Why I teach an LGBTQ+ college course • Florida Phoenix

For the past several years, I’ve taught an upper-division communication class titled “LGBTQ Health and Communication” to juniors and seniors on a college campus. We talk about how aging, disability, grief, policy, public health, serious illness, long-term care, loneliness, stigma, silence, fear, culture, history, can impact the health of LGBTQ+ people.

We also discuss the dangers of the “single story” about the LGBTQ+ community and how it impacts the way this community is cared for, an idea drawn from a powerful talk by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Essentially, she explains, the single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. And it turns out, if we show a group of people as one thing over and over, they become only that one thing. Unfortunately, we do it all the time. Immigrants, people who are unhoused, people living with Medicaid and many more.

The class I teach takes stories and storytelling seriously. Their power in shaping how people think, feel and talk about LGBTQ+ people, and how to tell more complete stories and why it matters for creating a society and healthcare system where more people can actually thrive.

For their final exam, the students deliver a 5-minute talk challenging the single story around the LGBTQ+ community. Every semester, the stories literally take my breath away for their compassion, honesty, authenticity, creativity and humanity. This year, they were especially powerful.

Throughout the semester, 7 guest speakers come to talk with the class. We hear from a physician who is trans and taking care of patients on the East Coast; an assisted living manager caring for the some of the most vulnerable to fight loneliness, hopelessness and boredom among older adults; a researcher who studies cancer disparities among LGBTQ+ people; a grief counselor who specializes in the many ways grief impacts the LGBTQ+ community, especially disenfranchised grief, which is so common in this community; and a queer community historian that explains the role history has played in generating stigma, silence and fear.

Many of the students are queer. Many more are there because they love someone who is queer. Some are communication majors, but most of them are not. Attendance is so high and consistent, I don’t even need to take it.

Over the years, teaching this class has made me worry about the safety of my students and my own, because across the country, classes like this have been banned — or if not yet banned, targeted with demands that we be forced to stop teaching.

But do we really know what we won’t learn if these classes are banned?

Last month, our class had the final exam. One student told me that when her mom calls at the end of each week, this class is the only one she talks about with her — all the things she learned that week, like how the stress of living with chronic stigma takes up to 12 years off the life of LGBTQ+ people.

The student also told her mom about how a guest speaker described a grade school assignment. He was shown pictures of a dog, cat, tree, squirrel and told to circle the category that was not like the others. He circled the dog because the rest all could climb a tree. He was penalized in class for not choosing the tree. The guest speaker talked about how early these associations are taught and rewarded, and how quickly the conversations about why one is more right than the other becomes the single story.

The student also told me (and her mom) how she has fallen in love with writing for the first time. She said she appreciates how our course assignments break some of our common scripts in a way that gives people more space to answer questions and talk about their life.

Another student told me that this class is where she found “safety in a moment of chaos.” She said the class taught her “the importance of caring for others while also taking care of herself.” And that having this class for a few hours each week “gave her hope and made her believe in a better future.”

Another student told me it’s been the “best class she’s had all of college,” and that “she felt safe, heard and supported in every single class.”

One student brought a handwritten note to the final exam giving thanks for the semester, saying, “it was truly everything I needed and more.” After talking about disability for most of her assignments and final, after her father was in a horrific accident leaving him wheelchair-bound, she said she was leaving class inspired to do more.

Another student wrote after the class to say, it was “truly life-changing.”

I’m sharing their stories because this is what most professors want students to feel — safe, heard, seen, inspired, hopeful. Students don’t learn a specialized vocabulary in an LGBTQ+ course. We don’t have special books. Special slides. Students are not tested on queer facts or other queer things.

This class, like many LGBTQ+ classes, are about creating empathy, learning how to have better conversations, and ultimately, learning to take better care of each other.