“A Productive, Joyous, & Fulfilling Hour”

Mar 13

How RuPaul’s Drag Race Changed My Teaching

or, How to Turn the Class Clown into the Court Jester

My title quotation could easily come from a review of RuPaul’s Drag Race. In an hour of that show, you’ll see queer artists present inspired impromptu creations, from high-fashion looks, and to stunning makeovers; from original song lyrics, to high-energy dance numbers; from iconic lip sync performances, to ironic diva impersonations. Productive: it’s a competition demanding a final product, and it’s happening in the moment. Joyous: it’s a fantasia of comedy and beauty. Perhaps it feels fulfilling because there’s not only all of that––there’s also the feeling like you’re among family, and a much-needed one given the hegemonic culture’s ignorance and fear of drag as an art form. But on Drag Race, you’re safe: RuPaul is everyone’s mother, and every episode ends with Mama Ru’s tender yet stern reminder: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an ‘Amen’ up in here?”

So it’s certainly an accurate review, but in fact, the title of my piece comes not from a television critic, but from a teenager: M, from my 1st period 12th grade English seminar this past fall. M wrote me a thoughtful card this holiday, in which she called my class “a productive, joyous, and fulfilling hour.” Obviously, I hung up the note on my fridge. I know all teachers reading this will understand me here: M’s words imparted honor, along with something like rest for my weary soul. She had seen and named something I’d been striving for in her class: productive and fulfilling joy, which might also be called play.

Since leaving my first big high school teaching gig in 2022 after a decade, I’ve been jumping around schools in search of…something. In each new environment, I have found myself reevaluating almost everything about my profession. Mix in the horror and fear of teaching during the rise of fascism, and I’ve often felt spiritually closeted, hamstrung by the dictates of so-called neutrality, so-called achievement, so-called ‘preparation.’ Clearly, the moral imperatives of my job are more urgent than ever. If the children don’t experience community and democracy now, they may never seek it out in their adult lives. If their lives never know a “productive, joyous, and fulfilling hour” in the intellectual realm, and in company of others, they risk developing the belief that those values are mythical––rather than what they are, which is countercultural.

This is an essay about how My Year of RuPaul’s Drag Race––watching it almost every evening before bed––inadvertently made me a better high school English teacher, clearer on my values and more playful in my pedagogy.

Children, settle down now.

There are at minimum two audiences for this essay: the first are drag enthusiasts, and the second are high school teachers. There is a Venn diagram here, of course, but some of the latter may be drag skeptics, or simply too culturally heterosexual to know better. If you’re ignorant enough not to be a consumer of RuPaul’s Drag Race, but not so ignorant as to recognize the show as one of our country’s (and the world’s) crown jewels (royal pun intended), then you are definitely my target reader.

During this first year of the ugliest presidency in my lifetime, a time of great shame, anger, horror, and disgust, I find that even the most self-aware and clever of the television dramas can easily turn my stomach. Therefore, my TV diet has shifted to almost exclusively properties of the RuPaul Cinematic Universe. This includes the traditional 18 seasons, the 10 All Stars seasons, the four seasons of Drag Race France hosted by Nicky Doll, and the occasional Canadian season (especially after a late-2024 visit to Chez Mado, a famous drag club in Montreal).

We’ve all found ways to numb the unbearable pain of a craven, corrupt government propped up by global imperialist dictators. My way of coping, so far, isn’t killing me. If anything, it’s giving me life, as they say.

Every night, I turn on an episode or three of drag race. It’s not a sleeping pill; it stirs my somnambulant soul awake, reminding me of my values. They’ll try to tell you that your rotten president was elected by populism, but if you want populism, you really ought to look no further than the drag show with the widest reach, international loyal fans, and a positive social message, all embedded in a comedic and moving 60-90 minutes of dazzling, Emmy-winning television!!!!!

In the process of absorbing all of this queer culture and excellence, I have asked myself questions about the role of education, and more specifically my role as an English/Language Arts teacher. I come to my students as a representative of (and, increasingly, an advocate for) the world of words: of creativity, of self-expression, of theatre––above all, of appreciation for beauty, humor, and wisdom. In 2020s USA, am I doing those worlds justice? Are my pedagogical approaches building up my charges in the way Ru builds up her queens? How can I encourage them to seek joy, productivity, and fulfillment over cruelty, grind culture, and self-loathing?

Lesson # 1: Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent

When it comes to drag, context is everything. No one here is suggesting that children should be exposed to the c-word in school; most of them are not developmentally ready to understand context well enough to use the word responsibly. C-U-N-T, in the context of Drag Race, is above all a compliment: you look like a woman, which is the goal (“May the best woman win” was the show’s original slogan). It’s a celebration of the feminine, a reclamation of a term used to reduce us to our body parts. If drag is clear on one thing, it’s that body parts never need to get in the way of gender euphoria.

The Queen of all Queens, Jinkx Monsoon

So how does a queen achieve that four-letter word status? Well, it’s an acronym. And from a pedagogical perspective, it also happens to be a useful rubric.

Charisma: It’s your personality, your charm, your likeability––or likeable unlikeability (some queens are proud villains). It’s your way of drawing us in. It’s the way you lock in with your audience, individually (in a lip sync, for example) or collectively (with a well-timed quip or a stand-out mug). You can’t be a leader without charisma.

Uniqueness: It’s what makes you stand out. A former student of mine recently wrote about the difference between raising kids to feel special, and raising them to be unique. ‘Special’ is a word that implies superiority: you deserve something more; you should be set apart. Conceptually, ‘unique’ is more truthful: you’re already set apart! No two of us are completely alike, making uniqueness (ironically) an infinite resource. Ru cultivates her girls to find what is unique about themselves, and to share it with the world as a source of pride, not shame––for in oppressive spaces, what marks us as different is what renders us vulnerable to social cruelty and exclusion. To value uniqueness is to be countercultural; it is to place self-esteem over abnegation to a superficial hierarchy.

Nerve: To quote Des’ree, you gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser. You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger. It takes a lot of courage to do anything public, for reasons mentioned above and many others. Without nerve, high school is a Sisyphean inferno (I know, mixed metaphor—but I’m a maximilist). Without nerve, you’ll never step outside of the cultural boxes corporate media need you to be in so that they can efficiently transform you into a consumer. A queen is not a consumer; she reigns over her own destiny, and she’s brave enough to take criticism, face setbacks, and––most importantly––show others what she’s truly made of.

Talent: Because of course, you’ve also got to be good. Really good. Good enough to stand on a stage and do something and earn applause. I paraphrase the poet Taylor Mali when I tell my students that in math class, they’ll ask you to show your work, but in the arts––including in the Language Arts––we ask you to hide it. A brilliant essay feels brilliant, in part, because it comes across as effortless, just like watching a brilliant lip-sync makes us imagine we too could jump and land in a split. Spoiler: we can’t, and learning a skill can take years. But refining a talent is one of life’s most delicious pleasures. The better you get, the worse you feel at it, but that’s how you know you’re on the right track. Talent should always be a balanced cocktail of nature and nurture, and school must be a place where kids learn to nurture their natural gifts.

Lesson # 2: You’re a Ru Girl Now

Everyone in a group—a classroom, say—needs to feel included as a prerequisite for anything else, let alone learning. Of course, motivation to learn can come from anywhere, and it can certainly transcend a hostile social environment. But as secondary teachers, we’re sensitized to young people’s social disconnection, knowing that isolation places them at a high risk for other negative outcomes. In our classrooms, we therefore attempt to simulate a highly respectful and egalitarian system of communication: a professional speaking environment, a collaborative community. It’s both a private and a public space: you have a reason you’re here in this group––perhaps, because you’re a sensational drag queen––and you’re invited to compete with your peers, honing your craft among your kind while figuring out what distinguishes you from them.

Some may believe that competitive schooling environments are designed to make a person elite. I feel I must digress and name a difference between elite and elitist, not unlike unique vs. special. Elitism is a belief, powerful and long-standing, in the idea of a special ruling class, more deserving of rights and privileges. Elitism is a vestigial organ leftover from our evolution out of monarchism and the ‘divine right of kings.’ These “elites” of the elitist camp make up stories to justify their place at the top, their excess of possessions and comfort at the expense of other humans. We do not stan the elitists.

Truly elite individuals, however, are those with a skill, ability, or talent that rare few others possess––one of the best and few at a human virtue, to borrow Aristotle’s term. This is not the same usage as a term like “business elite,” which can be used unironically by insecure rich people, or a different kind of unironically by activists critiquing classism and capitalism. They’re using “elite” to mean “one of the few powerful.” But from where does their power derive? From domination? Or from genuine merit and social value?

Society does need individuals who understand high standards––who want to be the best at their craft. But that mentality applied to everyone ends up leading to overdetermined hierarchies and unnecessary exclusions. What society needs even more are individuals who understand what it takes to do their best.

You might be thinking, but who can afford to become talented? Who has the resources to manage being their best, let alone the best? Indeed, it’s quite often the descendents of the aristocracy, who remain powerful by hoarding resources and only sharing them with their (statistically, mediocre) children, whose only reason for being at the top is having gotten born. RuPaul’s ironic monarchy metaphor, then, reclaims these symbols of arbitrary elitist power and hands them to her talented queer children, ordaining them as unique and elite in their skillset. In return for her love, you must be her court jesters and make her laugh––indeed, you must play along, turn in your homework, pass the assessments. But those tests don’t give you value. You’re already in––just for being you and trying your best. You’ll always be a Ru girl, just because you tried.

Hoping my grays grow in exactly like this.

Lesson # 3: “Make Me Laugh,” or “Those who [play] together stay together”

That’s the number one rule driving the judges’ critiques: make RuPaul laugh. She’s known as a generous laugher, and with almost two decades of her documented formula, contestants on the show are meant to know exactly what tickles her funny bone. In school, it’s similar: students learn each teacher’s expectations, but they also internalize a sense of humor, a personality for each class. They learn a life skill: how to read the codes needed to operate in a community, one where your charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent are only as valuable as their contribution to the greater good––learning. Class clowns, as a result, are often notoriously compensatory in their personae: unable to fully meet intellectual or emotional expectations, they use impulsive acts of comic interruption to divert from their own (perceived) incompetence.

So the question is, how can we tap into the energy of the clown and channel it toward learning––toward being the court jester: autonomous, funny, and successful? If these kids are going to be in a supervised space with an accomplished adult, how can we clown around together in an educational way? And, ethically speaking, how can they learn to play fair while also learning essential skills for functioning in the real world?

These are the questions of a ninth grade teacher (me), but perhaps they inspired the Drag Race structure as RuPaul conceived of it: its regulations, its routine elements. Challenges are always individually judged, but they inevitably entail collaboration: a ‘girl group’ performance, for instance, involves group choreography, but it also requires individual polish and sparkle––among the worst critiques you can get is, “You faded into the background.” Or how about “RDR Live,” a dragified version of SNL? It requires both personal character development and a role in the overall gestalt of a sketch. You must channel weird stupidity, but not at the expense of the others in your skit. Otherwise, you could find yourself accused of “showboating.”

English class, a simulation of community life, requires the same balancing act: How do you stand out and fit in? How do you take in the social information about your peer group while also insisting on your own unique approach? What work needs to happen backstage, behind the scenes, so that you can show up and deliver the “fantasy” as Ru calls it: such an effortless performance, such a believable character, as to transport your audience?

Learning to work backstage––to occupy the ‘werk room,’ as Ru calls it––is most of the challenge of schooling. “We’re teaching you how to think…” or at least that’s what we say. Children learn how to think through play––through simulation. We know this. And we also know that their memories work better when there’s emotional engagement––fun! Play! Joy! When I witness my students on the sports fields and courts, performing in theatrical productions, or delivering speeches, I see that the authenticity of the audience in front of them draws out their most authentic efforts. The classroom, then, is a kind of supervised backstage area, but I often feel like my presence there as a leader––as the arbiter of their grade and overall wielder of adult power––tends to interrupt their ability to authentically engage.

Supervision, therefore, must be used responsibly. An overly supervised child, like an overly micromanaged drag queen, will not develop the independence, resourcefulness, and creativity to grow into her unique persona. I wrote about this when it came to boarding school, where some of the children compensated for their overly managed lives by developing personae of eagerness and ease to mask their desperation, anger, and sleeplessness. Teachers can see through this mask; we know when you’re not well, and we also know when we’re being bullshat. It makes it difficult to authentically coach a student into her best self. By contrast, an under-supervised child (or queen) lacks the supportive feedback to learn to “see herself from the outside,” as Ru once advised the Widow Von’Du during season 12. “Don’t take any of it too seriously,” Ru added.

We’ve arrived at one of the central paradoxes inherent to true excellence: you must know your audience; you must know yourself. The work only becomes good when you can see yourself as others do. At the same time, you can’t take what they see seriously, knowing it’s all a performance. You’re not performing well because you’re self-consciously trying to control what others see; you do better when you realize that it’s all a show, so their judgments of you are, in fact, entirely within your control.

You must supervise yourself, and you must do it lovingly. This isn’t Foucault’s internalized panopticon. This is true self-love. You must become your own (loving) parent, your own (encouraging) teacher. You must accept Ru and the judges’ critiques, positive and negative––but then you must return to yourself, relying most on you. When this happens, you become your own greatest champion and sharpest critic. You become useful to yourself. You also become a natural leader. In short, you become a Queen: meritorious, influential, and comfortable in your skin.

Judges panel from Drag Race France: LÉ-GEN-DAIRE!

Learning to make Mama Ru laugh isn’t about pleasing the teacher, though that appears to be the brief. When you’re having fun, the people around you––assuming they feel included in your jokes––have fun, too. The class clown can become a driving engine for community, as long as the others don’t feel sabotaged by excessive spotlight-grabbing or shade-throwing. As a teacher, it’s my job to create ‘challenges’ that have natural consequences baked right in: if you play well together, we all excel.

“Families who slay together, stay together,” Ru says. Classes of teenagers who can play well together, then, learn so much more: they learn effort without self-consciousness; competitiveness without the desire to scam; and horizontal camaraderie without vertical intimidation. A teacher can become a coach, holding space for her students to showcase their charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent. And a student can become a member of a new family, one that values her individuality in the context of a vibrant community. For children, like queer people, are a misunderstood and marginalized community in American society. Respect their right to play, and you simulate a “productive, joyous, and fulfilling hour” that is radically alternative to the imperatives of capitalism. Not surveillance, not busy work, not repression, but the deep, authentic experience of being both your fun and serious selves at the same time––and knowing that’s exactly right.

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