Middle School Celebrates Drag Queens: 'We Hope the Children Listen'
A North Carolina school invited two drag queens to talk to middle school students about the LGBTQ community and what it's like to be transgender.
Taylor Schmidt and Schara Brooks, two teachers at Central Park School for Children in Durham, North Carolina, told CNN they organized the event with school administrators because they believed LGBTQ students were being bullied.
"If we're going to be a school that's focused on equity and justice, and if we're going to be a school that believes in the act of liberation, we need to be creative with our approach," Schmidt said, according to the News & Record.
The school collaborated with social activists to create the Pride and Liberation Event, which included drag queens Vivica C. Coxx and Stormie Daie as special guests.
CNN reports students were permitted to opt out of the event but most decided to attend.
The drag queens spoke on a panel and encouraged the children to celebrate LGBTQ lifestyles.
"I thought they must be feeling so empowered to see someone being themselves on stage," Coxx told CNN. "Visibility matters, and seeing a queer person of color on stage saying 'this is me' has an impact that no one can really measure."
Daie agreed.
"You hope that the children listen to this," he said, "so that they know we didn't have this when we were growing up. We weren't seeing people like us being celebrated."
The two teachers who organized the event hope it spreads to other schools.
"If schools are nervous about doing the work of Pride and Liberation, we get it ... but what to us seems daring, to our LGBTQ+ students could be lifesaving. Public school educators ultimately teach for liberation -- that's the job," said Schmidt.
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