I blogged Monday about a San Francisco first-grade class who surprised their lesbian teacher by showing up at her wedding. A parent suggested the field trip and school administrators agreed it was a “teachable moment.” While I admired the thought behind the trip, I was very concerned about the far-right running with the story. Well, […]
Here’s a good one for discussion: A group of first-graders in San Francisco took a field trip to City Hall last Friday to attend the wedding of their lesbian teacher. They threw rose petals and blew bubbles. Mayor Gavin Newsom officiated. The field trip was a parent’s idea, a surprise for the children’s dedicated teacher.
(Originally published in Bay Windows, September 11, 2008.) It’s back-to-school time, when we LGBT parents face the dual challenges of getting our children in an academic frame of mind and readying all of us to face a new batch of questions about our families. My own son is about to start kindergarten, and I’m trying
Last year at back-to-school time I published a list of school-related resources from various LGBT organizations. I’ve revised and reposted it below. It focuses on key, accessible resources for parents and educators, and is not meant to be absolutely comprehensive. If you have any further suggestions, though, please leave a comment. [Update: Please see the
I wrote last fall of the DVD release of It’s Elementary, a documentary by Academy Award-winning director Debra Chasnoff that shows how various teachers have addressed LGBT awareness in the classroom. The DVD also includes a companion piece, It’s STILL Elementary, which looks at why the film was made, people’s response, and the situation today.
Even though my own son won’t need any of these tips for a while, I’ve been impressed by Lifehacker’s long list of back-to-school hacks. Whether it’s Top 10 Back to School Tools for the Organized Student, ways to Raise Your GPA, or Best Places to Find Deals on Textbooks, if you have a child in
There are only a couple of weeks left until school starts in most areas of the U.S. For those of you with school-age children, here’s a quick poll: {democracy:10}
(This was a bit of local coverage I did for Bay Windows, but I think it may be of interest to anyone interested in the history of social justice movements and the interaction among various progressive groups.) Twenty years ago, when the first Gay-Straight Alliance was created, with the goal of making schools safer for
Sometimes, I hate being right. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to foresee that the new storybook Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah Brannen, would be a target for the right. I didn’t imagine they’d quote me while doing so, however. The conservative publication Town Hall just published the article “Librarians Against Censorship,” by Brent
Today marks the 12th annual Day of Silence, an event where students from middle school to college are asked “to take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment—in effect, the silencing—experienced by LGBT students and their allies.” This year’s event is in memory of Lawrence King,
