Coming into a queer education: lessons from intergenerational LGBTQ + dialogues

This article examines an intergenerational, community-engaged LGBTQ + educational project that supports participants ‘coming into’ queer knowledges, histories, and practices. Amid curricular inclusion efforts and backlash in U.S. education, the project brought together LGBTQ + people aged 19–82 over six years for sustained intergenerational dialogue. Grounded in queer, feminist, and trans theories and informed by ethnographic and anecdotal approaches, the study treats the project as an evolving curriculum rather than a fixed programme. We argue that intergenerational educational spaces address critical gaps in gender and education research, which often isolate youth and older adults while neglecting relational infrastructures for queer thriving. The article advances three lessons: a spatial lesson on learning environments as ‘third teachers’, a narrative lesson on storytelling as curriculum requiring ethical care, and an emotional lesson on the affective labour of navigating difference and historical injury. Rather than offering a replicable model, we invite locally responsive intergenerational queer curricula.