Pronouns Twitter Chat
January 8, 2020
6 PST/ 8 PM CST/ 9 EST
Advocacy in professional spaces with pronouns.
#TeachPride January 8, 2019
Twitter Chat Questions & Archive
WU: Welcome to our January Pronouns #TeachPride Chat. What’s your name and what is your role in education? (We welcome sharing pronouns as/if you wish.)
Q1 How are you most comfortable sharing your pronouns or asking for colleagues’ or students’ pronouns? What strategies have or could work in your spaces?
Q2 What do we ask our co-conspirators to do to continue to push the sharing, discussing, and honoring of pronouns to become more normalized?
Q3 What would you like to see your school or the institution of public education in general do to help with normalizing the sharing, discussing, and honoring pronouns? What systems need disrupted or dismantled to help this happen?
Q4 What would we like to see education/professional conferences do? How can we advocate for those changes? (We’re also going to give some updates on some of our work with this. We welcome your thoughts and would love to hear other ideas too.)
RESOURCE: shea martin, @sheathescholar, shared a thoughtful thread about pronouns and misgendering at NCTE 19 late this fall, which sparked brainstorming at EduPrideAlliance about how we could push ISTE (where we formed) and other conferences to make changes.
RESOURCE: We sent our position statement (image to the right) to ISTE in December. We are recommending that ISTE and other conferences add pronouns as an optional question during registration and print those on badges. We are asking for stickers/ribbons be readily available in the meantime.
RESOURCE: One of our members also drafted letters that can be downloaded and edited to send to other national or local conferences you attend. There’s a more formal version: and a slightly more familiar version.
Q5 Do you have any go-to resources to share with colleagues, administrators, students, etc. about pronouns? We will momentarily share out resources we have curated.
Resources that could be helpful for ourselves or our nonbinary colleagues:
RESOURCE: Ace Schwarz, @teachingoutsidethebinary, and A. Tooley, @growingwithmxt, had a conversation about Supporting Nonbinary Educators in the Workplace in October.
RESOURCE: Talking about Pronouns in the Workplace from @HRC
RESOURCE: NBC News piece from last year about nonbinary educators embracing Mx.
Wrap Up: Thank you for joining us tonight! And feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the coming days if you missed the live chat! Join us on February 5 for a #TeachPride chat about Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Anti-Racist. We invite you to read the book alongside us.
Additional Resources
Pieces that help educate others and build inclusive classrooms.
Pronouns
Teaching Tolerance, @Tolerance_org, pieces on terminology and beginning ways to include non binary students:
Let’s Talk About Nonbinary on understanding the difference between sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression
Sex? Sexual Orientation? Gender Identity? Gender Expression? & Graphic
@Tolerance_org piece on The Gender Spectrum with words to know and how to create a more inclusive classroom and a section from Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ+ Students that focuses on creating inclusive classroom culture.
Going further for advocacy resources:
Respect for All: Policy Recommendations to Support LGBTQ Students A Guide for
Gender Support Checklist for Transgender and Non-Binary Students from @HRC