November 13 - 19 is Transgender Awareness Week
November 20 is Transgender Remembrance Day
Gay-Straight Alliance clubs, or GSAs for short, are student-run organizations that unite LGBTQ+ and allied youth to build community and organize around issues impacting them in their schools and communities. GSAs have evolved beyond their traditional role to serve as safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth in middle schools and high schools, and have emerged as vehicles for deep social change related to racial, gender, and educational justice.
A growing body of research confirms that the presence of a GSA has a positive and lasting effect on student health, wellness, and academic performance. It can also protect students from harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and improve school climates for all students in the long-term.
Through GSA organizing, young people are able to launch campaigns on a variety of issues that affect all students across the country.
GLSEN_GSA_Space_Agreements.pdfGLSEN_GSA_Resources_2023_Building_Inclusive_GSA.pdfGLSEN_Back_To_School_Student_Guide-2022.pdfAs many of you start to gear up for your literature class, soccer practice, musical auditions, and/or restarting your GSAs; know that when you return to school, we are here to help you with our resources and stories from your peers.
GLSEN_Back_To_School_Educator_Guide-2022a.pdfEducators, it’s important to recognize it may take time for yourself and your students to readjust to being in the classroom. To ease into the new school year, we encourage you to promote inclusion and safety as guiding values for your class.
Goal: Identify the things that make students feel unsafe at school and to envision and dream of experiencing safety.
Prompt: Imagine you are coming back from summer break where everything changed! Your school, district, state, and federal government created safe and inclusive policies from the list of demands you created. As you attend your first day you realize that it truly is a place you feel safe and included. Build that image with your GSA on this vision board.
Activity
What would be your list of demands before summer break? (5 minute brainstorming)
After returning from summer break, what is different about your school that makes it safe and inclusive now that these policies are in place and implemented by educators? (10 minutes editing the Jamboard--link below)
Review your Jamboard or vision board with your group. Share back some of the important pieces that were named.
Taking these visions of a safer school, what are some things you can do now to make these ideas happen?
Keep this vision board as a reminder of what students want and deserve. Use this as a guide for how you participate in advocacy campaigns like Solidarity Week, No Name Calling Week, and Day of Silence.
