Getting Ready for Benjamin: Preparing Teachers for Sexual Diversity in the Classroom (review)

In 1999, the Gay and Lesbian Studies Special Interest Group hosted a symposium on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) issues in teacher education at the annual American Educational Research Association conference. The anthology, Waiting for Benjamin: Preparing Teachers for Sexual Diversity in the Classroom, is one of the results of that meeting.This collection of articles serves as an introduction to LGBT issues in teacher education, a call to critically examine the curricular and institutional silence around genders and sexualities in education, and a guide for integrating issues of sexual and gender diversity into teacher certification programs.

Rita Kissen, who authored The Last Closet: The Real Lives of Lesbian and Gay Teachers, edits this collection of 19 essays. Twenty-eight authors from Australia, Canada, Finland, and the United States contribute their work to the book and tackle the complexities of sexual and gender diversity in the field of teacher education. The primary goal of the volume is to underscore how "LGBT issues are inextricably interwoven into the basic concerns of pre-service education" (p. 4). Collectively, these pieces make visible the heteronormative and homophobic underside of many teacher preparation programs and school environments.

The book is divided into three thematic sections. Each segment includes a brief introduction by Kissen, who provides an overview of the chapters and articulates the common themes that tie the essays together. The pieces in this anthology are concise, well-written, and accessible. In addition, each of the articles draws on distinct perspectives and methodologies to think about how sexualities intersect with teaching and schooling. A detailed description of each of the sections follows.

The primary objective of Part 1, "Surveying the Landscape," is to provide an overview of the state of LGBT awareness in a variety of teacher certification programs. The articles address several issues ranging from the challenges of integrating LGBT issues into teacher education curriculum to the representation of sexual diversity in teacher education textbooks. The majority of pieces in this section analyze the results of surveys given to teacher candidates. Topics addressed include pre-service teachers' understanding of homophobia in schools, teacher candidates' preparation to deal with LGBT youth, and male teacher candidates' perceptions of their own masculinity and sexuality. The overview of teacher education curriculum and interpretations of survey results make visible how colleges and universities that emphasize multicultural education often simultaneously ignore issues of gender and sexuality.

In "'Add Lgbt and Stir': Multiculturalism and Sexual Diversity," the authors write about the inclusion of sexual diversity within multicultural education paradigms. Each essay negotiates the possibilities and the limits of multicultural theories for integrating LGBT issues into teacher education programs. Of particular note is Letts's piece, "Revisioning Multiculturalism in Teacher Education: Isn't it Queer?" Letts offers an insightful critique of familiar conceptualizations of multiculturalism and draws on queer theory to problematize more limited notions of diversity. His "queer multicultural teacher education" acknowledges the positive interventions made by multiculturalism, and at the same time attempts to move away from simplistic identity politics often associated with that paradigm. Similarly, other authors build on the tenets of multiculturalism, as well as concepts of inclusive schooling to theorize teacher education models that address sexual and gender diversity. Throughout these essays the authors focus on how to include LGBT issues in teacher education as part of the larger project of educating for social justice.

Part 3, "Telling Our Stories," includes personal reflections on attempts to bring sexual and gender diversity awareness into educational contexts. The essays in this section are poignant and capture the everyday courage required of administrators, pre-service and practicing teachers, students, and teacher educators committed to LGBT issues. As Kissen points out, the contributors to this volume, who seek to foreground lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered issues also "painstakingly negotiate...