Teachers learning about their sexual identities through collaborative storytelling: Mandla and Sihle's story

I draw on a study in which I engaged myself and a group of my fellow Life Orientation teachers in collaborative self study to review who we were as sexual beings, how we understood sexuality and how this self-knowledge might affect our teaching of sexuality education. I begin by elucidating my theoretical perspectives. I go on to describe how the participants and I employed personal history storytelling to explore our development, understandings and positioning as sexual beings. To illustrate my discussion, I share a story related by two of the participants. In Mandla and Sihle's story we meet two women teachers who identify themselves as lesbians and who also want to be identified as men. I explain how Mandla and Sihle's story illustrated for us how family, religious and cultural influences and gender norms play a significant role in how we view ourselves as sexual beings. To conclude, I reflect on how through dialogue with trusted friends, teachers can gain new understandings of and new perspectives on what their lived experiences mean for them, as well as what they can learn from them.