Queering ESL Teaching: Pedagogical and Materials Creation Issues

Queer issues in English language teaching (ELT) have received increasing attention in recent years. This has included calling for interfaces between queer theory and ELT theorizing and descriptions of what is at stake in heteronormative classrooms, as well as exploring normative discourses reflected in language learning materials. Despite this considerable progress, there is still much work to be done regarding how teacher trainers and practitioners might go about queering practice. This article seeks to explore how English as a second language (ESL) classrooms can be meaningfully queered to create safer and more respectful spaces for students to engage with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues in a second language. This discussion begins by looking at how ESL teacher training can be queered, for example, including representation from queer TESOL literature and modeling queer teaching practices. The conversation concludes by arguing that there also exists a need for teachers to seek out ways to queer commercially available classroom materials.