Alone on stage: How one LGBTIQ+ educator uses poetic performative autoethnography for social change

Abstract

This article analyzes one open-educator’s self-reflexive examination of his poetry performance calling for the need of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer (LGBTIQ+) educators to serve as role models in the secondary classroom setting as a mechanism to promote social change. The author, who presented an original poetry collection in front of 400+ high school students and educators advocating for the need for out-educators, reflects upon this act as both Poetic Inquiry and Performance Autoethnography, providing a hybrid methodology – Poetic Performative Autoethnography (PPA), while framing the experience and its meaning to both the participant-researcher and the audience. The article includes discussion regarding the importance of/and political nature of representation, the need for space and dialogue, as well as obstacles facing LGBTIQ+ educators in the classroom.