English teacher Erika DeShay Lowenkron will be teaching the new CP Introduction to Queer Literature course next year. While much of classic literature is taught in schools, having a class dedicated to teaching work written by queer authors allows for a more in-depth conversation about LGBTQ+ issues.

“The goal is to try to give a little bit of history of queer authors and queerness in literature. So it would be a little bit of classic authors that maybe we’ve heard of, but we haven’t read their works that are geared towards queer material,” DeShay Lowenkron said.

In this course, students will analyze literature that relates to the unique experiences of the LGBTQ+ community. Students will read classic authors such as James Baldwin and Virginia Woolf and analyze more contemporary articles.

After receiving input from the Spectrum Club, DeShay Lowenkron brought the class to the district coordinator last year. But with not enough time, the class was unable to be approved, pushing it to start next year.

“I was involved in making the class and I think it is a good step. I am interested in a lot more classes that talk about minorities and other groups that have faced discrimination in the US… hopefully we see more classes that focus on topics like that,” senior Ben Ginsberg-Margo said.

As an educator, DeShay Lowenkron feels the responsibility to help her students by creating an environment that brings issues to light and supporting them as best as possible. By talking about the issues in a class setting, it allows students to feel comfortable with their experiences. Her hope is to create an environment for the LGBTQ+ community to talk about their experiences and relate them to literature that has an impact.

“It’s easy to be an ally and just say ‘I approve of these things,’ or ‘I have these friends,’” DeShay Lowenkron said. “And it’s important to be an ally. But I think the next step is to say, what can I do if I have any power? How can I use it to help someone who doesn’t have it?”

While much of classic literature is taught in schools, having a class dedicated to teaching work written by queer authors allows for a more in depth conversation.

“Students were missing and categories we don’t quite cover… there’s plenty of really great literature that we miss in other classes, and it felt like a good time to dig in,” DeShay Lowenkron said.

Using work written by queer authors and stories written about them allows for many students to learn about other experiences and validate their own.

“I think cultural representation classes are really important in general, both to students that fall under those cultural categories, but also in terms of educating people who may not know about that themselves,” junior Spectrum club member Milo Anderson said.

DeShay Lowenkron uses her own experiences to motivate students to feel comfortable expressing themselves within a class setting, allowing for a more safe environment for many students.

“I always want to walk into my classroom as a black teacher feeling like I can be exactly who I am and I want my students to come in exactly as they are,” DeShay Lowenkron said.

This story was originally published on Union Street Journal on January 11, 2024.