“In queering, there is no closing – and arguably, there is never closure. To queer is to venture into controversial, intellectually complicated, nuanced terrain with students. It requires faith that middle school students in a public school such as mine not only can, but must, learn to grapple with complexity if their education is going to provide opportunities, rather than impose insurmountable limitations.”

My placement’s instructional focus this year is rigor: a buzz word I have difficulty nailing down the meaning of, but as it pertains to my classroom, it is incorporating the “why” is this important and “how” can what we’re learning affect your life. This element proves to be challenging, as I’m pushed to ask higher-level questions to my students. It’s also a challenge for myself to incorporate real world problems and needs when we’re learning how to use certain idiomatic expressions or new verb conjugations. Least of all, I’m supposed to, or at least must try, to ask these higher-level questions and hold these discussions in French.

This passage of Krywancyzk’s article got me thinking: how could I queer my higher-level questions? Recently, during a family vocabulary unit, I tried to ask my students to evaluate whether they thought there was such a thing as a “normal” family with the help of an info graphic that showed several examples of families in France compared to the states,. I attempted to ask this higher-level question in French, and I’m afraid certain students thought I was saying their families weren’t normal. My CT stopped me and I had to rephrase in English. I appreciate Krywancyzk’s approach to queering his pedagogy, yet I’m still hesitant to start talking about these complexities, as Krywancyzk’s says, particularly in the target language.