About Us
As A Queer Endeavor:
We believe that schools and classrooms are places of possibility, where as bell hooks says, “ we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress.” This, hooks says, and we believe, is “education as the practice of freedom.”
We believe that centering the lived experiences, knowledge, & identities of students is essential for creating safe and humanizing classrooms.
We believe in honoring teachers as professionals who want to do right by their students. To support teachers’ processes of becoming, we create access to professional learning that invites vulnerability, un/learning, accountability, and action.
We believe that learning about identity, power, privilege, and oppression is tender work and we create “soft spaces of accountability” to support that deep learning.
We believe that transformative justice in education relies on intersectional movement building and a commitment to collective liberation. This means recognizing that systems of oppression are intertwined. It means acknowledging that we all have issues of equity and justice that take us “out of [our] depth,” as Charlene Carruthers says, and that we all have learning to do.
Professional Learning
A Queer Endeavor builds partnerships with school communities to make “unworkable” the silence that surrounds topics of gender and sexual diversity in education. Drawing on critical, queer, and anti-oppressive perspectives, we design and facilitate professional learning experiences for teachers, counselors, school- and district-leaders, and youth-serving adults.
In our professional development sessions, participants engage in knowledge-building, critical self-reflection, dialogue, action, and practice. We move beyond anti-bullying framings to raise educators’ awareness of how cis-heteronormativity functions in K-12 schools and negatively impacts LGBTQ+ youth. We support educators to “take stock” of normativity in their unique contexts and provide action steps and promising practices for affirming gender, sexual, and family diversity.
We center gender and sexuality, because what’s counted as normal in schools with respect to LGBTQ+ people and topics has been resounding silence. And, we recognize that these identities never stand in isolation from others. This means that, in our work, we also examine norms that surround race, social class, language, religion, dis/ability, and other social and identity markers.
Educator Institute for Equity and Justice
In the spirit of collective liberation, every other year we host an Educator Institute for Equity & Justice (EIEJ). The mission of EIEJ is to support educators and youth serving adults to engage in critical self-reflection, dialogue, and practice around critical, queer, and anti-oppressive learning and practice. It’s to support and learn alongside one another as we “take stock” of and disrupt what counts as normal in our schools and classrooms when it comes to the relationship between identity and power and collective trauma. It’s about building intersectional networks of solidarity and community, because we are all implicated in historical oppression and we believe that we have to work together to heal.
Research & Public Scholarship
As an organization, we are committed to learning and disseminating knowledge.
- Policy and Policy Implementation
- Educator Learning
- Educators enacting queer practices
- Breaking the Silence
- DPS Film Partnership: “Reclaiming the Narrative: A Documentary About LGBTQ+ Students”
Bethy Leonardi (she/her/hers)
Bethy was born and raised in New Orleans and has a hard time not talking about it. She loves to dance with her 3 year old, hike, laugh, and eat delicious food. Mostly though, she loves to feed people. Over the past few years, she has worked to refine her skills on the Big Green Egg and she also makes purple kimchi that’s pretty darn good. She calls it “Prince.” Bethy identifies first and foremost as a teacher. Before earning her PhD, Bethy spent 16 years as a secondary English and math teacher in Louisiana, California, and Colorado and not a day goes by that she doesn’t miss that job. Bethy is co-founder and co-director of A Queer Endeavor and an Associate Professor in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice. Bethy’s work explores how public schools, as compulsory institutions affirm, include, deny, and/or silence queer identities. Specifically, she is interested in how educators enact promising practices that disrupt-- and heal-- cis-heteronormative school ecologies to create schools that are ready for (and not merely reactive to) queer youth. A way in to understanding school ecologies is through a focus on the relationship between policy and practice-- and at the level of implementation. Specifically, Bethy is interested in policies that challenge the status quo, that is, what counts as “normal” in public schools. She works to understand how those policies might land in local ecologies, and how educators might “till the soil” so that they land safely and have positive impacts.
Sara Staley (she/her/hers)
Sara is an assistant professor in Teacher Learning, Research, and Practice in the School of Education and co-founder and co-director of A Queer Endeavor. After earning her undergraduate degree and teacher licensure from the University of Kansas, Sara spent six years as a language arts teacher, primarily in southern California. Her classroom teaching experience fueled curiosities about why teaching is such a difficult profession to learn, and in 2008 she moved to Boulder, Colorado, in pursuit of a PhD. Her research and community-based work are animated by deep commitments to justice-oriented teacher education and to creating safer, more humanizing school cultures for LGBTQ+ youth, families, and staff. Currently, she studies how educators learn and enact queer-inclusive and anti-oppressive practices. Things that make Sara happy include compassion, when national leaders act with integrity and humanity, the rolling plains of Kansas, deep belly laughs, and her three-year-old.
brittni laura (she/her/ella)
brittni laura is a Queer, Indigenous Xicana from northern colorado, with roots in southern colorado and northern new mexico. she carries the medicine of her family from generations of relationship with the land, traditional foods, education, and community. she is practicing living a slow life, tending to her plantitas & cooking up medicine in the kitchen while finding the balance between being a mom and a professional. brittni laura is a Scholar in Residence with A Queer Endeavor where she runs media & marketing, and supports the team with facilitations, research, and more. previously, brittni laura worked with A Queer Endeavor as a college student and an Equity Teacher Leader. she is formally trained as a secondary language arts teacher from the CU Boulder School of Education and spent five years in the classroom learning and building with students towards a liberated future.. her time in the classroom was difficult, beautiful, and she misses the students everyday! brittni laura is a facilitator with over 10 years of experience providing equity and diversity trainings for educators, community organizations, and students alike. she is honored to carry on her work with AQE in education, inspiring love, self-awareness, & autonomy in the classroom so all students and teachers can understand & transform their personal & social conditions.
