Join NCTE for a special webinar discussing pedagogical approaches for engaging with Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer in classrooms, libraries, and communities. Gender Queer has often been targeted in recent waves of censorship and book banning, usually by taking the work out of context. Members of NCTE’s LGBTQIA+ Advisory Committee will be part of a panel of experts leading the conversation with author Maia Kobabe and discussing the value of the text as a whole. Each panelist has expertise in queer and trans pedagogies in schools and teacher education and will bring their extensive experience to the conversation.

Thursday, January 25, 7:00–8:00 p.m. ET

Thank you for your interest in registering for this event. NCTE’s single sign-in system is currently undergoing maintenance. As a result, we are not able to add additional registrations in the 24 hours before the event begins.

This is a members-only event, and registration is required. Please contact profdev@ncte.org with any questions.

Maia Kobabe (e/em) is a nonbinary, queer author and illustrator from the Bay Area, California. Eir first full-length book, Gender Queer: A Memoir, was published in May 2019. Kobabe’s short comics have been published online by The Nib and The New Yorker, and in many print anthologies, including The Secret Loves of Geeks; FTL, Y’All; Gothic Tales of Haunted Love; Advanced Death Saves; and Be Gay, Do Comics. Before setting out to work freelance full-time, e worked for over ten years in libraries. Eir work is heavily influenced by fairy tales, homesickness, and the search for identity.

Anna Gonzales (she/her) is an English teacher at Little Red Schoolhouse and Elisabeth Irwin High School. She teaches grade 10 American literature and a range of electives for grades 11 and 12, including trans literature, gender and sexuality in Shakespeare, Black American literature, contemporary Native American literature, analytical writing, and personal essay. Gonzales attended Swarthmore College, where she majored in English and Gender & Sexuality Studies, and she earned an MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, where she completed a thesis on the benefits of student reflection in the classroom. Before LREI, she taught English at Deerfield Academy.

Jack Helton (they/them) is a PhD candidate in English education at Columbia University’s Teachers College. They have served as an instructor in the MA program in English education, studying adolescence and literature with pre- and inservice teachers, and in the undergraduate Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies departments at Barnard and Columbia College. Helton is a crisis interventionist for LGBTQ+ youth and a trans competency trainer for educators and youth service providers. Their research looks at the relationships between gender, sexuality, and schooling—specifically the ways in which hetero- and cis-normativity are naturalized through school. Helton is invested in queer and critical trans pedagogies as a means by which educators might disrupt the hegemonic regimes of gender and sexuality as they intersect with dominant discourses such as race, class, and ability.

Ileana Jiménez (she/her) is the chair of NCTE’s LGBTQIA+ Advisory Committee. She is a leader in the national and global feminism-in-schools movement and creator of #HSfeminism and #K12feminism. A high school English teacher-activist for 25 years, she teaches a course on gender, sexuality, and schooling at Barnard, and has taught critical feminist and queer pedagogies courses at NYU and Columbia’s Teachers College. Her doctoral research at Teachers College is on Black and Latina feminist pedagogies, curriculum, and activism. In 2011, she received a Fulbright to interview queer and trans youth in Mexico City’s high schools. She received her BA in English from Smith and an MA in English from Middlebury. She is @feministteacher on social media platforms.

shea wesley martin (they/them) is a literacy scholar-educator and facilitator currently completing their doctoral studies in Adolescent, Post-Secondary, and Community Literacies at The Ohio State University. Before beginning their doctoral studies, martin taught middle and high school English in Florida and Massachusetts and co-founded/facilitated several literacy initiatives to support LGBTQIA+ youth and educators around the country. Through their scholarship and pedagogy, martin deliberately centers the stories, histories, and humanity of queer and trans people of color. Above all, they remain committed to bridging the gaps between the “scholarly,” community efforts, and literacy classrooms. martin was awarded the Konigsberg Award from the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE (ALAN) in 2022 and the NCTE LGBTQIA+ Advocacy & Leadership Award in 2023. Their work appears in multiple scholarly and creative outlets including Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, Radical Teacher, and Electric Literature.

Cody Miller (he/him) is an associate professor of English education at SUNY Brockport. During his seven years as a high school English teacher in Florida and in his current role, he has positioned texts as vehicles to discuss broader sociopolitical issues in students’ lives and worlds. Miller is the editor of English Leadership Quarterly. He served as the chair of NCTE’s LGBTQ Advisory Committee from 2018 to 2021. He was awarded NCTE’s LGBTQIA+ Advocacy & Leadership Award in 2022.