The History Exists: How & When Do We Teach Queer Narratives?

"What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?” - Jim Mattis

Some stories are like scaffolding. They are not the whole building, but without them, nothing sturdy ever gets off the ground. The art of teaching LGBTQ+ history to children is less about “all the facts now” and more about building that scaffolding in age-appropriate layers that can hold more truth every year a student grows. When we do this well, we are not just filling in historical gaps; we are showing every student that people like them have always existed, contributed, and mattered, which quietly rewires what they believe is possible for their own lives. By threading Queer stories into the larger human story, we are not only giving LGBTQ+ students a mirror, we are teaching all students that dignity, courage, and complexity are not “special topics,” but the basic materials of history itself.

If we treat Queer history the way we already treat topics like war, slavery, or colonialism, the path becomes clearer. You start with names, faces, courage, creativity, and service. Later you add the complexities of identity, discrimination, resistance, and joy. The destination is honesty. The journey is carefully staged.

Teaching the person first, the identity later

Think about how we already talk to elementary students about George Washington. They meet the general, the first president, the leader who helped create a country. Only later do they discover that the cherry-tree story is made up and that his world was soaked in slavery and conflict. The early version is not a lie in itself. It is a simplified slice of the truth, meant to be expanded, corrected, and complicated over time.

You can use this same pattern to teach Queer history. For younger students, you spotlight the achievement, the courage, the service to others, the doors opened. In middle and high school, you begin to layer in how gender identity, sexuality, and social prejudice shaped those same lives. The key is intentional omission at first, followed by intentional addition later. You are not hiding the full story. You are staging it.

A practical rule of thumb for K–5 classrooms is this: if you can explain why a person matters without referencing romantic or sexual relationships at all, you can introduce that person to young students right away. For later grades, you revisit those same figures and add the missing pieces around gender and sexuality, discrimination and resilience, community and culture. By the time students graduate, they have heard the same names multiple times, each time with more context, nuance, and honesty.

Dr. Margaret “Mom” Chung: building from “first doctor” to Queer trailblazer

In the early grades, Dr Margaret “Mom” Chung can be introduced in simple, vivid terms. She was the first known American-born Chinese woman physician, growing up in California at a time when it was extremely hard for Chinese Americans and women to become doctors at all. She opened one of the first Western-style clinics in San Francisco’s Chinatown and treated families who often had nowhere else to go for medical care.

You can tell younger children that she became “Mom” to thousands of American servicemen during World War II, many of whom she informally “adopted” as her sons. She helped them feel cared for, wrote to them, fed them, and celebrated them when they came home. She also helped support efforts like Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services, which opened more space for women to participate in the Navy and paved the way for women’s broader integration into the armed forces.

In middle and high school, you circle back. Now students are ready for questions like: What did it mean to be a Chinese American woman in medicine when racism and sexism were embedded in law and daily life. How did Dr Chung’s gender expression and close relationships with women and men challenge norms of her day. Older students can examine how later historians and community members have read her life through Queer lenses, including how her presentation blended masculine and feminine traits and how she moved through social spaces that were often hostile to both Asian Americans and LGBTQ+ people.

The person you first met in elementary school as a caring doctor becomes, in later grades, a case study in intersectionality, identity, and resistance. The name stays the same. The story deepens.

Baron von Steuben: from “military coach” to Queer icon

For younger learners, Baron Friedrich von Steuben can be presented as the brilliant military trainer who helped turn a struggling group of Revolutionary War soldiers at Valley Forge into a disciplined army. You can describe him as the person who wrote one of the first drill manuals for the United States and helped shape what eventually became the modern American military.

This version emphasizes leadership, teaching, and problem-solving. He arrives in a desperate situation, studies what is not working, and designs clear training that everyone can follow. He becomes a model for “the coach who changed the game.” There is no need to mention sexual orientation to a seven-year-old in order for this to be meaningful.

In high school, the story grows up alongside the students. Now you can invite them to consider his life as a Queer man in the eighteenth century. Modern historians widely accept that von Steuben would be understood as a gay man today, pointing to accusations about his relationships with men and his close male companions who lived and worked with him. You can connect this to questions of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the ongoing debates about LGBTQ+ people serving openly in the military.

When students have already met von Steuben as a key architect of the American armed forces, learning that he was likely Queer reframes everything. Instead of “an extra controversial detail,” his sexuality becomes part of a bigger conversation about who has always been defending and building the country, even when the country refused to fully accept them.

Thomas / Thomasine Hall: from “rules and clothing” to gender fluidity

With younger children, you can introduce Thomas or Thomasine Hall in the context of colonial rules and clothing. Hall lived in the early 1600s and worked as an indentured servant in Jamestown, Virginia. Historical records show that Hall sometimes wore clothing seen as “for men” and sometimes clothing seen as “for women,” which confused neighbors and eventually brought Hall before a colonial court.

At an elementary level, you can focus on how strict clothing and behavior rules were in the colonies. The court decided Hall had what they called a “dual nature” and forced Hall to wear a strange combination of both men’s and women’s clothing so that everyone would always know Hall was “different.” You can talk with children about fairness, rules, and how people in power sometimes respond to difference by trying to control it.

With older students, Hall’s story becomes a powerful early example of gender-expansive identity in colonial America. Hall was an English intersex person who moved back and forth across gender presentation, working and living at different times as Thomas and as Thomasine. The court’s ruling that Hall must forever wear mixed clothing becomes a window into how law, religion, and social norms tried to pin down gender as a fixed, binary category. High school students can engage with how historians today understand Hall as evidence that complex gender identities existed long before modern labels, and how society responded with surveillance and punishment.

Again, the scaffold holds. Children encounter a story about strange, unfair rules. Teenagers revisit the same figure as an early example of Queer and gender-expansive history on this continent.

One-Eyed Charley: from daring driver to trans possibility

Charley Parkhurst, known as “One-Eyed Charley,” fits perfectly into the pantheon of adventurous Old West figures that elementary students already love. You can tell younger grades that Charley was a legendary stagecoach driver in the 1800s, famous for bravery, skill, and the ability to navigate dangerous routes full of robbers, wild terrain, and harsh weather.

Children can picture a one-eyed driver racing across dusty roads, handling horses in storms, and delivering mail and passengers safely through real danger. That image alone invites discussions about grit, responsibility, and what it means to be trusted with other people’s lives.

Later, in high school, students can learn that when Charley died in 1879, people discovered Charley had been assigned female at birth and had likely given birth to a child. Newspapers were shocked. Friends refused to believe what the coroner reported. Now Charley’s life can be examined in the context of trans and gender-nonconforming history, where living and working as a man created opportunities and safety that would not have been possible for a woman in that time and place. Students can wrestle with questions about whether Charley should be understood as a trans man, how we speak about people who did not have modern language for their identities, and how Queer people have always been present in the “myths” that define national imagination.

The same story that thrills a ten-year-old becomes, later, a serious conversation about gender, survival, and historical erasure.

Lyons Wakeman: from “teen soldier” to hidden identity

With younger students, Lyons Wakeman is first and foremost a story about determination and service. Under that name, Wakeman served as a soldier with the 153rd New York Volunteer Infantry in the Union army during the Civil War. You can present Wakeman as a young person who wanted to support their family, earn money, and serve in a war where the official rules said women could not fight.

At that level, you do not have to say anything about sex assigned at birth. You can instead invite children to think about what drives a teenager to leave home, put on a uniform, and step into danger. Wakeman becomes a face in the crowd of young people who have always been asked to shoulder the heaviest costs of war.

In later grades, students can learn that Lyons Wakeman’s legal name was Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, and that Wakeman disguised themself as a man to join the Union army. Historians now analyze Wakeman’s letters and choices to explore whether this was solely a disguise for economic and military reasons, or something deeper about gender identity. High schoolers can talk about gender roles, economic inequality, and how Queer and gender-nonconforming people have navigated systems that try to keep them out.

Once again, the same name reappears across the years. The story starts as courage and ends as complexity.

How to build this scaffold in real classrooms

All of this can be more than theory. Teachers and school leaders can create a practical ladder for Queer history that respects both developmental readiness and the right to truth. Here is one workable structure.

In early elementary, focus on contribution and humanity. Introduce Dr Chung as a caring doctor and community leader, von Steuben as a brilliant teacher-soldier, Hall as someone caught in strange clothing rules, Parkhurst as a daring driver, and Wakeman as a determined young soldier. Let students see that history includes Chinese American women, immigrants, people of many backgrounds, and lives that do not all look the same. Keep the emphasis on bravery, problem-solving, and service.

In upper elementary and middle school, begin to name unfairness and difference more clearly. Talk about racism, sexism, and the way people who “broke the rules” about gender or behavior were often punished. With careful language, you can start to hint at the fact that some people’s families, friendships, or ways of being in their bodies did not match what society expected. You can use words like “different,” “not accepted,” “treated unfairly,” and “living in a way that felt true to them.”

By high school, bring the full vocabulary. Talk explicitly about gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and gender-expansive identities. Invite primary sources, letters, court records, and modern scholarship into the conversation. Ask students to analyze how historians make sense of limited or biased records, especially for people whose identities were misunderstood or criminalized in their own time. At this stage, Queer history is no longer an optional sidebar. It is part of how you teach about war, medicine, migration, law, and culture.

Throughout, involve parents and caregivers transparently. Share with them that the early-years focus is on diverse heroes and human dignity, not on explicit sexual content, and that the more detailed conversations in later grades are age-appropriate, evidence-based, and rooted in respect. Invite their questions. Let them see the scaffolding, not just the final floor.

When we do this well, we are not just filling in historical gaps; we are showing every student that people like them have always existed, contributed, and mattered, which quietly rewires what they believe is possible for their own lives. By threading Queer stories into the larger human story, we teach that dignity, courage, and complexity are not “special topics,” but the basic materials of history itself.

Coming Out of the Footnotes

In the end, the question is not whether education is “ready” to include Queer history. The history is already here, written into every era by people who loved, led, and risked everything while remaining invisible in the official story. The real question is whether we are willing to stop handing the next generation a half-empty past and start giving them the whole, complicated, beautiful truth.

So let this be a turning point, not a footnote. Choose one figure you already know and reintroduce them with a Queer lens to your students, your colleagues, your community, or your own kids this year. Do not wait for perfect conditions. Take one bold, specific step that makes the past more honest and the future more possible, and let that be the moment when the story they inherit finally starts to match the world they deserve to build.

References

National Park Service. “Dr. Margaret ‘Mom’ Chung.” U.S. National Park Service, updated February 19, 2025.

Wikipedia. “Margaret Chung.”

Columbus Medical Association. “Women’s History Month: Margaret Chung.” March 10, 2021.

Addus HomeCare. “Dr. Margaret Chung: The First American-Born Chinese Woman Physician.” April 30, 2024.

Museum of Flight. “Doctor Mom Chung.” Flight Deck blog, October 30, 2023.

Windy City Times. “Baron von Steuben, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Franklin to Washington.” September 30, 2013.

YouTube. “The Untold Story of General Baron von Steuben – New Day NW.” September 24, 2023.

EqualityMaine. “Trans History.”

EqualityMaine. “Thomas/Thomasine Hall – 1600s Gender Fluidity in Colonial America.”

OutHistory. “The Fearless Character of One Eyed Charley.”

Reddit. “4 Interesting Trans Men from Throughout History.” r/ftm, September 15, 2021.

History of American Women. “Sarah Rosetta Wakeman.”