Monica Taylor

Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies & Professor of Teacher Education at Montclair State University

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Biography

Monica Taylor is the Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, a professor in the Department of Educational Foundations, as well as in the teacher education and teacher development doctoral program at Montclair State University. She is the academic co-editor of The Educational Forum. She writes about feminist pedagogy, self-study, LGBTQ+ inclusive practices, teaching for social justice, and teacher leadership. Read More >

She has written three books—Our Bodies Tell the Stories: Using Feminist Research and Friendship to Reimagine Education and Our Lives with Myers Education Press in 2023, Playhouse: Optimistic Stories of Real Hope for Families With Little Children, published by Garn Press in 2017, and A Year in the Life of a Third Space Urban Teacher Residency: Using Inquiry to Reinvent Teacher Education, published by Sense Publishers in 2015—and edited Whole Language Teaching, Whole Hearted Practice: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, published by Peter Lang in 2007; Gender, Feminism, and Queer Theory in the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices, published by Sense Publishers in 2014; and The 2nd International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices, published by Springer in 2020. She is co–principal investigator of the WIPRO Science Education Fellows grant that supports science teacher leaders in five districts in New Jersey.

She serves on the board of Planned Parenthood of Metro NJ and volunteers as an advocate for asylum seekers and voter protection. Her commitments to fighting sexism, heteronormativity, and racism manifest in all aspects of her life. Read Less ^

Speech Topics

Creating Early Childhood Classrooms Free of Gendered/Heterosexual Expectations

Dr. Taylor describes the ways in which teachers can create early childhood classrooms that welcome all children and invite appropriate scaffolded conversations about gender and sexuality.

Promoting Gender Equity in Middle & High School Classrooms

Dr. Taylor offers insight into some of the challenges girls face in middle and high school classrooms around the need to be perfect, fear of making mistakes or failing, and peer pressure. She offers teaching strategies that encourage autonomy, independent meaning-making, and authentic engagement for adolescent students.

Promoting Sex Positivity Among Adolescents/College Students

Dr. Taylor describes what it means to embrace being sex positive, an attitude toward human sexuality where all consensual sexual activities, including LGBTQ+ activities, are considered healthy and pleasurable.

How Teachers Can Address Trauma in Classrooms

Dr. Taylor acknowledges that now more than ever (with the pandemic, the mental illness epidemic, and the increase in school shootings) the experiences of trauma are often common for both teachers and students alike. Taylor provides some ways for teachers to address experiences of trauma in the classroom including relationship building with teachers and students, bringing emotions into the classroom, and finding ways to connect through empathy.

Bringing the Body into the Classroom

Dr. Taylor offers teachers/educators ways to facilitate embodied learning in the classroom through simple techniques like a body check, breathing, meditation, to using theater and movement techniques to make meaning of the world.