As agricultural professionals, we must continually increase our competence and awareness for working on critical social issues. Agriculture has been traditionally seen as a primarily White, male, heteronormative field. However, this perception excludes the many important contributions of women and minoritized groups. No one - a community member, learner, or educator - should be excluded from agriculture for being themselves. Addressing gender, LGBTQ+, and heteronormativity in agriculture in our research, programming, and outreach is critical to increase inclusion and promote equity. Hearing from each other's experiences can help us become more confident in tackling these issues in our outreach and educational efforts. Learning from other professionals and how they have personally worked through these tough conversations will increase professionals' competence to handle these conversations post-conference. Through dialogue, we'll explore the challenges surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation within the agricultural classroom and how we can prepare future agricultural professionals for these conversations.

This presentation's objective is to identify the challenges educators face concerning gender identity, sexual orientation, and heteronormativity in the agricultural classroom setting. In addition, we will facilitate conversations for participants to learn from other professionals how they have managed these difficult conversations. This workshop will begin with an introduction to the topic of heteronormativity and gender within agricultural spaces, and working with the group to set norms for how we will approach these difficult conversations. The first half of the workshop will consist of small group conversations facilitated by the presenters for participants to share what experiences they have in navigating these topics in their classrooms. The second half of the workshop will consist of groups sharing out common themes that they have identified in their conversations as well as sharing out tools and resources that others can explore to help better equip them for this topic.