Bethy Leonardi is an associate professor in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice. After teaching middle and high school for 16 years, Bethy Leonardi returned to graduate school and received her PhD in Educational Foundations Policy and Practice from The 麻豆影院 in 2014. That year, along with Dr. Sara Staley, she co-founded A Queer Endeavor, a nationally recognized center for gender and sexual diversity in education, which is housed in CU 麻豆影院's School of Education. A Queer Endeavor is a grassroots, queer-run initiative that鈥檚 a significant influence on Dr.Leonardi's scholarship and community-based work. In collaboration, Drs.Leonardi & Staley work in deep partnership with districts and school communities to develop knowledge, practices, processes, and resources so that the culture of school is not only safe from physical and or emotional danger, but also humanizing for LGBTQ+ youth, families, and staff.
Awards that Bethy has received for her scholarship and community-based work include the Best Should Teach Gold Award, the Kalpana Chawla Award and the President鈥檚 Diversity Award (all from CU 麻豆影院).
EDUCATION
PhD, Educational Foundations, Policy, & Practice, 麻豆影院, 2014 MA, Educational Foundations, Policy, & Practice, 麻豆影院, 2007 BA, English Education, Nicholls State University, 1996
Dr. Leonardi's scholarship explores how public schools, as compulsory institutions affirm, include, deny, and/or silence queer identities. Specifically, she is interested in how educators enact promising practices that disrupt-- and heal-- cis-heteronormative school ecologies to create schools that are ready for (and not merely reactive to) queer youth. A way in to understanding school ecologies is through a focus on the relationship between policy and practice-- and at the level of implementation. Specifically, Bethy is interested in policies that challenge the status quo, that is, what counts as 鈥渘ormal鈥� in public schools. She works to understand how those policies might land in local ecologies, and how educators might 鈥渢ill the soil鈥� so that they land safely and have positive impacts.
My teaching philosophy is guided by an anti-oppressive education framework and is rooted queer, critical, and transformative pedagogies. It includes several commitments: understanding education as practice of freedom, building learning communities that center self-reflexivity and vulnerability, recognizing that learning and unlearning do something to students and teachers, and supporting students鈥� desire to take action to change both schools and society.
I love teaching.聽 And to love teaching, I have to be deeply committed to my students and to my growth as an educator. Central to my teaching philosophy is my own process of becoming and my commitment to continue to ask and to live the questions that arise throughout that process. Teaching is important to who I am as a person. I鈥檇 like to say that it鈥檚 my favorite part of this job, but that would be a complex statement to unpack. It鈥檚 hard; it hurts; it鈥檚 exhausting, and it's worth every growing pain.
COURSES
EDUC 5005 Advanced Social Foundations of Education
EDUC 3013 School & Society
EDUC 4804/6804 Queer(ing) Topics in Education
EDUC 5022 LGBTQ Topics in Higher Education
Leonardi, B., & Staley, S. (2019). Complicating what we know: Focusing on educators鈥� processes of becoming gender and sexual diversity inclusive. Theory into Practice. 58(1). 29-38.
Leonardi, B., & Staley, S. (2018). What鈥檚 involved in 鈥榯he work鈥�? Understanding administrators鈥� roles in bringing trans-affirming policies into practice. Gender and Education, 1-20.
Leonardi, B. (2017) Navigating the relationship between policy and practice: Competing discourses of fear and care in teachers鈥� sense-making about the FAIR Education Act, Journal of Education Policy, DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2017.1320730
Leonardi, B. (2017). The 鈥渂ox鈥� ing match: Narratives from queer adults growing up through the heterosexual matrix. Journal of LGBT Youth, 14(1), 93-117.
