15. “Please Don’t Gender Me!” Strategies for Inclusive Language Instruction in a Gender-Diverse Campus Community

Foreign language instructors increasingly face challenges in the classroom due to highly gendered structures inherent in many languages. Teaching grammatically gendered foreign languages such as German in its normative language patterns without consideration of how it affects gender nonconforming students, not only creates an exclusionary classroom environment, but also neglects to teach students authentic conceptions of new sociocultural developments in the target language. The question arises whether and if so how such gendered notions can be addressed successfully to create an inclusive environment for all students in a language classroom. While we cannot change language patterns or dismiss textbooks altogether, we need to develop strategies that can be incorporated in language classrooms to create safe spaces for students while still allowing for effective pedagogical instruction.