Renowned author and consultant, Lester L. Laminack illuminates the urgent need to create safe spaces for our LGBTQ+ youth. Lester helps listeners understand the trust required and the risks our children take when inviting others to know who they truly are.
Resources to Help You Support LGBTQ+ Youth:
Connect with Lester:
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Renowned author and consultant, Lester L. Laminack illuminates the urgent need to create safe spaces for our LGBTQ+ youth. Lester helps listeners understand the trust required and the risks our children take when inviting others to know who they truly are.
Resources to Help You Support LGBTQ+ Youth:
Connect with Lester:
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to Schoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I am Olivia Wahl, and I am humbled that I have the privilege to welcome my guest today, Lester Laminack. Lester is a Professor Emeritus at Western Carolina University, where he received two awards for excellence in teaching.
[00:00:28] Olivia: He is currently a full-time writer and consultant working with schools throughout the United States. Lester has co-authored a number of professional books and has several articles published in journals such as The Reading Teacher, Science and Children, Language Arts, Primary Voices, and Young Children.
[00:00:47] Olivia: Lester is also the author of seven children's books. Three Hens, a Peacock, and the Enormous Egg; a sequel to Three Hens and a Peacock, will be released in February of 2023, and A Cat Like That is under contract. I will never forget sitting at Lester's NCTE roundtable session in November of 2018. To get a seat at his table was like a hard-fought round of musical chairs.
[00:01:15] Olivia: When I secured my spot, I sat with awe and appreciation for his snappy bow tie, his calm demeanor, and his stack of beautiful picture books that he would soon share with us. The session was around cultivating students' voices in the reading workshop, where Lester used a collection of Ezra Jack Keats’s stories to teach us how to illuminate writers craft moves for our young readers and writers.
[00:01:40] Olivia: And although this was my first time sharing a table with Lester, this was not the first time I felt like I was sitting in community with him. When Katherine Bomer's book, The Journey Is Everything, was published in 2016, I jumped to read the gorgeous essays at the back of the book immediately. Lester's essay, You Didn't Know Me Then, held residence on pages 196 through 198.
[00:02:05] Olivia: His essay lingered with me for years after reading it. And most recently, after reading Lester's blog, Why We Need LGBTQ+ Literature for Children and Youth, published in the Colorado Council of the International Reading Association (CCIRA) in June of this year. I hoped to have Lester as a guest to share his vision and call to action that will help listeners ensure that every student is physically and emotionally safe to be who they are.
[00:02:35] Olivia: It is my honor to have this important conversation with you, Lester. Welcome.
[00:02:39] Lester: Thank you. It's an honor to be here. And I agree with you, it is a most important conversation.
[00:02:46] Olivia: Yes. Before we jump in, Lester, I love to ask guests who an inspiring educator is from their life. Would you share with listeners?
[00:02:55] Lester: Sure. I had a lot of teachers who were important to me, but if we have to narrow down to one, it would be a person whose class I never sat in, a person I never met face to face.
[00:03:11] Lester: But one of the most influential educators, in my experience, is Fred Rogers. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, I think, can teach us all something about what it means to be fully human and also for us to examine the way we interact with children.
[00:03:31] Olivia: I agree. I actually saw a beautiful Fred Rogers quote that I shared with the world today that when we see It's so important to remember why it was not so scary for us, and a lot of it circles around the people that we're with as the memory that quelled that fear.
[00:03:51] Olivia: And right now, it's pretty terrifying in education, but just, I would say in the world. I'm going to use the words gag order that some states are putting on educators and alongside the mistreatment of the LGBTQIA+ students, caregivers, and educators in the states. I wanted you to be a guest because you speak so eloquently to both your own experiences as well as our call to action as allies.
[00:04:19] Olivia: So, I wanted to kick off our conversation around how your own life experiences influence both your writing process and your published pieces that you create.
[00:04:30] Lester: If we start with the children's books, I think any person who writes literature can't avoid having the influence of who they are and all that they've come through, showing up in their stories.
[00:04:45] Lester: Even when we write fiction, every piece of fiction has some grain of truth. And, you know, you think about how a pearl is formed, there's one little grain of sand that is the origin of that somewhere. And I think every story, the pearl of that story, comes from some grain of truth in our own experiences. My first book for children was The Sunsets of Miss Olivia Wiggins.
[00:05:11] Lester: And that story is an elderly woman in a nursing home dealing with dementia or Alzheimer's and a great-grandson who comes to visit and helps more than he knows. And that story has its origins in two family members who died of Alzheimer's. Trevor's Wiggly-Wobbly Tooth…I was a first-grade teacher, and I was the person who pulled all of the teeth.
[00:05:38] Lester: That experience with kids telling all the stories of: Oh, don't let your dad try to pull it out with the string. My brother said he would pull mine out with pliers. And those kinds of things filtering through your own experiences into a story. And every one of the picture books has one piece of something from your own experience.
[00:05:58] Lester: You know, the only one that's fully true is Saturdays and Teacakes, which is a memoir piece. And anyone who writes memoir will tell you that everything in it is true, although it might not all be factual. What happens is when you start to write something from long ago, you rely on what your memory pulls up.
[00:06:20] Lester: And when you're a grown-up writing about childhood, you may over-romanticize some notions and ignore some of the less pleasant pieces. And so, when you start to write, it may not all come up factual, but it's all true. So, I think that's important for us to think about.
[00:06:40] Lester: In writing for teachers, how my experience filters in, this is my 46th year as an educator. So, I started teaching in 1977 and everything I write or have written for teachers has emerged because of interaction with teachers. And my work as a classroom teacher, you know, I drew on that experience, of course, but then as a college professor, and then as a consultant out working in schools.
[00:07:11] Lester: I begin to notice patterns when I'm working with teachers, and there are concerns or worries that arise, and then as we sit down to try to problematize those and work through them, I begin to notice patterns from one school to another, from one state to another, from one type of school to another, and it's, wow, this is something that a lot of people are grappling with.
[00:07:34] Olivia: Yes.
[00:07:35] Lester: And then when you start reflecting on how did we respond to that, that becomes a book. So your truth, your experience, who you are filters into that no matter what.
[00:07:45] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Lester: And as it relates to the focus of your podcast, the LBGTQ+ piece, I think we have to recognize that each of us, when we think about our identity, our identity is thousands of different threads woven together to create an individual tapestry.
[00:08:07] Lester: And being a gay cisgendered man is only one of those thousands of threads of who I am. So, you may not see evidence of the fact that I am a gay man in anything I write. If you know me, then you know that. You know, if I'm doing a presentation, and there's an example of family, the way any speaker would do, I speak of my husband in the same way that a heterosexual male would speak of his wife.
[00:08:40] Olivia: Yes.
[00:08:41] Lester: My wife and I were out to dinner last night and I saw this - and then make an example out of that. Well, I would say: My husband and I were on a hike over in the Great Smokies and this took place. And I use that as a metaphor in the same way. Otherwise, though, I think if you just read my work, you may not know.
[00:08:58] Olivia: Yeah. And that metaphor of a tapestry that we’re made up of thousands of beautiful threads. It's such a gorgeous image.
[00:09:08] Olivia: And in the blog post that you had shared in June of this year, something you said, I quote: Imagine your existence, neither valued nor acknowledged. Instead, everything you see and hear makes it clear that people like you are not only devalued, but also abhorred. Imagine that the person you know yourself to be, your truest, most natural self, is something the world proclaims immoral and or illegal. Imagine you see reports on television and in newspapers declaring that your identity is punishable by imprisonment, even death in some parts of the world.
[00:09:45] Olivia: And in your own country, you see religious groups gathering to protest your right to work in certain professions and your right to marry or raise children. If this is what you witness as a young person, how willingly would you reveal your most inner truth? How likely would you be to deny and fear your own natural self instead?
[00:10:06] Olivia: How likely would you be to seek out someone like you in a book, a poem, an article, a movie, or a song? Why would you? Especially when the whole world proclaims that you, and those like you, have no right to be who you truly are. So why would you bother? Lester, those words, I read them. I poured over them again and again.
[00:10:27] Olivia: It's critical that our children feel safe and feel seen. The pattern I've found, especially through this season of interviews for the podcast, it's that notion of being present of wise seeing, wise being - making choices to be in the moment. I think of all of the children that we work with in schools. What does it mean to you to be seen? And how can literature serve as validation reflecting the children we have?
[00:10:56] Lester: To be seen - all of us, every human on the globe has a need to be valued and respected for the dignity and integrity of being human. And our society has created situations where we value certain characteristics and traits or skin colors or height or body shape or religious practices over others.
[00:11:30] Olivia: Yes.
[00:11:30] Lester: And when we do that, whether it's in movies or in music or on billboards or in stories or in what we see on the news about who wants to restrict access to one book or another, we send a message to our children about what is beautiful, what is valued, what is lovable, what is not. And so, we don't have to wonder why the suicide rate is 3xs higher among youth in the LBGTQ+ community than in any other aspect of youth and young people in the country.
[00:12:12] Lester: They don't see themselves. Now, clearly, there's a movement in the country for us to have what Rudine Sims Bishop identified as mirrors, windows, and doors, and we are working hard in many different venues. To make sure that children have access to that. And when Dr. Sims Bishop did that work, she was focusing specifically on African American Children and Children of color being totally underrepresented.
[00:12:45] Lester: And even though that piece was written a couple of decades ago….
[00:12:49] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:12:49] Lester: …. we haven't done much improvement in that area. There is some improvement. There is some new attention. But if you look at what's being challenged in the banned book world, the three broadest categories of what's being banned have to do with banning books that have any mention of or reference to an LBGTQ+ character, books that might fall under some crazy definition of critical race theory. So, there are people who can't even define it, but use it as a weapon…
[00:13:27] Olivia: Yes.
[00:13:27] Lester: …and take out books that have any reference to African American history that might be something that is not pleasant to white people. And then the third category has to do with things around religion and religious practices. So, if we mentioned other religions or other attitudes, cultural traditions, we end up wanting to challenge those books, not us, but those people who are challenging books out there are pushing against something that is different.
[00:14:00] Lester: So, if we need those windows, mirrors, and doors anywhere, we need them for those three categories. Those mirrors are necessary for children to recognize that who you are is valued in the world. And if there's nothing about you, or someone like you, or a family like yours, in the library where you go to school, if there's nothing that reflects you and the textbooks that your school requires you to read, and then if we even move further out into the community and remove all of those layers from even the public library…
[00:14:44] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:14:45] Lester: …and the kids see this and hear it on the radio and on the news and on television, you know, they're sitting there thinking: Oh, wow, that's me.
[00:14:57] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:14:57] Lester: So, if I'm so horrible that grown-ups want all these books moved, how could I ever tell anybody? And this whole concept of coming out is warped. Just totally warped.
[00:15:14] Olivia: Say more. What do you mean?
[00:15:16] Lester: Um, the idea that that someone in the LGBTQ+ community needs to come out - why do we owe that to anyone?
[00:15:30] Olivia: It's so true. Yeah.
[00:15:32] Lester: You know, so on what, on what date did any cisgendered heterosexual person get up and say: Okay, today, come what may, no matter what happens, no matter if my parents kick me out, no matter if my church throws me out, no matter if my community wants to burn me at the stake, I'm going to tell everybody I'm straight, you know, I just got to make this proclamation. I'm straight. It never happens.
[00:16:02] Olivia: Yeah, it's so true.
[00:15:30] Lester: And then I think a cisgendered heterosexual person probably never has a moment of reckoning where they sort of wake up one morning and have been struggling with this notion, you know, it feels like everybody else is attracted to this and I'm not, you know, and everybody else wants to do that and I don't.
[00:16:27] Lester: And at what point do you come to this realization, well, there's a reason for that. I don't think that a straight person ever has this place. It's just the world is so geared around who they are that they just slide right into that existence without ever even having an acknowledgment of it.
[00:16:46] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:16:47] Lester: And so, for those people who believe out there that this is a choice that a child makes, you know, if that's the case, then that means you also made a choice. If a child makes a choice about any aspect of their identity, their gender, their sexual orientation, if they do indeed make a choice about that, then it would be true that you made a choice. When did that happen? How old were you when you had the reckoning? Oh, wait a minute. Gee, I'm heterosexual. Or, gee, I'm cisgendered.
[00:17:23] Lester: You didn't ever even have to consider it. I've been on this little kick where I was reading some books that were, uh, getting challenged in the last twelve months. In a couple of those books, there was mention of the notion that we need to shift the notion of coming out to the notion of inviting in.
[00:17:43] Olivia: Oh, it's beautiful.
[00:17:44] Lester: Because when you come out, you know, you're making a public proclamation. Well, you're not standing on the street corner and you're not putting an, you know, a front-page headline and you're not getting on the news and announcing to the world. You literally are typically speaking to one person at a time and each time walking a little further out on the ice, you know, at what point will I fall through?
[00:18:11] Lester: Where's the ice solid enough, who can I trust enough? And so, what you're doing is slowly inviting those people into your intimate circle of people that you trust the most, not to turn their back on you and not to make this a public issue for you. And I think probably for most LBGTQ+ youth, it is their greatest challenge to figure out: Who can I trust? And with whom can I be my truest self?
[00:18:45] Olivia: Yes.
[00:18:46] Lester: And if there is no one, then you can't fully explore things. You can't figure out, okay, what does it mean? So, if you're trying to figure out, this is who I am. This is who I'm attracted to. This is how I feel. If you can't talk to people about it…
[00:19:09] Lester: Your parents and they say: You know what? I have a cousin who is _____ (whatever it is you're identifying as). Let's go talk with that person. I want you to have the best advice from someone about how to navigate these feelings you're having.
[00:19:27] Lester: If we weren't so afraid of the literature and we could say: You know what? Let's ask your counselor. Let's ask your librarian. Let's ask your teacher if there's a book that we can read together that will help us move through this. Otherwise, what a young person is left with is whatever they can find. And often it's the exaggerations and the stereotypes. And so, you see kids struggling to try to figure out, who am I?
[00:20:01] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Lester: And I assure you, your listeners can't see us today. I'm sitting in my office. It's a normal-looking space with 5,000 books, some art, an old wooden school desk, light gray walls. I'm wearing a red, white, and blue plaid flannel shirt on a chilly day in late October in the mountains of North Carolina.
[00:20:54] Lester: If you could spend a week in my house with my husband and our two dogs, at the end of the week, you would walk away saying: Gee, they're exactly like us, except there's two guys, but, you know, they have the same kind of discussions. They have the same kind of disagreements. They do laundry, they wash dishes, they cook, they clean up the house, they take trips, they read things and talk about them, they have a glass of wine by the fireplace. It's exactly like our life.
[00:21:12] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:21:12] Lester: But the portrayal that young people get are those exaggerations that don't let them see that there is a life that they can embrace. And so, I think we do them such a disservice when we take any sort of opportunity to figure out who they are, when they find those threads, then how do I weave them together with all the other threads of who I am as a human? Because otherwise, what happens is that one thread becomes the primary issue.
[00:21:50] Olivia: Yeah. And one of the questions that I had noted to ask you is: How do you hold space for hope when so many are trying to instill fear and silence the voices? You just spoke to that so eloquently. And that idea of inviting in, and I'm embarrassed to say as an ally, thinking that coming out day is this magnificent thing where the juxtaposition of inviting in is so much more what we want, that inclusivity and the image of one person at a time, inviting in to quell that fear.
[00:22:28] Olivia: It's just, it's moving. It was empowering to see the NPR story that came out on October 26th.Most Teens Who Start Puberty Suppression Continue Gender-Affirming Care, Study Finds. And the research found that a whopping 98% of people who had started gender-affirming medical treatment in adolescence continued to use gender-affirming hormones at follow-up. I'll include a link to the article in the show notes, but I think it just says that if we give our children, our teenagers time and space to really search and see who their truest selves are, it's often the journey that they do continue with because they're able to be who they are in a safe way.
[00:23:12] Olivia: Thank you for sharing that perspective because it's not one that I would have considered, and I appreciate it for myself and listeners.
[00:23:19] Lester: I was trying to call up who it is that used that phrase, and I don't know who originated the phrase, but I am pretty certain that one of the places I read it, um, this past year was from George Johnson in All Boys Aren't Blue. And so, if you have seen him, he has been on many panels, and his book, I believe, is one of the sources where I came across the notion of inviting in rather than coming out.
[00:23:53] Lester: And so, you know, when we have National Coming Out Day, I understand the need for that. And, you know, the Coming Out Day concept doesn't mean that you stand on the street corner and announce to the world.
[00:24:09] Olivia: Right.
[00:24:10] Lester: But it does mean that, you know, there is a peace that comes from admitting who you are. And having someone out there in the world that knows it. And with that person, you can be fully transparent and fully yourself. And, you know, God bless the child who has found that peace.
[00:24:33] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:24:34] Lester: Who can just walk through life and say: This is who I am and what I've come to understand about myself. And God help the parents who can't understand that.
[00:24:47] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:24:48] Lester: You know, those parents who are so concerned for whatever reasons that they won’t accept their own child, those friends who turn their backs, those churches who turn children out, I hold no space for those people. Here we're talking about a young person whose existence depends on finding a space where they're safe, where they're loved, where someone holds them up, and where someone helps them navigate.
[00:25:27] Lester: And I think part of the fear for some adults is that they don't know how to help them navigate. But there are places that can help them.
[00:25:39] Olivia: I also really appreciate the idea of being able to just call it out. I don't know is as a parent how to help you potentially, but I can connect you with someone that does. There are so many resources out and you listed my gosh, I think ten different resources to support LGBTQ+ youth at the end of the blog posts that I will include in the show notes if it's okay with you.
[00:26:05] Lester: Oh yes, please do.
[00:26:06] Olivia: Yeah, they're wonderful. It really resonated with me because I think there are many, many of us out there that do want to support, but we don't know how. And you just said, you know, the world is tailored around certain people and not others, right?
[00:26:23] Olivia: And so that's why conversations like this are critical to have, but the call to action, you mentioned: Make a commitment for us to read at least ten books from the Colorado Council of the International Reading Association list. What else can we do? What needs to happen now for LGBTQIA+ students, caregivers, educators? What would be a really important next step for all of us?
[00:26:47] Lester: Well, I think right now we need to just, first of all, open your heart.
[00:26:52] Olivia: Yeah.
[00:26:52] Lester: Just stop and step back and ask yourself: Can I pull my lens back enough to see that what is in front of me is a living, breathing human being and the tapestry of who they are is not defined by the one thread that I'm worried about. What are the other threads inside that child? What are all the things I know and celebrate about this glorious human being that is right there in front of me? And how is it that then I can accept that? Can I let a single thread of someone's identity cause me to turn my back on them?
[00:27:35] Lester: I sure as heck hope not. So first, I think, open your heart. Secondly, I think we have to create spaces in our schools that make a place for those young people to have a spot where they can gather. Where they can talk with each other. Where there can be trusted adults who can talk with them and help them understand how they are alike and how they are different.
[00:28:04] Olivia: Yes.
[00:28:04] Lester: And what that means and how they work through the world with it. And understanding how to navigate things. There are places in the world, my friends, that are simply not safe for us.
[00:28:15] Olivia: That's scary.
[00:28:17] Lester: But it's true. You know, it's true. I bought a home once in a little coastal town and I popped into the office of the historic community where they restore all the old houses and things.
[00:28:35] Lester: Just chatted with some people. And the woman seemed really lovely and accepting. So, I said to her: I'm interested in living here and might want to explore some real estate. Could you guide me to a real estate agent who would understand where it is and isn't safe for a gay person to live?
[00:29:00] Olivia: Oh, wow.
[00:29:01] Lester: She hugged me and then she said: I need you to meet my friend and then she named someone. And that person drove me all around the area and pointed out places where other gay people lived and said: You know, a lot of people live in these areas, and you would have a neighbor here. I mean, there's been no trouble, there's acceptance, but then there are parts of any town where you might not be welcome.
[00:29:00] Olivia: Yes.
[00:29:21] Lester: And, you know, I'm 66 years old and there is, as I mentioned in that blog, there was a hesitancy to press send because once you put something out there, it's in the world forever.
[00:29:44] Olivia: It is.
[00:29:44] Lester: And there are people who will ban books with the content, but they're also banning books written by people who are in the LBGTQ+ community, whether their content contains it or not. So, we need to make space for that. Groups like Gay-Straight Alliance groups in schools, GLAAD, uh, The Trevor Project - places like that, that offer opportunities for parents to gain information could be helpful to the adults.
[00:30:22] Lester: And it is the adults who set that tone. It's not the children.
[00:30:26] Olivia: It sure is.
[00:30:27] Lester: Children simply reflect as mirrors of the family they come from and the culture they come from, and the groups that they're part of, what they hear adults say. So, if adults can back off a little bit and broaden their own understanding of: Wait a second. What do you know about people in this community? And most of the time what the adults understand or believe they understand comes from their exposure to the stereotypes and the exaggerations and not the reality of it.
[00:31:09] Lester: It's like, so have you been in my home? Have you noticed that my home is very much like yours? Wow. So, what did you imagine before you got here? Well, let's see, what movies have you seen? And then I can tell you what I think you're going to imagine. You know, it's like, if you've only seen certain kinds of movies, then that would be your image.
[00:31:33] Lester: If you've read only certain kinds of books, that would be your image. Unless you've known someone and then, you know, Harvey Milk used to say, uh, the whole come out, come out thing, you know: Come out, come out wherever you are. Until they know that they know us, they can't begin to wrap their head around what this means and who we are, that we're just people like them.
[00:31:58] Lester: And so, you know, many of us growing up never knew that we knew people who were in the LBGTQIA+ community. We just didn't know it because, you know, it's not across your forehead. There are people you may have suspected, but you didn't know that you knew. And then, you know, when you think about it, it's like: Oh, that was one of my best friends in school.
[00:32:21] Lester: And just like, well, you didn't know that, you know.
[00:32:25] Olivia: Yes.
[00:32:25] Lester: Somebody that you work with, someone that you sit next to at church, someone that you ride next to on the subway every single day. Someone that serves you coffee at your favorite little coffee shop. Someone who stands in the pulpit and delivers the sermons that you so enjoy.
[00:32:46] Lester: Your favorite politician. Your favorite quarterback for your NFL team. There are people everywhere that you just don't know because they haven't felt comfortable yet to invite you in, share a truth that could change everything about what you believe about them on the basis of the stereotypes and exaggerations that you've known across your life.
[00:33:16] Olivia: Yeah. I cannot thank you enough for carving time in your schedule to have this conversation and to shed light on what we can do as a community that really wants to love and protect, not only our children to be who they are and their truest selves, but our adults, our friends, just to be able to love whomever you choose to love and feel welcome in every community, it would be the ultimate dream.
[00:33:45] Olivia: I would love, Lester, to think about how we could start the notion of Story Corps for our youngest children. I think it could be absolutely phenomenal to get two people that think that they're so, so, so different to sit across the table from each other and to talk about their lives just like you have today.
[00:34:03] Olivia: I think we would find again, we have so much more in common than different. So, thank you for all that you do for our educational community, but for sharing your stories because I think they'll allow others to feel safe to share theirs. Thank you, Lester.
[00:34:19] Lester: Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure and I hope we make some ripples and do some good.
[00:34:25] Olivia: Me too. Take care. Schoolutions is a podcast created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Special thanks to my guest, Lester Laminack. Thanks to my older son Benjamin, who created the music that's playing in the background. If you like Schoolutions, please share, rate, review, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @schoolutionspodcast. If you want to reach out, leave me a SpeakPipe voice memo at my website: www.oliviawahl.com/podcast or via email @schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Don't forget to talk about us nicely on social media, and please keep listening. Let's continue finding inspiration together.