This series of graphic stories is a large component of my PhD dissertation titled; To Do This Discussion Differently: Queering teacher professional learning through comic art and graphic stories. The first three of (eventually) four, connected graphic stories form the “results” chapters of that thesis document. The fourth book in the series can be more accurately described as one-part “choose your own adventure”, and many-parts identity workbook. It will be an expression of the slower, more introspective, and also more action-oriented approach to Teacher Professional Learning (TPL) that my thesis aims to encourage through both form and function. My preparatory research and plans for book four compose much of the final chapter of my dissertation, which also addresses the broader impact and next steps of this work in general.

All four books together are collectively titled: to do this discussion differently.

The individual stories are titled as follows:

BOOK.1 – DOING THINGS WITH DEMONS: self-care for care-givers  

BOOK.2 – VISIBLE IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING SEEN: a conversation about privacy in hyper-visible bodies

BOOK.3 – THIS POEM IS BOTH/AND: a story of love and community

BOOK.4 – IT’S OKAY NOT TO KNOW: an identity adventure book

I have been writing and drawing these stories in a format that makes them amenable to; (a) the formatting and dimensions prescribed by the University of Toronto for materials included in a PhD dissertation; (b) publication as a series of stand-alone, comic book style graphic stories; and/or (c) publication as a bound volume of three, connected graphic stories accompanied by a stand-alone, interactive “workbook”.

I successfully defended this dissertation on June 28, 2022, and I hope to begin work on BOOK.4 very soon.

* please note : this section of my website was created for editing and development purposes only.

* please do not share the password, images, text, or PDFs publicly or privately without my express permission. thank you!

DOING THINGS WITH DEMONS: SELF-CARE FOR CARE-GIVERS

doing things with demons is the first book in the to do this discussion differently series. It is an invitation to think differently about how (and/or if) you take active steps to care for your own physical, mental, and spiritual health on a regular basis. This is quite decidedly not a “how-to” or “self-help” book because its contents are just my attempt to communicate the very human reality of how caring for oneself can sometimes feel like the least possible thing imaginable.

I am the main “character” depicted throughout this book because, more so than any other in the series, this story stems directly from my own personal life, feelings, and experiences. The series of drawings that became DTWD began as a silent rebellion, in the form of a list titled; “things i didn’t suck at today”. It was my private push back against a situation where I was expected to self-report on all of the things I wasn’t doing well-“enough” on a daily basis. The contents of that list turned out to be quite synonymous with a full category of things I have difficultly letting myself do because they involve active self-care; non-work-related recreation, rest, and comfort. It is very easy for me to judge myself for not always living in a way that fully embodies the kind of unabashed self-care I genuinely wish for all my friends and colleagues. At the same time, I can say that I have repeatedly resolved to try again: to question the idea that not doing “self-care” in some expected, prescribed, and/or perfectly consistent way means that I am not doing it at all. The idea of “doing things” with demons emerged from the sense – more visceral than logical – that (a) everyone’s “demons” are different, and (b) sometimes just inviting your demons “in” and resolving to be more gentle with them than you can manage to be with yourself is a pretty magnificent victory.

doing things with demons ­­empathizes with the fact that knowing how – and/or if – to make caring for oneself an active and indispensible piece of one’s own identity as a care-giver can feel like a very complicated choice. As such: the pace, content, and format of this book are designed to invite readers into that consideration slowly and abstractly. A great deal is left up to the imagination, and it is my hope that the words and illustrations of DTWD will provide you with some tangible support and encouragement to explore similar facets of your own personal life and experiences.

VISIBLE IS NOT THE SAME AS BEING SEEN: A CONVERSATION ABOUT PRIVACY IN HYPER-VISIBLE BODIES

visible is not the same as being seen is the second book in the to do this discussion differently series. It emerged from the transcript of a conversation between a friend/colleague and myself about the intense sort of entitlement to access that many people assume with regards to the lives and bodies of individuals who read as “visibly different” from themselves.

 Whether these dynamics emerge in the context of gender presentation, skin colour, perceived race, culture, religion, physical ability, and/or other un-expecteds; those who feel safe enough in majority to be looking often feel entitled to the surveillance of those whose differences make us hyper-visible. All too frequently, that sense of ownership extends towards a false claim on our stories – or – more accurately – a generalized assumption of what our narratives “should” be. The stories they are expecting to hear, take, and tell are not the realities of complex individuals with the right to share everything – and/or nothing at all.

My conversation with *Khadijah – shared here through pages of transcript-style text, interspersed with detailed imagery, and layered further still with found poetry[i] – addresses how standard beliefs about what it means to be “visible” frequently disregard the lived and felt realities of people who find themselves without the option to blend in. Khadijah and I discuss the assessments of “difference” we each encounter, and how these assumptions are frequently made in contrast to the white, English-speaking, straight, cis, “able”, and binary-gendered bodies that are expected to populate North American schools and society. We talk about how ideas regarding who “belongs” get conflated with the (mistaken) notion that what is visible on the surface is the same as “seeing” - and that seeing is the same as “knowing”.

Creating illustrations for the story of visible has challenged me deeply (and importantly) with regards to the ethical complexities of making graphic stories with privacy and anonymity in mind. With this story in particular, I want to show more of how it is possible to communicate the affective “truth(s)” of physical experience visually, without simply using drawing as a tool to expose and repeat all that has happened to that body in three-dimensional life. When I consider the verbal images that Khadijah conjures, such as; “when people are so out of touch that they can’t empathize, that’s just consumption” and “…people being distilled into bylines”, I want nothing more than to make drawings with enough layers to hold the truth(s) of all that feeling - while still/always honouring the reality in these words she has gifted us.

The dance of text-with-imagery in this book is one example of a consensual, relational process for learning to see more deeply, while also being-more-seen. It is my hope that the pages of visible will illustrate this reciprocity as a present and viable alternative to the exploitation of “difference”.

[i] found poetry: Found poetry can be (loosely) described as both a process (v.) and a product (n.) that utilizes words, phases and or quotations which have been “found” in innumerable contexts beyond the new poem they end up in. These bits of found text are compiled, considered, and then selectively/creatively rearranged in order to share a new way of seeing/speaking.

THIS POEM IS BOTH/AND: A STORY OF LOVE AND COMMUNITY

this poem is both/and is the third book in the to do this discussion differently series. It is about moving towards more intentional and inclusive relationship building in school communities. this poem weaves together imagery and ideas that originated in; (a) a found-poetry activity that my grade 3/4 students and I collaborated on to write the “identity story” of our classroom community (2015), and; (b) a poem I began as a graduate student (2016) while working to process and understand more of what being queer/trans/transition-ing while teaching elementary school has felt like – then and now. As such, this poem is a particularly personal sharing for me. It is equal parts love, grief, anger, joy, and celebration.

 So much of my own experience as a queer/trans person in schools has required a continuous, intentional process of unlearning. I have needed to actively unlearn the lies I was taught to believe about myself and my community(s) in order to ensure that I would not also be complicit in re-teaching these untruths. As such, I both need and want to centre the magical awesomeness that trans/GD people gift to this world in everything I create from this point forward. The imperative of this perspective exists not just “because” we have survived, but because we are – and have always been – uncompromisingly here. Nowhere in my professional and/or personal life have I felt that truth more consistently and profoundly than with the grade 2/3/4 students who graced me with two years of classroom teaching, learning and community-building (2013 – 2015).

The text for this poem began in that place of hopeful imagining, and this illustrated expression of who we were for and with one another is my attempt to respond in kind. Our story deserves a place in educational research for the same reasons, and with the same urgent need, that it belongs in the hands of children reading to their parents, teachers and care-givers. It is essential because who we are relationally and in the greater pattern of this world is important.       

I have endeavoured to infuse this poem with intersecting and overlapping storylines of love, queerness, futurity, hurt and hope because human relationships are complicated, and the process of learning one another well enough to care deeply and actively in communities over time is not linear. Be it action, offering and/or descriptor, care is rarely as simple a thing to give, receive, and feel as this brief little word would suggest. It is my hope that this “story of love and community” will be able to communicate the possibility of care as a gift which holds many potentials; each as grace-full, and as complicated, as the givers.