Queer/Trans@OISE

 

Queer/Trans@OISE (QT@OISE) is a place for 2SLGBTQIA+ teacher candidates and allies in the MT program! We host weekly informal gatherings from September to April (except for when students are on practicum). 

 

We recognize that gender and sexual identities are understood through diverse lenses, including different personal, political, and cultural contexts. The ways that gender and sexual diversity work is done in mainstream culture often centers white thin able-bodied settlers, further marginalizing Indigenous/Two-Spirit, Black, Brown, and Asian queer and trans folx. It can also overlook the ways that ableism, saneism, classism, sexism, and fat-phobia intersect with many queer and trans people's lived experiences. Gender and sexuality do not exist in a vacuum from other marginalized identities. This is a space that Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, fat, neurodiverse, autistic, disabled, chronically ill, anxious, depressed, mentally ill people are welcome and will be centered. We are a support space and value care, reciprocity, and community-building.

 

*Due to COVID, meetings will be online via Zoom; however, once it is safe to do so, meetings will happen again in person at OISE.

 

We create a community space where queer and trans future educators can share their experiences and build a sense of community. 

 

Our weekly gatherings are part social, part resource sharing, and part queering, trans-ing and femme-inizing education. We recognize that formal education is often homophobic and transphobic and otherwise hostile to people who are outside of cis and het identities, and we seek to both make change and support each other. 

 

We share resources and information about events through our email blasts. 

 

We can act as a resource for faculty and staff at OISE. If you are a faculty member wanting to learn more, please reach out and build relationships with us; we would love to support you in queering, trans-ing and femme-inizing your pedagogies

 

Outside of our weekly drop-in meetings, we will be trying to put together a panel of queer and trans educators this year.

 

We welcome people of all sexual orientations and gender identities but center the needs of people who are themselves part of the 2SLGBTIQQA (Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual) spectrum. Allies are welcome, but we ask you to be aware of how you take up space.

 

This space is designed for teacher candidates in the MT program. That being said, if you are a grad student or faculty member who identifies as somewhere on the 2SLGBTQIA+ spectrum at OISE, you are more than welcome to attend. We would love to have you here!

 

We post the link to our weekly meetings on our Facebook group and in our email blast. All you need to do is click on the zoom link!

 

Contact coordinator, Lindsay Cavanaugh (she/her) at lindsay.cavanaugh@mail.utoronto.ca to be added to our listserv or for more information.