Who Gets Called a “Bad Student”? | Ep. 227 (with Samrat Sharma)
Samrat Sharma is a queer immigrant scholar from India pursuing a dual-title PhD at Penn State. In this conversation with Bryan Stanton, he compares schooling in India and the United States, from unequal resources and school meals to the gap between education policy and what children actually receive.
Samrat also shares his research with the Hijra community in New Delhi. By studying gossip and cussing as ways people build community and share knowledge, he asks who gets labelled a “good” or “bad” student, and whose knowledge schools recognise.
In this episode, you will:
- Examine how funding, caste, and access to food shape students’ opportunities.
- Explore how community language can teach, protect, and connect people outside a classroom.
- Consider what queer educators carry into their work from the generations before them.
The conversation returns to a question at the heart of Teaching While Queer: how can educators recognise the knowledge communities already hold and help make a dignified life possible for every student?
Queering Education is a Teaching While Queer podcast centering LGBTQ+ educators and the real-world realities of teaching while queer. We explore queer representation in education, including burnout, tokenism, doxing, visibility, boundaries, and advocacy for inclusive classrooms, safe schools, and anti-bullying practices.
This podcast supports gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, asexual, aromantic, agender, and two-spirit teachers, and addresses how gender identity in schools can be honored to reduce isolation, protect educators, and build community.
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Keywords: Teaching While Queer, queer educators, LGBTQ teachers, inclusive education, gender identity in schools, safe classrooms, anti-bullying strategies, educator burnout, LGBTQ advocacy, queer visibility in education