Today marks the 16th annual Day of Silence, an event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), where students from middle school to college take some form of a vow of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment. But a federal bill reintroduced yesterday that would prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination, harassment, bullying, and violence in public schools faces a tough road ahead.
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day—but it also kicks off No Name-Calling Week, “an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.”
I often write about schools and education, but mostly from the perspective of parents or students. Debbie of A Day Is Short is a teacher, however, and wrote yesterday of her experience coming out to her third-grade class, in the context of her pregnancy and impending parenthood. It’s a raw, emotional post about the struggle of trying to be honest with her students while facing the fear of homophobia.
Yesterday, I posted my column about the December 14th school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Today, I’m honored to bring you a guest post from my own mother, who had her own thoughts and offered to share them here. Some of our thoughts (not surprisingly) overlap, but she adds her own perspective as a mental health professional.
Thanks, Mom!
(I wrote this for my newspaper column the day of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. I hope 2013 is the year we as a country begin to take serious steps to ensure such tragedies never happen again.)
This was going to be a very different column. Then 20 children died in Connecticut.
The latest results from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), the longest-running and largest study of American lesbian families, show that almost all of the teens in the NLLFS are academically successful and say they are happy with their lives. That’s great news—but brings with it one matter for concern.
The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) on Wednesday released the latest version of its biennial National School Climate Survey. The new survey, conducted in 2011, found that the majority of LGBT students still face harassment and feel unsafe at school—but for the first time since the survey began in 1999, it found “a significant decrease in victimization based on sexual orientation” and an increase in “levels of student access to LGBT-related school resources and support.”
Back-to-school time is here, which means it’s time for my annual back-to-school resource post, a tradition I first started way back in 2006. My own son wasn’t even in school then. He’s grown and changed, and so has this list. I originally wrote a version of the below as part of one of my newspaper columns last year. I’ve revised it somewhat and hope it remains useful, whether your children are just entering school, starting a new school, or encountering new issues along their educational journey.
It’s back-to-school time, so I thought I’d once again put up a poll to see what’s on our minds this time of year. Please share any further thoughts in the comments.
Only two out of ten elementary school students have learned about same-sex-headed families, according to a new study commissioned by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Combine this with the fact that same-sex families with children live in 96 percent of counties in the United States, and we clearly have a failure to teach children about the world and people around them.
