you know, or students or your district even commits to one year or three years. And then the very next year after that you have to rethink it because so much has changed. It is constant, which makes it sound insurmountable, but it's not that either. And it's also true that small changes can go a long way. And so it's not, it's not as if it's this sort of long ongoing process with no end goal, but rather that the things you accomplish during the process contribute to the progress of it, right? And students notice, teachers notice LGBTQ teachers are not outside of this work. In fact, they mostly have to shoulder this work in the district that they're in, which is not very either but that there are so many stakeholders who are part of this. And last, it has to be an ongoing process. So what, so what does it look like, right? What is it? Finally, here we are. Before I get into sort of some of the questions that I sort of ask of content when I'm thinking about it. Just a couple of sets of considerations that I want to offer as we're thinking about them. The first one is student agency, like I referenced a couple of times. Students have to have a voice in this right. And not only that, but as as you're thinking about this work in your own context or classrooms or libraries or communities, I urge you to sort of think about what agency students have in the process right to decide which content they want to learn about. Do they have agency in accessing information about current events that directly impact them. And who's there to help them through that process right. So when I was anecdotally when I was in high school, I'm from Maine in the US, which is a very rural homogenous area, and I had no idea that this information existed I didn't know the queer identities existed, not because necessarily I was in sort of a small homophobic town or anything I just I just didn't know because it wasn't taught in school ever. So if someone had asked me at that point I wouldn't even have known what I was missing out on, right. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have been able to say this whole content area this whole area of history, these types of authors is what I want to learn about, because I didn't even know that existed. And so what agency to students have and actually being able to identify what it is they want to learn and then being able to learn that. And secondly, teacher preparation right teacher professional learning teacher development teacher preparation is a big big part of this work. It has been the focus of entire reports and events and series that we've done because it's it's doesn't do much good to sort of feel textbooks or film materials or create entire resources that have all this language that teachers themselves might not be prepared to teach right. Even if a teacher has the best of intentions and many do in terms of wanting to to be better for students to create really inclusive welcoming learning environments for students, which extends to materials. If those teachers are not prepared and comfortable to teach that content. Then, then we've done something wrong, right. Then we're leaving out a really big piece of this puzzle. So our teachers prepared to teach the content that students most want to learn. And then secondly, what might help them become more comfortable in teaching inclusive content such as lbtq history or stories. So some of this is as simple as you know providing the language and helping helping teachers to understand sort of what what's out there what queer authors are out there or sort of how to be there for students right of who may want to talk to them or things like that. But some of it is really sort of like bias training that exists some of it, some of it happens on a not intentional level right. Because we don't know and like like for teachers as like for all of us, this is an ongoing process and so what does what does teacher professional development look like for this work specifically. And I'll add on top of that, especially right now. So that's a question of where does this fit in right because as we know of all teachers, almost everywhere, I think, at least in the US, they're underpaid and they already have way too much on their plate, and especially this year they have like so many things going on that they didn't sign up for. And it's just a lot already they're managing so much, and they're being asked to be a hero to everyone in their life. So how do we make what they're already doing learning events for them, how do we make, how do we help them help students make the learning environments more inclusive without without offering LGBTQ sort of teacher preparation as something that's sort of an additional ask for them right. So these few slides are going to be some sort of questions that I think about when I think of what inclusive content looks like. And they're broken down into again what I think of as sort of three types of queer inclusive content that you can ask of materials when you're looking through them. The first one is gendered language. The second one is visual representation I should say visual and sort of content representation. The third one is non LGBTQ specific considerations. So the next three slides will go over those more specifically. So first of all gender language right when you have a text in front of you when you have an open text that you're allowed to edit and adapt and change and share back out right. What gender pronouns are used, when and where are they used right when I say gender pronouns I mean she and he. They're neutral pronouns such as they, although there are other ones as well. Where could those be used, right. And that question is really meant to ask, where could they be used, not that they should be used in all contexts all the time because that's not necessary either really a diversity of pronouns of names and of visuals is useful but on occasion. Gender neutral pronouns such as they can likely be inserted into the text. The second one that I ask of content here is what gender stereotypes does the content evoke right. There are just about a bajillion gendered stereotypes in our world. Many of them we probably are not thinking consciously about when we use them. Many of them are built into the language that we use the idioms, the metaphors that we use all the time. But really stop and think about it. It's they really jump out of the page. They're clear if you're really combing through the text and trying to see where gendered stereotypes show up. For example, are there names in the text that you sort of immediately think of as male names. Are they wearing blue. Are they playing sports. Are they building things are they driving trucks. Are there names that you think of as generally feminine or female names. Are they talking about dresses are they shopping. Are they doing nails. It sounds like that's kind of an obvious those are obvious examples but again you'd be surprised if if you go through the text to look for those things. The third one here is what gendered assumptions underlie the content, again, sort of similarly to stereotypes there are a lot of assumptions that are there when we're when we're thinking about sort of what what picture the text is painting. And I have an example in just a couple of slides about that one in particular assumptions. Okay, so number three what gendered assumptions underlie the content and then number four would gendered assumptions underline the names that are used right. Like I mentioned, the, a little bit of a tricky thing is that in sort of LGBTQ community and queer theory in general. So the idea is that the idea is that names don't have genders right any name could be any gender, any person can be any gender. And so it's difficult to sort of point out gender quote unquote gendered names. That being said, there are assumptions that are associated with names right if you see the name bill in a text, you're going to, you're going to visually be thinking about a man. And so it's sort of a way around that is just to offer diversity of names right other names that people generally read as male are the names of people generally read as, as female or feminine are their names that people may not know whether it's male or female, or not know but make assumptions about right. So just a variety of names, or you can be useful to have in text. So it's sort of more nitty gritty are are sort of Miss, Mr or Mrs used in the text. Each of these is is gendered right in some way that we're thinking about, could they be similarly to pronouns up at the top, could they be replaced with gender neutral term, which is pronounced mix. That's thought of as a gender neutral term instead of Mrs or Mr. Or to just be eliminated entirely. Often there's just like unnecessarily gendered things in texts, and everywhere. Could it just, could you just take that out and it would still have the same meeting. Maybe you could maybe you couldn't. Again, this is just a question to sort of get you to think about that. Before I move on, do any other questions does anyone have any questions about any of these questions, or do you have anything that you would add to this list. I'm not right about this list or any questions. This is great. This is often an aspect of our look to find so I think it's really valuable that we put together so many different questions around us, especially removing things that are not necessary. I think I do a lot of reading on the French language and a particular term that they use for kind of gender free writing. There's a lot of debates about how to do because of French language and if you're familiar but it's very gendered because the nouns are gendered. So there's a really interesting you know debates there and in those communities there is a lot of talk about if you wanted to make a text more neutral. How do we do that. There's all kinds of practices and how to interact with accessibility it's really fascinating in English it's much simpler if you think about it so frankly, implementing this as something rigorous to review your work seems really doable. So I think you put together a good framework for that. Absolutely that actually what you're saying reminds me of a blog post I read recently from a from a researcher at an organization called coral, which is an acronym for something that I don't remember, but they, the author who wrote it is French and she focuses on queer inclusion in the classroom a lot and she wrote this blog post about exactly what you're saying about how it's it's difficult and languages that are so linguistically that are so gendered with things like that English language does not have. And I think that's really fascinating and and a consideration that most people don't think about again because we often think of it as the sort of Anglo sex and perspective when we think about queer inclusion in the classroom but in reality, other languages and other cultures are doing this better than we are already so that's fascinating. Alright, moving on to the second one here. Visual and content representation right. What are you saying in the in the text and what are you saying visually, which is equally as important when you're reading through content and open texts. The first question I have here is, are masculine feminine and sort of androgynous present presenting people portrayed in roughly equal rates in photos right similarly to believe that that names don't really have a gender. Gender presentations are not sort of necessarily aligned with masculinity or femininity right non binary people can look like anything. Men can look like anything right so gender people can look like anything. But that being said, or is there a diversity of gender presentation in the images in the videos in any other sort of visuals that you have in the context. Just to sort of get you thinking about does it does it always look like people of sort of one demographic or not. The second one is, is there visual diversity among the LGBTQ people portrayed right. Again, similarly to the sort of single story narrative that we're talking about earlier visibly queer quote unquote visibly queer people who hold additional marginalized identities are not often showing up in textbooks. When we do see what we assume to be queer people in textbooks, they mostly look like me right. They look like either flamboyant white gay men as as we sort of stereotypically think about them, or they look like women like me who have flannel shirts on and short haircuts and are like a lumberjack or something and they're always building on stereotypes. But again, in reality there are literally thousands of different LGBT LGBTQ presentation that experiences and gender expressions and so having a diversity of those in your visuals is really important. Number three is there an LGBT LGBTQ specific section of the content. Right. Like I said, it's, it's not always it shouldn't always pull focus in things where it's not about this but, for example, if, if you're talking about a historical event where an LGBTQ LGBTQ person had a great influence in that particular historical event, then they should probably be acknowledged right. And something a question that I get a lot is, you know what, what difference does it make for if it's not sort of if it wasn't like Harvey milk, or if it wasn't Stonewall, then like what difference does it make for a student to know, sort of like that person's sexuality right. And that's a totally fair question like why why would it make a difference right. And my response is representation matters. A good example of this is Alan Turing, right. The scientist. Most people don't, I shouldn't say most people don't know I have no idea what people, but I think a lot of textbooks about him don't don't teach about his sort of sexual gender identity, because of just his robust contributions to science which were great but for a young queer in that classroom to know that someone like them made that significant contribution to history and to science. It actually matters a lot, right. It matters to know that someone that you perceive to be like you did great things it says that you can do great things. So if, if there are examples of that where that could be mentioned, or it could be acknowledged and celebrated in the text in the stories that are being told, then the text should do that. So number four, if history, ELA English language arts, or general humanities, if it's one of sort of one of these three general categories. Does the content mention LGBTQ historical figures icons events, or influences where appropriate. Again, I think influences is also really key right when we're thinking about sort of LGBTQ civil rights history. There's a lot of other really big events in, for example in American history, going on at that same time. And I think for that reason, partially because of that reason. That's not really mentioned that much it's certainly not mentioned in mainstream proprietary textbooks, but it had influences far outside of like San Francisco in 1969 right it had big influences and what was going on in the country. Those, those stories are really not woven in that content, that context, excuse me, is not very acknowledged very much in textbooks outside of sort of things that are specifically focused on queer and trans people. But it can provide outside of allowing students to sort of see themselves in the context. It can often just add, you know, truth value to what was going on to help students understand the full sort of the full context of what was going on in the world if we're talking about history or humanities. Right. Third and final one I know I'm talking quickly, and we're moving through this quickly but again please stop me if you have any questions. Next, and next after this one we're going to sort of go through a couple examples of this to see what it, see what it looks like. This is basically non specific, excuse me, non LGBTQ specific considerations right. Like I said, LGBTQ people exist in every other demographic on this earth. It's, they, we are everywhere. We exist in every population and so things that are meant to include specifically other sort of types demographics categories of people are also queer inclusive right there's overlap there. So the first couple are about sort of physical accessibility right is the content in black and white font. Is it is a sharp contrast between the text in the background. Is it a normal size is it aerial or times new Roman those two fonts right are are thought to be the most sort of accessible to read on screens and in text. Is there all text provider for the photos right all text being the description of what's in the photos for people who use screen readers and anyone who would like to read it. And really importantly, is the all text accurate is a descriptive and is it free of personal bias right if if someone is relying on all text to understand what what photos are in the materials that they're reading. And that text includes just a bunch of, you know, homophobic biases, then that's not very useful right. That is not the representation and the inclusion that that person really needs to be able to access this content. Number three are their audio clips of the printed text available. Is it available in more than one way right in order for content to be actually inclusive and actually accessible and actually open. We want people to be able to get to it to access it in any way that they're able to do that. Number four, consider the point of view of the author right this is a big one is the content presented through a white lens, what privileges must be must you have as the reader to understand the point of view of the author. This is a big one in American textbooks specifically, which are nearly always written from a white lens, a white perspective, celebrating whiteness and ignoring everything else right. This is a big one, especially it's it's not always thought of I think as queer inclusion, but it certainly is and it should be because queer people are not all white. Statistically, most of us are not white. And so this is a really important one when we're thinking about queer narratives, right, like we were talking about queer stories and points of view. And then finally, in word problems back to the example of math right what hypotheticals or examples are used which which backgrounds must someone come from in order to understand these examples. I don't know about this in just a minute but essentially another way to get you to think about sort of what do you need to know in order to be able to access the content that's happening right. Does it have just a lot of assumptions built into it and a lot of knowledge that you have to hold in order to even be able to understand it, because if that's the case, it's probably not very accessible. I'll pause one more time before we move on and talk about a couple of real examples and see what that looks like anyone have any anything else they would add to this any issues with any of these things or any thoughts. There's a pretty loud noise I'm having trouble hearing you. I don't know if other folks can hear that but I was having trouble hearing you because there was a repetitive noise. It sounded like you were sharing resources. If that's the case. Hopefully, maybe in the chat here. Oh I see in the chat you. I'm sorry I'm sorry that we can't hear you clearly. If you could put in the chat was what what you were saying or if you were sharing resources you can share them there seems given up for the day it's over. I'm going to go ahead and move on then to our, our examples. And this is the last thing that I have. I have three examples but they're the last thing that I have here so hopefully we'll be able to end a little bit early and give give folks some part of their day back. So walk you through again so we can sort of feel out together what this looks like what this feels like, when we're sort of applying some of these questions. This first example is from the seventh grade American open math textbook. It's in the US that's about ages 12 to 13 right. And I will read it out loud since it's not very long. The example of the excerpt says, William is a homeowner trying to sell his house. He has to pay his real estate agent john 7% commission. He wants to make at least $150,000 on the sale after he pays john. What price to the nearest dollar does William need to sell his house for in order to make at least $150,000. So that is the word problem. So my question to you all is and feel free to answer just just say it out loud or feel free to have it in the chat. I'm sorry I'm not great at multitasking so I hadn't looked at the chat until now but now that I'm here. I see that Nicole wrote in the chat traditionally men buy and sell houses right. Right there are a lot of gender assumptions in this right, sort of reinforcing the idea that that men, particularly, not just any men right but William and john are kind of commonly read as white male names are people who buy homes, right. So sort of reinforcing that stereotype. What anyone notices about this in particularly what is sort of required knowledge in order to do this problem. Money. Yes. Yes, money. I don't know about you but I didn't, I didn't exactly know what a home buying commission was when I was 12 years old, right. A class assumptions and absolutely. I had no idea what a commission was when I was 12 years old I was not buying a home then my parents were not buying a home. There's absolutely a class sort of a set of a class associated set of knowledge here that you have to know in order to be able to even do this problem in the first place on top of the sort of reinforcing the gender assumptions of who is a home buyer and who is not a home buyer. This one is the one that I start with because it's one in my opinion that would not be so hard to add a couple of smaller tweaks to, in order to make it, you know, not in order to sort of address some of the biases that are in it. The names in particular, I would, I could change right you could change them to names that are thought of as women's names or names that are sometimes thought of as androgynous or both male and female names. There are a lot of he him his pronouns in here right you could change those. If you have a commission you can say what a commission is right, or you can just say you know he, he has to pay john 7% of the cost that the house sells for. There, there are just some smaller tweaks to this right. Does anyone notice anyone notice anything else about this or would change it in any other way. That's the easiest example. Example number two, and this one is a, this is a sort of excerpt from a year seven British textbook, which is also about ages 12 to 13. I'll read it aloud again says in town a 70% of the men are married to 90% of the women. What percentage of the adult population in town a are married. What do you notice about this one. Yes, men are always first. It doesn't even, it doesn't even put the women first. Absolutely. What else do you notice what stands out to you about this. What assumptions are being made in this one. I guess if you ask me if you ask me if you ask me if you ask me, if you ask me, if you ask me if you ask me if you ask me if you ask me, Eli says, men can only marry women. Right. It is absolutely making that assumption that, that it's kind of a brass assumption if, if you ask me that all the people in this town are straight, and that they're all marrying the opposite sex. at the end of this, but yes, it is assuming heterosexuality rather strongly and weirdly for a math problem if you ask me. Right, and the underlying assumption there, Xenia is absolutely right in the chat, she says marriage is only considered valid if it is heterosexual. Yes, it is somehow saying all of these things in two sentences. And so like I said at the beginning, it sounds, when you're sort of describing the biases that can pop up, it sounds, it's easy to think that sounds, you know, very outdated and what kind of texts still say that, but like they do, right? And when you're sort of thinking about it, it becomes very clear, I think. Liz says, and assuming everyone is cisgendered, yes. It makes all of these brass assumptions in two sentences. What would you change about this if you were going to rewrite this? How would you change it while people are thinking or typing or both? Back to Laura's comment from earlier, Alex is a good name and they use they them, plus describe what a commission is right from that last one. Alex is a good example of names that are often thought of as both female or male names, which again, I'm here to tell you any name can be any gender, but people do read it a certain way, so intentionally including that is a great idea. Alex is a good example. So back to this one, right? People, yes, people, gender neutral words for groups, right? People is a great one. Everyone's people, you could just say that. Or make it not about marriage, yes, that's another great one, because marriage, right, is sort of traditionally a heterosexual institution, and it doesn't have to be about that. And probably, you're exactly right, the 12 year olds are not like very concerned with who's getting married to whom. Couldn't it be somebody else? Yes, yes, you all got it. Group orange, group green, yes. Things like sort of silly names or colors or whatever it is for describing groups of people in ways that are not hyper-gendered, right? Like men and women are a really great way to get around that. All right, moving on to number three, our final one. This is an excerpt on sexuality specifically from a university level Canadian open textbook. I'll read it out loud. These two sentences I just numbered because they're from the same paragraph in this excerpt, but they're not sequential. So the first one says, transgender females are males who have such a strong emotional and psychological connection to the feminine aspects of society that they identify their gender as female. The second sentence says transgender individuals who attempt to alter their bodies through medical interventions such as surgery and hormonal therapy, so that their physical being is better aligned with their gender identity are called transsexuals. I see folks sharing links in the chat rather. Thank you for sharing those. That's great. So when you read these two sentences, when you read these two sentences, what stands out to you about the content specifically? What do you notice? What questions do you have? Um, blatant transphobia. Yes, I might not even realize how transphobic it is. Right. Yes, you're exactly right. This, I believe, was written by someone with good intentions and good will. And it's a perfect example of why impact is much more important than intentions, right? And also what happens when content is not written by queer authors. I don't know this person who wrote this. It's listed because it's an open resource. I have no idea who they are, but I can almost guarantee you that they're not a queer trans person, right? And the reason that I can tell that, not just because it's obvious and everyone should know that it's obvious, but the reason that I can tell that is because the language is outdated, right? Transsexual, for example, is no longer a phrase that's in use. Transgender male and female is not typically phrases that are in use anymore since we usually think of female and male as sort of having to do with biological or medical sort of context. Instead, when we're talking about sort of social constructs of gender identity, we usually talk about men and women, and therefore say transgender men or transgender woman or person. That's sort of one indicator to me that this is sort of outdated. Another is that it's pretty invalidating, right? Trans females are males is not true. That's not an accurate statement. If you're reading something like this, and it seems helpful, but you're not quite sure if it's accurate information or not, there are just about a bajillion resources that you could go to that are sort of tried and true, and I link a lot of them in these slides here where you could sort of feel out whether or not the language is sort of updated and relevant. What I appreciate, the reason that I pull out this sort of very grievous example is that I think that it's useful to sort of see what is out there, especially in OER spaces and materials. This textbook is in OER Commons. You can go there looking for it, and more than that, it's one of the very few texts on gender and sexuality specifically. There are not a lot that are openly licensed, and so if you are someone looking to learn about this for the first time, this is what you're going to see if you're looking at open materials. That's pretty concerning. As people who are sort of committed to this work and accurate information being out there, I think we do have a duty really to make sure that the information that is there, again, the open materials that people are relying on more and more now, make sure that they're accurate and useful information. Before we wrap up any other lingering questions or thoughts or comments or feelings, feel free to say it out loud or throw in the chat. Thank you to everyone who's sharing resources and links in the chat. That's great. Hi, everyone. I have a question. It's just a question I have because of the online learning situation. It's much different than face-to-face, and I always welcome all my great, diverse, creative students. They're graphic designers, or they're going towards graphic design, or maybe they're just taking a Photoshop class to learn a little bit about image manipulation. I get all kinds of great folks, and I enjoy talking to them and their stories and their diversity, but when I'm faced with an online discussion group, everyone's introducing themselves, and they introduce themselves with the gender identities that I mentioned before that I need to brush up on. What's your suggestion? Does anyone have a good suggestion for if someone introduces themselves and they happen to mention that they're cis, gay, or however they identify themselves? I usually just say hi, and I just kind of skip over that part because I don't want to call attention to it. I don't want to seem rude. Maybe I'm approaching it the wrong way. Does anyone have a suggestion for me? I'll share my immediate reaction and then invite anyone else to as well. I so appreciate this question because I think it comes from a real place of caring, and I appreciate that you asked it. My typical go-to is to say thank you for sharing that. I think just like you mentioned, it doesn't necessarily need to be broadcast, but it also ought to not be ignored. I think trying to build a community, especially when online, like you said, which I imagine is really a lot harder than it is in person to make those personal connections. I think that difference in that way ought to be accepted. We can recognize difference. Difference among us is there, and it's something to be celebrated. It's not something to be ignored, but it is there. When people share that with me, especially online, I just say thank you so much for sharing that part of you. If it's not the point of the conversation, then the conversation moves on. Does anyone else have anything to add on to that? I'd just like to say thank you so much for that. That is a beautiful perspective, and I love it. That's what I'll do. I love it. Thank you. Absolutely. I love that question. Any other questions or thoughts or anything on anything we talked about? I'm hearing nothing. I'm going to move on to my very last slide, which is just to share some more resources with you all. I so appreciate everyone sharing their resources in the chat. Liz, is there a way to capture the chat and be able to hold on to those resources that were shared? Yeah. Anybody in here can save the chat, and then I will get a version when I close the meeting. I can share those links on the OE Global post for this session. That would be awesome. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. I always forgot that you can just save the chat. I'm asking everyone else on the internet how to do that. Thank you. That's great. I just wanted to share a couple resources that I have with you all. Again, the link to this slide deck that I've used and all of these things here are live links as well. If you can access that is under the presentation on OE Global's website for the conference. The first one is just all the questions that I presented to you here in a Word doc, so it's a little bit easier to look at. Number two and three are reports that we've, our own reports that we've written at New America on LGBTQ inclusive teaching and another one on learning. So one from the teacher side, one from the student side. Number four is teaching tolerance, which is an organization based out of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the U.S. They do, excuse me, they do lots of great work in this area and one of the most foundational resources they have is their glossary of terms. It has every term that you would ever think of and they have young people who work there and they update it all the time. So you know that that's like a good place to go for language. If you just hear something and you don't know what that means or you want to learn more. I don't include that in, in this presentation because it makes people feel like they have to memorize every term on that list in order to engage with this work and that's not true either, but it's a good resource to hold on to. Number five is a list of resources that I curate with teachers and administrators that I work with most often. It has books, it has YouTube videos, TED Talks, podcasts, Twitter feeds, all kinds of stuff, all about the things that we've just talked about. And then number six is an LGBTQ studies open textbook. It's aimed at higher ed. It was sort of spearheaded by Deb Amory at SUNY Empire State College in New York, but it has tons of authors, myself included in one very small part of it, but lots of other people, more brilliant than I am who wrote that textbook. And again, it's updated all the time and has lots of great content in it about all kinds of things. And it's a really cool model for having open LGBTQ focus content. So if you're interested in that, please check that out. Aside from that, that's all for me. Thank you so much for, for joining this and for being here and for caring about this enough to show up to this work during a pandemic. I really appreciate it.