SPEAKER_00: Find your community.
SPEAKER_01: Be together.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Queering Education, where we challenge what school is and build what it should be.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Stanton.
SPEAKER_00: This is a Teaching While Queer podcast about inclusive teaching, queer pedagogy, and showing up authentically in every classroom.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, let's do the work.
SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Queering Education, a Teaching While Queer podcast.
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Brian Stanton.
SPEAKER_00: My pronouns are they, them.
SPEAKER_00: Today I am at the New Jersey Education Association's Carol Watchler LGBTQIA Advocacy Conference.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so excited because I actually get to sit down with the Carol Watchler herself.
SPEAKER_00: Hi, Carol, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing very well, and thank you so much for uh for doing this work and doing this podcast.
SPEAKER_01: So I am Carol Watchler, and um I am uh a retired educator, um, longtime NJEA member and um activist in the Education Association on on behalf of uh sexual orientation and gender identity issues.
SPEAKER_01: And we've been doing this a long time.
SPEAKER_01: Um it goes all the way back, as I'm going to talk about when we have the panel about the history, to uh when the law against discrimination in New Jersey expanded to include sexual orientation.
SPEAKER_01: And then I uh ended up connecting with uh people at the NEA level, and um and we created um or I was a part of um the early uh leadership in the NEA caucus.
SPEAKER_01: Um and then that really kind of came um gradually back to New Jersey, where it's a little bit easier to be um out and and uh queer and visible at a national space than it is necessarily in your own home state and local and school.
SPEAKER_01: So um I was still teaching at that point.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't really um have um a lot of things that I could offer uh people I um uh shared with my colleagues, um, and some of them would would suggest that students just check with me and ask who they should be in contact with.
SPEAKER_01: Um and but I retired in 2003, and at that point we had created the NJEA, um lesbian and gay and then transgender caucus, and um uh and it went on uh until people moved on to uh work for the NJEA staff or become principals or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so the caucus uh faded a little bit, but um we were very lucky because um the uh leadership of NJEA um invited us to be an NJEA committee, and that's absolutely still running, and that has become the SOGI committee that is sponsoring this conference.
SPEAKER_01: Um so uh my my work right now really is to stay in touch with NJEA and with the SOGI um committee, and um also to do professional development where possible.
SPEAKER_01: I I work with one um statewide organization that allows me to do a session and their series of of teachings for um educators and other um uh wherever it's possible to uh provide professional development.
SPEAKER_01: And um at one point um I was really fortunate because we did some great work with Glissen, um who uh we have their um their executive director, um, I believe is our keynote speaker today.
SPEAKER_01: Um and um uh we had a chapter here in central New Jersey and kind of reached out to um the whole of New Jersey to have the GSA forum.
SPEAKER_01: Um and I was a part of uh kind of helping that happen for more than 10 years.
SPEAKER_01: And and that um that was even after I retired, but it gave me a real wonderful opportunity to maintain connections with with young people.
SPEAKER_01: Um but um when I think of the young people now, I think of the young educators who are just moving into their uh positions in um you know in teaching and uh the courage that they need and the um the sometimes anxiety that is just surrounds the whole question of who I am and who my family is and um you know how how I should be in relationship to my colleagues, my students, my community.
SPEAKER_01: Um so that that's certainly something I'm glad that this conference is here to help people out with.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: I am gonna veer a little bit from the questions that I mentioned at the beginning, namely because I want to talk a little bit about longevity in education.
SPEAKER_00: Burnout is happening so quickly uh right now.
SPEAKER_00: I I feel like educators are pulled thin.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they're just working, you know, working to the bone.
SPEAKER_00: And you have been working in and around education for so long.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to get some insight from your experience about what it's like to um kind of see the political tides cycling themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we're truly being honest, the rhetoric that's being thrown out right now at trans people and queer people is the same rhetoric from the 80s, is the same rhetoric from the 70s, it's all the same information just being recycled and put a new branding on.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so what can we learn uh from the educators of the past and the experience of the educators of the past to help us in this moment now, especially as we have people coming into education um as out queer people?
SPEAKER_01: I think the most important thing that I could say to people is um find your find your community, be together.
SPEAKER_01: And even when I'm talking um in a professional development that is a cross-section of people um that are allies and um and maybe queer people and and maybe just kind of discovering what it means to to learn a little bit about queer people or from queer people.
SPEAKER_01: That um so I always say to groups um, and especially when I'm talking to some groups that come from different school districts, is you're the ambassador.
SPEAKER_01: You are the ambassador back to your school district.
SPEAKER_01: Now, however um stronger you hold your privacy about your identity um or however much you want to speak about it out loud, um you're probably gonna have um a couple people who are um close enough that you can uh you can trust as allies or maybe know as um queer um co-conspirators.
SPEAKER_01: And but yes, um, yes, use that couple of people to talk together about what do we need to do in our district?
SPEAKER_01: What what is needed here?
SPEAKER_01: And um and maybe it's just to have some conversations with um whoever in administration might be possible good listeners, or maybe it's just some other um peers that you may be able to um to draw into.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're gonna do something together.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's families, maybe it's um parents who you can uh discover to be allies, but I'd say find those one or two people that you can feel comfortable with and and celebrate yourselves and give yourselves a little bit of opportunity to just be together and and then figure out how what what are the different aspects of your school, your school district.
SPEAKER_01: In my school, um there was um we had an equity committee and um we dealt with we wanted to deal with every kind of marginalized beings and what it meant to include people in in the curriculum.
SPEAKER_01: Um and that was a way that um that I could work with allies and um when we went through, and it would happen to be the seed program, seeking educational equity and diversity, which is a marvelous um program that um met once a month, and um and each month we would try to bring resources from different groups that are sort of um invisible in the curriculum and and help people find ways to make them.
SPEAKER_01: And I and I was so glad to do this because I knew that there would be the time to bring out um the um all the resources around sexual orientation and gender identity.
SPEAKER_01: So um it's really important for your colleagues to um to know how what it's like for students.
SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, to the extent that you have anybody that you can talk to to say, how are we gonna make sure that everybody knows how to be respectful and understanding of uh young people, may not speak out in the classroom, of course, but they're there.
SPEAKER_01: And so we want all educators and all education employees to know that they can um can you know uh acknowledge and affirm the dignity of every person.
SPEAKER_01: Um so I I mean, however you might do it, and I think that there's ways you can do it without making such uh um a center on yourself, but just to again bring up the question of equity for all groups that are marginalized, and then somehow or other you're gonna be able to say, and and this is another group, and um and you'll find joy in that.
SPEAKER_01: There's so many incredible resources to share with young people from preschool on up through our high school and and beyond um youngsters.
SPEAKER_01: So look for those, um, share those in whatever way you can, and and then just look for your community.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought a community right close in uh people close to you, but also look for, you know, here's the SOGI um committee and NJEA, and here are um opportunities to um to touch base with somebody who's in your county who is the SOGI committee representative.
SPEAKER_01: Find them, find out who else is organizing in your county.
SPEAKER_01: Um and um and just uh I I just wish you the courage, um, but also the uh you know fairness to yourself to do it at whatever pace is good for you.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: Carol, I appreciate your time.
SPEAKER_00: I also love the legacy that you're leaving, the the mark that you're leaving, not only here in New Jersey, but I know that those ripples are felt throughout the caucus.
SPEAKER_00: Um I am here because of going to the caucus um conference a couple of years ago.
SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate um that these little ripples make their way to other folks, and I hope that through our conversation today, more people will be impacted by your work.
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: And and it's it's just it's such a blessing to have to have had that.
SPEAKER_01: I can tell you when I um first became the the uh initial co-chair, um, and uh the people who set up the structure for the N A caucus did a marvelous job um and by saying that there's gonna be um two co-chairs and there's people throughout the country um who are paired in leadership.
SPEAKER_01: Um so uh when that happened and um you know I went home and then I started interacting with people from across the country, I just said, this is the most wonderful thing that's happened in my life.
SPEAKER_01: It was just such such an incredible um blessing and opportunity.
SPEAKER_01: So thanks for helping me, keeping it going.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being a part of Queering Education.
SPEAKER_00: This is a Teaching While Queer podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Take what you need from this conversation and bring it back into your classroom and your students.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Stanton.
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep showing up.