Building a School Vision, Developing Goals, and Setting High Performance Expectations

In order to create safe and supportive communities for students who are LGBTQ+, school leaders must take proactive steps to build a school vision, develop goals, and have high expectations for staff and students. It is common for school leaders to rely on student GSAs and other bottom-up type initiatives to drive progress, but having school leadership that is visibly and explicitly committed to working toward inclusion is necessary to create spaces that are truly safe and supportive for LGBTQ+ students.

School leaders' official, explicit commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion also helps teachers and other professionals in the building feel more confident when it comes to implementing LGBTQ+ related curriculum or intervening when they witness anti-LGBTQ+ behaviors or comments.

Start with Your Mission Statement

Chances are, your school or district's mission statement already uses inclusive language: almost every school and school district mentions "all students" as part of its mission and vision.

For example, LAUSD's vision statement includes the phrase “where all students graduate ready for success" ("District Information," n.d.); and Grand Oak Elementary School, in Charlotte, N.C., states in their mission statement that their goal is "to create a positive, rigorous and engaging school environment for all students" ("Our Mission Statement," n.d.).

Your school or district mission statement most likely states something similar. Start there as you work to craft, and calibrate, a compass for your school's work to serve LGBTQ+ students.

The next step is to plan specific actions to ensure that LGBTQ+ students actually receive the resources, support, and inclusion that the mission statement promises. In LAUSD, for example, one might ask "What do LGBTQ+ youth need in order to graduate ready for success?" At Grand Oak Elementary School, one might wonder what constitutes a "positive" and "engaging" school environment for a student who is LGBTQ+. What resources, actions, and/or mindsets are needed to ensure that LGBTQ+ students are included when the mission statement is operationalized?

These are the questions to ask as you plan your path forward.

Establishing Supportive Policies and Practices

Supporting LGBTQ+ youth in schools will take proactive work on multiple levels within school systems. Measures that work to reduce victimization of transgender youth are important, and “stopping harassment of transgender youth will require systemic efforts to address safety among peers, teachers, and at the administrative level” (McGuire et al., 2010, p. 1187). Policies that support LGBTQ youth in schools often include anti-bullying measures and the ability to use their preferred names and pronouns in school, a basic support that 42.1% of transgender and gender nonconforming students reported not having access to in the 2017 National School Climate Survey (Kosciw et al., 2018). Access to locker rooms and bathrooms that align with one’s gender identity has a major connection with ability to engage and participate in school, and is a right that 43.6% of transgender students reported not having in their school settings (Kosciw et al., 2018).

GLSEN provides several model policies ready for schools to be adapted and adopted to address issues such as use of correct names and pronouns, access to gendered spaces and activities, anti-bullying protections, and other policies that are essential to be inclusive of LGBTQ+ youth in schools.


School leaders who champion inclusive policies set the tone for entire districts and schools. But sometimes, educators don’t realize how policies that sound standard or fair on the surface can marginalize or discriminate against LGBTQ students. The examples in Teaching Tolerance's new LGBT Best Practices Guide point to aspects of school that can be tough for kids with queer identities—and offer ways to both follow the law and create more inclusive, fairer policies.

TT's New LGBT Best Practices Guide, (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/tts-new-lgbtq-best-practices-guide

Safe Zone

You might want to consider creating a Safe Zone in your school. You can find information and resources for this at https://thesafezoneproject.com/ or at https://www.glsen.org/.

A sticker or sign that says "Safe Zone" or "Safe Zone Trained" serves as a visual indicator that the person displaying the sticker has gone through a Safe Zone training and wants to communicate to others that they are open to talking about and being supportive of LGBTQ+ individuals and identities.

Two reasons to have a Safe Zone program on a K-12 school campus:

(1) LGBTQ+ students need to know who on campus is safe and supportive. For example, researchers in a 2008 study found that when youth from LGBT households could identify six or more supportive school staff members, their reported GPAs were higher when compared to participants with fewer supportive allies (Kosciw & Diaz, 2008, p. 100).

(2) Allies need a way of showing others that they are safe and supportive. A Safe Zone training program is a key part of integrating LGBTQ+ groups and school staff. Such training allows for educators to gain knowledge and understanding of any biases towards this group as well as providing a set of lenses to reframe our interactions, conversations, and services in our efforts to create an inclusive environment.


References

District Information / Mission & Vision. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://achieve.lausd.net/strategies

Our Mission Statement. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://schools.cms.k12.nc.us/grandoakES/Pages/AboutOurSchool.aspx

Kosciw, J.G., Greytak, E.A., Zongrone, A.D., Clark, C.M., Truong, N.L. (2018). The 2017

National School Climate Survey: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth in our nation’s schools. New York: GLSEN.

McGuire, J.K., Anderson, C.R., Toomey, R.B., Russell, S.T. (2010). School climate for transgender youth: a mixed method investigation of student experiences and school responses. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 39, 1175-1188.