ABSTRACT
This case study looks at a team of two first grade teachers at a TWBE school in the Mountain West and how they collaborate on the creation of inclusive classrooms for a transgender student. The teachers’ efforts are grounded in their experiences of marginalization in schools, as a lesbian and a Latina respectively. They engage in explicitly transgressive and anti-oppressive pedagogy through the incorporation of LGBTQ+ materials and lessons, the use of translanguaging, and the modification of binary language structures in English and Spanish. These changes include adopting non-gendered pronouns in English (they/their/them) and Spanish (elle) to refer to the student as well as non-gendered word-endings in Spanish (¿Todes están listes?). While their administration, students and families, and some colleagues are supportive, other colleagues occasionally express or enact oppositional stances toward their adoption of non-binary gendered language. This case examines how critical and intersectional perspectives support the teachers in their efforts to create classrooms that are inclusive of all their students.
