It’s that time of year again! Here’s my annual collection of back-to-school resources for LGBTQ parents, parents of LGBTQ children, and educators, enlarged and improved for 2018! I hope it remains useful, whether your children are just entering school, starting a new school, or encountering new situations in their educational journeys.
For Teacher Appreciation Week, let’s look at a new book aimed at helping elementary school English teachers bring LGBTQ inclusion into their classrooms or deepen discussions they may already be having around LGBTQ identity and gender.
The Trump administration continues to push for banning some, if not all, transgender people from the military, despite all four service chiefs asserting that the presence of transgender troops has caused no harm. At the same time, one Department of Defense program has launched a new professional development course for staff at military-affiliated childcare centers and youth programs on how to create safe, inclusive spaces for gender-expansive and LGBTQ children.
Both Massachusetts and Illinois have recently taken steps towards including the history and achievements of LGBTQ people—and the authentic telling of their lives—in the states’ education curricula.
Students around the country are organizing walkouts and other observances at 10:00 a.m. ET today to honor the victims of gun violence and stress the need for stricter gun control laws. As parents, we need to listen to and support them. Here are a few resources to help.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School GSA, along with its president, Emma Gonzalez, were honored at Equality Florida’s 2018 Miami Gala last Saturday for their work against gun violence in the wake of the tragic shooting at the school last month. Listen to Gonzalez’s remarks.
It’s GLSEN’s annual No Name-Calling Week, a time to focus on ending name-calling and bullying in schools and promoting #KindnessInAction. Somehow, it seems more relevant than ever.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made headlines by marching in Pride parades—but here are two ways Canadian provinces are supporting queer families (among others) through actual policies: Ontario now recognizes up to four co-parents, and Quebec will introduce discussion of different family types, including same-sex couples, to its mandatory sex education curriculum.
Debra Chasnoff, the Academy Award-winning film director of Choosing Children, about the first generation of out lesbian moms, and a number of award-winning LGBTQ-inclusive educational films, has died at the age of 60 from breast cancer.
Great news out of California: The state Board of Education yesterday evening approved 10 LGBT-inclusive history and social studies textbooks to be used in K-8 classrooms–and rejected two that excluded LGBT people.
