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

Abstract

In this article, I analyse my self-reflexive examination of my poetry performance calling for the need to have lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) educators serve as role models in the secondary classroom setting as a mechanism to promote social change. I presented an original poetry collection in front of 400+ high school students and educators advocating for the need for queer educators to come out of the proverbial closet, and here I reflect on 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 me as participant-researcher and the audience. I include discussion about the importance of/and political nature of representation, the need for space and dialogue, as well as obstacles facing LGBTIQ+ educators in the classroom.