GSA Advising
From 2016 to 2022, I advised 7-12th grade adolescent students in their Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) student club. I created curriculum, connected students with resources, and acted as as a responsibly boundaried adult who wants the next generation of queer youth to have access to life roadmaps and supports. This has been some of the most important and impactful work I have been able to do.
In this role, I regularly organized all-ages drag brunch outings, mediated group and family conflicts, and coordinated fundraisers for local queer organizations. I established a free binder exchange, which took donations from local queer adults and donated 20+ binders to queer youth.
Outside of GSA, I taught queer summer camp experiences - offering
drag culture and performance camps for adolescents (7-12th grades) and gender creative social camps for younger students (3rd-6th grades).
iRace Advising
From 2017-2019, I organized logistics and curriculum for Great River’s annual iRace summit, a student-centered conference on race, identity, and culture.
The iRace summit was a pre-pandemic annual conference, rooted in students’ desire for a day of intentional pause and reflection on how issues of cultural identity and marginalization affect our greater communities.
This was a year long project that involved everything from teaching classes on identity to inviting and reviewing dozens of potential workshop facilitators to being responsible for all the day-of logistics of a 800 person conference.
I saw my advising role as an opportunity to support students in thinking deeply about their own identities and about the places where Great River could use its institutional privilege to better support individuals.
Student-created documentary on the history of iRace. Charlie is interviewed at 1:55-2:20, 6:45-7:11, 8:20-9:00, and 11:37-12:37.
