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Advisory Lessons About Inclusivity

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LGBTQ+ INFORMATION FOR STUDENTS AND STAFF

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Las escuelas y oficinas abrirán en su horario habitual. Los programas de cuidado infantil antes y después de la jornada escolar y el uso comunitario ocurren según lo programado

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Starting with the first LGBTQ flags to new pride flags flown today, find the history, colors and meaning of 21 different LGBTQ flags.

This article is part of In Session: The Teen Vogue Lesson Plan. Find the full lesson plan here.

Ever since the first rainbow-hued LGBTQ flag was created in 1978, pride flags have been a colorful symbol of queer identity. Much like the communities they represent, these flags are in a constant state of evolution, expanding to better and more inclusively encompass every queer identity under the rainbow. And what a rainbow it is!

Today, there are dozens of LGBTQ+ flags representing just as many gender identities, sexualities and intersections of communities. Although the symbolic use of bright colors has long been connected to queer culture, these flags, fittingly, are a highly visible, widerspread signal of queer identity compared to some of the slightly more covert LGBTQ+ symbols that preceded them. Flags are, after all, meant to be flown - loudly and proudly! Below, we'll walk you through the origin, meaning and colors of 21 LGBTQ flags, from the original pride flag to new pride flags flown today, so that you can understand which identity each flag celebrates.

1. Gilbert Baker Pride Flag

This is the mother - or, in less gendered terms, the parent - of all LGBTQ flags. The original pride flag came to be in 1978 after Gilbert Baker, an activist, gay military veteran and drag queen, was tasked by fellow activist and politician Harvey Milk with creating a celebratory symbol for the gay community. An eight-striped rainbow was what Baker and a team of collaborating artists and volunteers ultimately crafted, unfurling the first flag at June's San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade - just a few months before Milk was assassinated in November 1978. Each of the colors had a distinct meaning:

Hot pink: Sex

Red: Life

Orange: Healing

Yellow: Sunlight

Green: Nature

Turquoise: Magic

Blue: Harmony

Violet: Spirit

2. 1978-1979 Pride Flag

Following Milk's assassination, demand for the gay pride flag as a symbol of hope and joy for a mourning community increased. Choosing not to trademark the design - Baker wanted the flag to be kept a free symbol for all in the community to use - he took it to San Francisco's Paramount Flag Company for help mass producing it. Given that hot pink fabric was hard to source, the company ultimately dropped the pink stripe, briefly producing a version of these LGBTQ flags that used a stock, seven-striped rainbow fabric.

3. Traditional Gay Pride Flag

Shortly after the seven-striped version was produced, the gay pride flag was adapted yet again. In 1979, for a protest in response to Milk's assasination, the turquoise stripe was removed. Now with six colors, the flag could be split in half evenly, flanking both sides of the street the protest would march down. (And, without the turquoise, the flag became yet-easier to mass produce, too.) From then on, this version of the flag would come to forever be linked with LGBTQ rights and solidarity, living on as the "traditional" Pride flag seen most often until today.

4. Philadelphia Pride Flag

In 2017, a new Pride flag was introduced by the city of Philadelphia. Commissioned by the Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs as part of its More Color, More Pride campaign, the flag was meant to better represent the inclusion of queer people of color - people who, despite having played a foundational role in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, often faced marginalization in white (and gay cis-male) centered spaces. In Philly earlier that year, several gay bars had faced investigations into complaints of racist discrimination at 11 gay bars. Raising the new flag outside City Hall during Pride 2017, the message of queer inclusion and intersectionality was clear.

5. "Progress" Pride Flag

Inspired by the new Philadelphia Pride Flag, Daniel Quasar, a queer, non-binary graphic designer in Oregon, set out to create a version of the flag that would help elevate marginalized queer identities even further. Released in 2018, their "Progress" Pride Flag incorporates the colors of the Trans Pride Flag and, in its black stripe, also honored those both living with and lost to HIV/AIDS. The inclusion of an arrow, as Quasar explained in their Kickstarter, was intentional, too: "The arrow points to the right to show forward movement, while being along the left edge shows that progress still needs to be made."

6. The Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag

In 2021, the Pride flag got another update from intersex writer and Intersex Equality Rights UK advocacy group member Valentino Vecchietti. Incorporating the design of the 2013 intersex flag, it got a positive response from members of the community. Writing on their Instagram, Vecchietti's advocacy group said: "Since we posted this flag... intersex people and allies from all over the globe have said it is bringing them joy to see intersex inclusion."

7. Bisexual Flag

Created by bi activist Michael Page in 1998, the Bisexual Pride Flag has three colors each symbolizing a different kind of attraction. Pink is meant to represent attraction to your same gender and blue attraction to a different gender, while the overlapping lavender stripe symbolizes attraction to both and/or multiple genders. Some see the flag's original concept as worth expanding on; in sharing her own updated spin on the flag, one bi artist pointed out that "a lot of people get thrown off by those color choices too, because they are often culturally reinforced as representing women and men."

In keeping with our understanding of bisexuality today, the Bi Pride Flag - like bisexuality itself - shouldn't be seen as enforcing a binary. "Today, many people define bisexuality as being attracted to people of similar gender identities to theirs and gender identities that are different than theirs," bi-identifying writer Natalie Dahl wrote for Teen Vogue. "There are many gender identities out there and a bi person can choose to date someone who identifies with any of them."

8. Pansexual Flag

The flag that's since been widely adopted by the pansexual community got its start on Tumblr. It's been in use since 2010, when it was posted to an anonymous Tumblr by its creator Jasper V, a queer, non-binary person living in England. Jasper has since shared they had no idea the extent to which the flag would take off. "The first Pride I went to a few years ago where there were pansexual flags on display made me very emotional," they said. "A limited number of my offline friends know that I created the flag design, so them saying when they see the flag in offline spaces they think of me and are proud makes me so happy."

The Pansexual Pride Flag's colors are commonly understood to mean the following: pink represents attraction to femme-identifying people, blue represents attraction to those who are male-identified, and yellow represents attraction to non-binary and genderqueer folks.

9. Transgender Flag

In 1999, Monica Helms, a trans woman and Navy veteran, designed a flag to represent the trans community at the encouragement of Michael Page, creator of the bisexual flag. In conversation with Point of Pride, Helms described the flag's meaning: "The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives."

10. Asexual Flag

Before the Asexual Pride Flag was born, a number of different symbols, including the ace of spades playing card, were used to represent the asexual community. In 2010, AVEN - the Asexual Visibility and Education Network - decided it was time to coalesce around a shared symbol, holding a flag design content on its forum board. Two AVEN users, known as standup and Bristrek, led the effort, with standup's design ultimately winning the vote. The flag's four colors each have their own meaning:

Black: Asexuality

Gray: Gray-Asexuality and Demisexuality

White: Non-Asexual partners and allies

Purple: Community

11. Demisexual Flag

In a way, the demisexual flag also had its start on AVEN. It was on this forum that the term demisexual was first coined by a user known as sonofzeal, describing their experience of requiring an emotional bond as a prerequisite to sexual attraction, as well as their need to find language distinct from asexuality. The creator of the Demisexual Pride Flag - which, just to emphasize again, represents an identity separate from asexuality, despite the two flags' similarities in color - is not yet known.

12. Omnisexual Pride Flag

Omnisexuality, in which someone feels an attraction to all gender identities, is described as distinct from pansexuality in its relationship to gender. "Pansexuality is more gender-blind, while with omnisexuality, gender influences the type or strength of attraction to each gender," Casey Tanner, a clinical sex therapist, told Health. The flag for this community was designed in 2015 by Tumbler user pastelmemer, with its colors meant to represent the following:

Light pink and light blue: The gender spectrum

Pink: Attraction to women and femme-identifying people

Blue: Attraction to men and masc-identifying people

Dark purple: Attraction to people whose gender is outside the above categories

13. Lesbian Flag

Although there are some popular alternatives to this seven-striped Lesbian Pride Flag, including the Labrys Lesbian Flag, in general, this is the flag most widely used. In 2010, what's now separately known as the "lipstick lesbian flag" was introduced by its creator Natalie McCray. Similar to the current flag but with a lipstick mark in its upper left corner, the flag was seen as representing only femme lesbians, excluding those who are butch. After McCray was accused of racism and transphobia in 2018, a search for a new flag began, and artist Emily Gwen answered the call. Her redesign of the flag has since been widely adopted, with colors, from top to bottom, meant to represent the following:

Gender nonconformity

Independence

Community

Unique relationships to womanhood

Serenity and peace

Love and sex

Femininity

14. Genderqueer Flag

Designed in 2011 by the genderqueer activist Marilyn Roxie, the flag's three colors each carry a specific meaning, described by Roxie as:

Lavender: Meant to represent androgynes and androgyny, Roxie also pointed out that lavender is a color that's "long been associated with queerness"

White: Meant to represent agender and gender neutral folks

Chartreuse green: The inverse of lavender, this stripe is meant to represent people with identities "defined outside of and without reference to the binary"

15. Non-Binary Flag

In 2014, then-17-year-old Kyle Rowan designed the Non-Binary Pride Flag for those who didn't feel represented by the existing Genderqueer Pride Flag. The colors, as broken down by non-binary writer Cade Hildreth, are meant to represent the following:

Yellow: People who identify outside of the cisgender binary of male or female

White: Multigender people

Purple: People who identify as a blend of male and female genders

Black: People who are agender or genderless

16. Intersex Flag

In 2013, Morgan Carpenter, an intersex man and activist, designed what's since been embraced as the official Intersex Pride flag. At the time, Carpenter says he was "concerned with inappropriate symbols and iconography used to describe intersex people, often accompanying stories about us - images that have no firm grounding or basis in the history of the intersex movement." He sought a symbol that would be freeing for his community. "The colors and circle don't just avoid referencing gender stereotypes, like the colors pink and blue - they seek to completely avoid use of symbols that have anything to do with gender at all," he explained. "Instead, the circle is unbroken and unornamented, symbolizing wholeness and completeness."

17. Genderfluid Flag

The genderfluid flag was created by agender Tumblr user JJ Poole in 2014. At the time, Poole says they'd been trying to find an identity that fit them: "At the time, I knew genderqueer fit me, but it still felt too broad. I found genderfluid to be fitting but was disappointed with the lack of symbolic representation." They came up with this flag, with colors commonly understood, according to Amherst College, to signify the following:

Pink: Femininity or feeling female

White: Lack of gender

Purple: A combination of masculinity and femininity, including various degrees of androgyny

Black: All other genders, including third gender and pangender folks

Blue: Masculinity or feeling male

18. Agender Flag

In 2014, Salem, an agender and panromantic demisexual artist from New York, says they were seeing a "huge influx" of identities and pronouns being discussed and strengthened on Tumblr. "I figured if there was a time to come up with a flag for genderless people, this was it!" The colors of the flag they designed are commonly understood to represent the following:

Black and white: An absence of gender

Gray: Semi-genderlessness

Green: Non-binary identities

19. Aromantic Flag

Although there are a few aromantic flags in use, this version, created and posted by Tumblr user cameronwhimsy in 2014, is considered the main one. In a follow-up post, the creator clarified their intention behind each of the colors:

Greens: Aroromanticism and the aro-spectrum

White: The "platonic" stripe, described by cameronwhimsy as covering "the importance and validity of all non-romantic relationships and feelings"

Gray and black: The full sexuality spectrum, including "aro-aces, allosexuals and everything in between"

20. Two-Spirit Pride Flag

The Two-Spirit, also styled as 2S, identity is reserved for Indigenous North American people, expanding in meaning beyond folks who identify simply as Indigenous and queer. In many Indigenous North American cultures, it's an identity associated with a specific leadership and healing role, often (but not always) describing someone who occupies a third gender. While there isn't one officially agreed-upon 2S flag, Tumblr user 2Sanon posted the above version in 2016. With two feathers falling from a circle that symbolizes oneness, it's since become the most widespread Two-Spirit Pride flag.

21. Straight Ally Flag

This flag began to be used in the late 2000s by straight allies to the LGBTQIA+ community, though its origins remain unclear. Featuring an "A" for ally against a black and white background, it's meant to give non-queer allies a way of visibly showing their support - without necessarily coopting the flags and symbols created by and for the queer community.

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The History and Symbolism of 21 Different LGBTQ Flags

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Starting with the first LGBTQ flags to new pride flags flown today, find the history, colors and meaning of 21 different LGBTQ flags. This article is part of In Session: The Teen Vogue Lesson Plan. Find the full lesson plan here .

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Secondary Content Area Specific Resources

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Why Does the Rainbow Represent LGBTQ+ People

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“We Are Here”: High Schoolers Write and Review the LGBTQ+ Books They Want to Read 

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By Tiferet Ani

I don’t have to tell my fellow educators that this school year has been A LOT. A lot of anxiety over the ongoing pandemic and the toll it has taken on the physical and mental health and safety of our students and ourselves. A lot of fear and frustration regarding nationwide attempts to censor the accurate teaching of history and the banning of books our students need to see themselves and learn about each other. Wonderful and affirming learning is happening in our classrooms, but how many of us are too exhausted or fearful to share our classroom stories in the present climate?

if you're an LGBTQ+ student who lives in a place where LGBTQ+ books have been banned (or removed) and you need some books to read, DM me and we'll make sure you're covered.
— shea wesley martin (@sheathescholar) January 27, 2022

I’ve been sitting on a story that I haven’t had the energy to tell until now. Thanks to shea martin and their January 27 Tweet: “if you're an LGBTQ+ student who lives in a place where LGBTQ+ books have been banned (or removed) and you need some books to read, DM me and we'll make sure you're covered,” and an initial request from a young person shared on Twitter on the evening of January 28: “My school removed all lgbtqia+ books please help,” galvanized me to action. According to NBC News, “The American Library Association said its Office for Intellectual Freedom reported 273 books were affected by censorship attempts in 2020, many with content that highlighted race, gender and sexuality.”

This Fall, I taught an LGBTQ+ Studies elective for high school students. It was being piloted for the first time. Students and teachers collaborated to develop the course outline and unit projects. Our first unit project focused on children’s books, an amazing learning resource for everyone, even high school students. The goals of the project were to have students examine how picture books contribute to our socialization, critically analyze books for bias and anti-bias, and write a review of a book or create their own book they wish they had growing up.

I set the stage for the project and its importance by showing my students the 2018 Diversity in Children’s Literature graphic (produced by Sarah Park Dahlen and David Huyck) and asking them to discuss what they see, think, and wonder. Students were surprised by how many of the surveyed books featured animals (27%) and how few featured people of the global majority (5% Latinx). I also shared 2019 data from an Instagram post by We Need Diverse Books that revealed that only 3.1% of 3,176 books surveyed featured LGBTQIAP+ main characters, and for the issue of representative authorship: less than half the books that featured Black or African main characters were written or illustrated by Black/African creatives. I asked students why the data is problematic and then introduced them to the Dr. Rudine Sims-Bishop article “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Next, I had students reflect on the books they had read as children that provided windows and mirrors to them as well as which of their identities were not mirrored back to them. Students stated they lacked mirrors for their LGBTQ+ identities and in some cases, their Jewish identity and in one case, their Lebanese/Arab identity.

I wanted my students to practice evaluating picture books for bias. I turned to the invaluable resource of Social Justice Books to identify criteria for anti-bias books, as well as titles connected to gender identity and LGBTQ+.  I used the criteria to create a report card for students to use to evaluate books and I selected a picture book that was not recommended by reviewer Dr. Laura M. Jimenez, Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution, for students to review as a group. We watched a YouTube read aloud of the book to hear it and see the illustrations. Students then used the report card to analyze the book. Students pointed out that the narrator was the building. One student with knowledge of the Stonewall Uprising noticed the erasure of trans women from the event. After students had rated the book, we were able to compare their observations and thoughts to those of Dr. Jimenez by reading her review. It was great for students to reflect on aspects of the book they had similar reactions to and aspects they did not notice or felt differently about.

During our next class, students selected another book from the digital bookshelf or the few hard copies we had in the room to analyze. And Tango Makes Three was a wildly popular choice that garnered universal love and appreciation from my students. Julian is a Mermaid did not receive the same appreciation due to the fact that the white cisgender author did not share the identities of the main character she wrote about.

After this preparation and practice, I assigned my students their final project. They could either write a review of a book or create their own book that aligned with the anti-bias criteria. Artistic students gravitated towards the creative process of designing their own books and I received some excellent original works and book reviews. One of my tech-savvy students built this website to showcase the class’ work. As had become my habit, I asked students to reflect on the project and its impact on them. Student responses showcased how worthwhile it was. Read the following responses to see what students gained from analyzing children’s books:

Looking through books like the one I read for this assignment and other books in the room made me realize how beneficial these books would have been for me as a child. I would have really benefited from having more exposure through picture books to the queer community (or any exposure at all, really) as a child. Reading these now makes me hopeful that the next generation will have the exposure that many other kids and I didn’t have. (C, 11th grade)

I learned the value of introducing books like this to children. I didn’t realize before how meaningful a single book was, or how just one picture book could hold so much weight and have such an impact on a child. After doing a deep dive into the lessons in the book, I realized how much you could learn from it. I also never really considered how much of an impact illustration made and that there is so much an illustration could signify or teach you. (A, 12th grade, on reviewing And Tango Makes Three)

This project really made me think about the children’s books and shows that I used to read/watch when I was younger and realize how little explicit representation there was. A large part of my journey with my gender identity has had to do with not having the vocabulary or representation to really put a pin on my gender, and books like these would have been helpful. (I, 12th grade, reviewed From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea)

As a child, I never thought that I’d be able to one day be out because I simply did not know anyone who was LGBTQ+ in my family, friends, or in the books I read. Having my identity represented in children’s books might have made it easier for me to understand who I was and accept myself earlier. (F, 12th grade)

It is very important to have people from the communities being portrayed working on the project so that the stories are told with the authenticity and care that make representation helpful and not misinformative. (M, 12th grade)

Engaging with children’s books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters was a powerful experience for my students. Many of them recognized how access to these books as young children would have positively impacted their lives. As L., a 12th grade student reflected, “It is better to introduce new ways of thinking and to build positive structure from the ground up when possible, rather than pulling young people into old and broken systems and trying to fix them along the way. This makes it all the more unconscionable that LGBTQ+ youth around the country are being denied access to books that mirror their identities and experiences and that cisgender heterosexual youth are being denied books that provide windows into the perspectives and experiences of LGBTQ+ identities. We are here. Our lives and identities are not inappropriate. If you are moved to fight back against the banning of LGBTQ+ authors and books and get the books we need into the hands of LGBTQ+ youth, please consider supporting The Unicorn Express, established by shea martin for this purpose. Let’s get LGBTQ+ affirming books into the hands of youth around the country!

Tiferet Ani is a teacher educator and curriculum developer for Montgomery County Public Schools. She is the co-facilitator of the DCAESJ secondary work group.

She would like to thank her inspiring students, her co-teacher Ms. Sheryl Freedmen, and her collaborator on the children’s book project, Ms. Sarah Shipley.

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“We Are Here”: High Schoolers Write and Review the LGBTQ+ Books They Want to Read — D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice

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By Tiferet Ani This Fall I taught an LGBTQ+ Studies elective for high school students. It was being piloted for the first time. Students and teachers collaborated to develop the course outline and unit projects.

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In this archived webinar, learn about a groundbreaking study on the experiences of LGBTQ students in California in connection with the historical and national context. Panelists from WestEd, Gender Spectrum, and GLSEN share information about the needs of LGBTQ youth and what schools, districts, and youth-serving agencies can do to ensure access to the conditions that are necessary for success in school and life.

Who Will Benefit

Middle and High School Educators

School and District Leaders

Youth-Service Providers

Policymakers

What You Will Learn

What the data says about the experiences of LGBTQ middle and high school students in California and across the country

The unique needs of LGBTQ students, assets for addressing them, and methods schools can employ to be more safe, supportive, and inclusive

Real-world strategies to support LGBTQ students in the context of distance learning, the COVID-19 pandemic, and movements for racial justice

Presenters

Sophia Arredondo serves as the Director of Education and Youth Programs for GLSEN. She leads the content engine of GLSEN's core function: resource development, capacity building, and school stakeholder outreach to support LGBTQ+ -affirming school practice.

Joel Baum is the Senior Director for Professional Development at Gender Spectrum. Baum oversees all aspects of the organization's education and training efforts. He leads trainings, develops curriculum, consults with caregivers and professionals and provides resources in service of a more compassionate understanding of gender and young people.

Jenny Betz is a School Climate Specialist in WestEd's Health & Justice Program, focusing on engaging schools and districts in the School Climate & Wellness Partnership (SCWP).

Carla Peña serves as Program Coordinator at Gender Spectrum. Carla is a queer, non-binary writer, educator, and activist. Committed to equity and social justice, they have focused their life's work on LGBTQ+ rights, inclusive education, youth work, and community organizing.

Download the list of resource links from this webinar.

Read the WestEd report, Understanding the Experiences of LGBTQ Students in California, and download the infographic.

Listen to the Audio Recording

Webinar Presenter(s):

Sophia Arredondo Director of Education and Youth Programs, GLSEN

Joel Baum Senior Director for Professional Development, Gender Spectrum

Carla Peña Program Coordinator, Gender Spectrum

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Evidence-Based Support for LGBTQ Middle and High School Students

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In this archived webinar, learn about a groundbreaking study on the experiences of LGBTQ students in California in connection with the historical and national context. Panelists from WestEd, Gender Spectrum, and GLSEN share information about the needs of LGBTQ youth and what schools, districts, and youth-serving agencies can do to ensure access to the conditions that are necessary for success in school and life.

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Students learn about two millennia of LGBTQ history and reflect on how that history is represented in their textbooks and curricula.

Democracy & Civic Engagement

Using the strategies from Facing History is almost like an awakening.

- Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif

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Students learn about two millennia of LGBTQ history and reflect on how that history is represented in their textbooks and curricula. Democracy & Civic Engagement Using the strategies from Facing History is almost like an awakening. - Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif

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Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ+ Students

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Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students

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With this guide, we hope to help teachers and school leaders make curriculum and policy decisions that include LGBTQ students and prepare all students to thrive in a diverse democracy.

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By the editors of Rethinking Schools

Illustrator: Micah Bazant

Micah Bazant

Students tell us what they need verbally, behaviorally, and statistically. Transgender students also collectively tell us through high dropout rates, absenteeism, their rates of homelessness, and drug abuse. And they tell us through their frighteningly high suicide attempts - 41 percent of transgender students attempt suicide compared to 1.6 percent of the general population.

In their heartbreaking article in this issue, "Teaching Them into Existence" (p. 12), Mykhiel Deych writes about the suicide of their transgender student, Lilith: "Teaching isn't supposed to include life-or-death consequences, but it does. When it comes to LGBTQ students, we fail to hold space for their existence. Heterocentric, cisnormative curriculum writes out the existence of LGBTQ lives."

The issue is compounded because so much of our society works to erase transgender lives. In October 2018, the New York Times reported, "The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law." Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has deliberately moved to erase the existence, the acknowledgement, the protection of 149,750 transgender youth (ages 13-17) and 1.4 million transgender adults, not to mention those who are born intersex.

So, what can teachers, schools, and districts do to meet the needs of trans students? To make them visible? To keep them alive? To celebrate them?
Names and Pronouns
Every teacher, school, and district must honor the identities of transgender students by using their chosen name and pronoun, even when it contradicts what's on their birth certificate or classroom roster. In Deych's other article in this issue, "On Behalf of Their Name: Using They/Them Pronouns Because They Need Us To" (p. 8), student Olive told the faculty at their school, "Everything in our society is binary, it's not just gender. But when you don't fit into that binary, take a step back and you're like, but what about me? And it's just - it feels like - there's not a place for me in this society."

Naming acknowledges existence. One of the first actions colonizers took when they pillaged a new country was to rename mountains, rivers, roads, every nook and cranny in their own language because to erase a name is to erase ownership and identity. Similarly, during slavery calling enslaved people by a common name, like Sally or boy, or not addressing them with their title and surname, was a means of exerting control. In the same way, refusing to address transgender people by their chosen name or pronoun erases their presence, their right to a space and place in the school or classroom, and it maintains the gender binary social order that excludes them. One of the first actions of newly emancipated people was to rename themselves.

Recognizing this language problem, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) issued its "Statement on Gender and Language" in October of 2018, boldly addressing both the grammar and the politics of pronouns:
Language, which plays a central role in human cognition and behavior, is one of the most common mechanisms by which gender is constructed and reinforced. The words that people use to describe others or objects are often unintentionally but unquestionably based on implicit cultural biases that privilege the gender binary. . . . NCTE is concerned about the critical role that language plays in perpetuating gender bias, including binary understandings of gender and gender norms. Through careful attention to language as it relates to gender, [teachers] have the opportunity to influence inclusive and supportive thought and behavior both directly and indirectly.
Deych's article shares one Gay-Straight Alliance's (GSA) journey to crack their school's consciousness by raising awareness and directly asking teachers to attempt to use correct pronouns. Schools and school districts should download and discuss the NCTE statement as they reframe their own language and actions. In fact, they might take NCTE's advice and "[c]onduct an internal audit of written material representing the school and/or district and, where needed, direct the revision of material to eliminate binary language."

While adults struggle with the pronouns, the idea of gender fluidity, and transgender people, kids who read or experience transgender people early seem to understand the grey areas and the blurriness way before adults. Nine-year-old Xavier, for example, read the book George, about a transgender girl and talked about how unfair it was that George wasn't considered for the key role in a play. He's not confused, nor are his 4th-grade classmates who excitedly read and shared the book that made the Oregon Battle of the Books list, only to be banned by some districts. (See "What Kind Are You? Transgender Characters in Children's Literature" p. 18.) They understand that George's issue is not actually about bathrooms, it's about control and fear.
Curriculum
Schools must normalize transgender lives through literature and curriculum. As Lora Worden writes in her review of transgender books in this issue, students shouldn't have to wait until they read chapter books to learn about transgender characters. This is a service not only for trans students who feel endangered or invisible, but also for cisgender students. Disrupting bullying against LGBTQ students - who are the most likely to be bullied Ñ can begin with building empathy. As a department or district, teachers should seek gender diversity in their text selection, including texts written by transgender and nonbinary authors and about transgender and nonbinary characters and experiences.

Language arts teachers can also address the ways in which language moves in response to social forces by creating lessons on the politics of grammar and usage. Students might examine the ways Chicago Manual of Style and other style books have changed over the years as they respond to social upheavals, in this case determining that the pronoun "they" is appropriate to use in writing when referring to singular antecedents, including when writing for publication. Teen Vogue 's back-to-school issue in August 2018 published an article "How to Use Gender Neutral Words and Why They Are Important," which could be used as a model for showing students not only how to make their language more inclusive, but also how to write an essay that teaches others about the bias in language. For example, the article tells students: "When we speak about 'mankind' or 'the achievements of man,' what we're doing is confirming the subconscious bias that men are intellectually, morally, and physically superior to women, which is clearly untrue."

Social studies teachers might follow the lead of a collective of teachers in Portland, Oregon, who created a unit called "Queering Portland." These high school history and art teachers collected articles and artifacts to help students examine both the history of bigotry and abuse faced by the LGBTQ community locally, but also that community's resistance.

Teachers across curricular areas should take NCTE's advice to "[s]eize and create classroom opportunities to discuss and challenge gender assumptions, particularly binary assumptions about gender. This may include teaching students how to be alert and ready to question texts as varied as classroom materials to newscasts to school rituals and traditions - homecoming princesses, prom queens, etc. - that are riddled with sexism, heteronormativity, and dangerously gendered scripts.
Bathrooms
In February 2017, the Trump administration repealed a critical Obama decision. According to the New York Times, "In a joint letter, the top civil rights officials from the Justice Department and the Education Department rejected the Obama administration's position that nondiscrimination laws require schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice."

While the courts and Trump wrangle over whether gender-neutral bathrooms should exist, they already are in place in many schools, but more are needed in states and school districts that refused to implement nondiscrimination federal policy. Indeed, multiple gender-neutral bathrooms are necessary so that trans students and staff don't have to traverse the entire school or wait in lines to use the bathroom. In new school designs, gender-neutral bathrooms have become the norm.

But transgender students currently attending schools cannot wait for the courts to decide where they can pee or for communities to cough up funds to remodel existing bathrooms. If your school does not currently have a gender-neutral bathroom, get creative. Most schools have gendered, single stall bathrooms for staff members. These facilities could be opened as gender-neutral bathrooms. Don't wait for permission, act for the rights of transgender students now.
Gay-Straight Alliance
As Deych's article demonstrates, the GSA (sometimes also called the Queer-Straight Alliance) provided a safe space to discuss issues, but also created a gathering place where students nurtured their collective power to exert change. According to a 2014 article at Smithsonian.com, a large study conducted in Canada demonstrated that schools with GSAs dramatically reduce suicide risks for all students.

When we build inclusive communities for transgender students, we are all forced to think more deeply about our humanity and how we approach identity. Throughout our history, people in our society have been taught a gender binary that divides humanity in half and assigns some characteristics to one half and different characteristics to the other. We all become poorer in that cleaving. When we introduce transgender people into the curriculum, it allows us to think more expansively and imaginatively about gender and identity, and invites everyone to rethink who "we" are. Every action we take in schools to welcome those who have been traditionally marginalized reminds us that we are doing this work for all of us, helping all of us become better human beings.

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Celebrating Transgender Students in Our Classrooms and in Our Schools - Rethinking Schools

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By the editors of Rethinking Schools Illustrator: Micah Bazant Students tell us what they need verbally, behaviorally, and statistically. Transgender students also collectively tell us through high dropout rates, absenteeism, their rates of homelessness, and drug abuse. And they tell us through their frighteningly high suicide attempts - 41 percent of transgender students attempt suicide compared to 1.6 percent of the general population.

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Acting Out: Resisting Policed Performances of Gender

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Sexual Identity | Check-In | Elementary, Middle & High School Educators

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0:00 / 5:04•Watch full video

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MODULE 5: Sexual Identity | Check-In | Elementary, Middle & High School Educators

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"Awesome, insightful, powerful, necessary, relevant and woke.... The variety of adjectives used throughout Ari's journey to find their words will delight Language Arts teachers and can serve as a teaching text."- Cicely Lewis, School Library Journal

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"Awesome, insightful, powerful, necessary, relevant and woke.... The variety of adjectives used throughout Ari's journey to find their words will delight Language Arts teachers and can serve as a teaching text."- Cicely Lewis, School Library Journal

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Edcuator's Guide to Combating LGBTQ+ Discrimination

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The Intersection of Colonialism & Sexuality

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Simple Ways to Include LGBTQ+ Material Across the Curriculum

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Pride Puppy
Written by Robin Stevenson
Illustrated by Julie McLaughlin
Published in May 2021 by Orca Books
ISBN: 978-1459824843

Grades PK - 5

Book Review
This ambrosial alphabet book is a festive feast for the eyes - just in time for Pride month, 2021! Pride Puppy is a perfect pairing of prismatic pictures and alliterative prose that tell the story of a family's positively pleasing day at the Pride parade. Inclusive and welcoming of people from all walks of life, this book visually celebrates the intersectionality of LGBTQIA+ and other historically marginalized communities. Each page features images associated with a letter of the alphabet within the context of a satisfying story about what happens when a family brings their precocious puppy to the Pride parade. Children and adults alike will pore over the illustrations to find each of the items on the ABC "search and find" word list at the end of the book. With a multitude of messages about love, inclusivity, and equality, Pride Puppy will be a sure-fire staple in the growing collection of #OwnVoices LGBTQIA+ children's literature.

Teaching Invitations
Note to our Readers: These ideas are not meant to be prescriptive. Choose one. Choose more. It's up to you. Some ideas are bigger and will take a number of days to complete. Some are shorter. You can also choose to complete one part of a teaching idea, but not the whole thing. It's up to you!

One-of-a-kind Alphabet Books. In addition to Pride Puppy, encourage students to examine other narrative alphabet books, including classics such as (Base, 1986) and The Z was Zapped (Van Allsburg, 1987). Also view the new Blue's Clues & You! animated " ABC Song," which highlights P for Pride. Then, invite students to use Pride Puppy or another ABC book as a mentor text for developing their own personalized, alliterative seek-and-find alphabet books. Students could apply the same narrative pattern that Stevenson employs in Pride Puppy in which the story begins at home, follows the characters on an adventure, and ends with the characters' safe return home.

Proud Family Text Set. Read Pride Puppy as part of a text set about LGBTQIA+ families. Focus students' reading on the ways families love and care for each other and their communities. As revealed through the narrative illustrations, the intergenerational family in Pride Puppy cares deeply for the safety of their beloved dog, the well-being of their young children, and for the cultivation and maintenance of positive relationships with others in the community. Include books such as When Aidan Became a Brother (Lukoff, 2019), Cuando Amamos Cantamos / When We Love Someone We Sing to Them (Martínez, 2018), From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (Thom, 2017), The Boy and The Bindi (Shraya, 2016), and Large Fears (Johnson, 2016).

Book Duet. Pair Pride Puppy with This Day in June (Pitman, 2014), which invites readers to the San Francisco Pride Parade. Look for similarities between these two outstanding books, including the joyful celebration of intergenerational families with young children, costumed dogs, music and dancing, signs and banners, and much more. Consult the Reading Guide at the end of This Day in June for background information about the varying elements of Pride parades in cities like San Francisco. Also see Pitman's Note to Parents and Caregivers, which provides recommendations for age-appropriate ways to talk with young children about gender identity and sexual orientation.

History of Pride. In the U.S., Pride celebrations typically occur in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots, which heralded the beginning of the national gay liberation movement. Learn about the Stonewall riots and LGBTQIA+ civil rights activism with the many books, resources, and activities highlighted in the June 2019 Classroom Bookshelf entry for Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution (Sanders, 2019). For additional information, see Robin Stevenson's (2020) title for grades 4 - 7, Pride: The Celebration and the Struggle. While at Stevenson's website, also see her page of LGBTQ Resources.

Flag Study. In Pride Puppy, F is for feathers, flags, and fun. Read about the origin of the rainbow flag in the picturebook biography, Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and The Rainbow Flag (Sanders, 2018). Then, invite students to learn about the many different flags that are featured in Pride Puppy and represent the diversity of the queer community. See the recent Parents magazine article, "A Guide to the Different LGBTQIA+ Flags and Coloring Pages for Kids" for a brief introduction to each flag and for downloadable coloring sheets of each flag. To make flags with strips of construction paper, see the Drag Queen Story Hour how-to video on Queer Kid Stuff. As an extension, welcome children to create flags that honor something special about themselves.

Signs for Equality. The parade scenes featured in Pride Puppy are chock full of signs and slogans that advocate for love, inclusivity, and equality (e.g. "Trans rights are human rights," The future is intersectional," and "Love knows no gender"). Encourage students to work in teams to document all of the signs, slogans, and symbols they see in the illustrations. Then, engage in group inquiry projects to report on the meanings of each sign. After, invite students to develop additional signs and slogans to promote awareness, respect, and inclusivity of the queer community.

Pronouns and Gender Identity. In the illustrations of Pride Puppy, T is for they/them and B is for a button that honors they/them pronouns. Although using they/them pronouns might feel complicated for some adults, studies show that the affirmation and use of queer children's pronouns is essential to their health and wellbeing. Because pronouns reflect people's gender identities, it is important for students to understand the significance and nuances of varying gender identities. Fortunately, children's author Maya Christina Gonzalez has created books and materials to support teachers and children in this essential work. Her picturebook book, Call Me Tree / Llamame arbol (2017), is completely free of gendered pronouns such that the child protagonist is simply a child and readers need not engage with the binary gender system. The book offers a springboard for discussing gender assumptions and pairs perfectly with GLSEN's primary grade lesson plan, "That's a (Gender) Stereotype!".

Moreover, Gonzalez's Gender Wheel curriculum, tools, and resources, including her latest picturebooks They, She, He, Me: Free to Be! (2017) and They, She, He Easy as ABC (2019), likewise offer direct support for approaching gender identity with children. Another helpful resource is Genderbread, a teaching tool "for breaking the big concept of gender down into bite-sized, digestible pieces." Finally, fans of the classic Jacob's New Dress (Hoffman, 2014) will be pleased for the newest book in the series, Jacob's School Play: Starring He, She, and They (Hoffman, 2021). More resources are listed below.
Resources and Organizations: The Trevor Project - Education The Human Rights Campaign - Creating Safe and Welcoming Schools GLSEN Educator Resources Learning for Justice: Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students The Safe Zone Project - Resources for Educators Gender Spectrum: Educators & Education Professionals Pride and Less Prejudice: Fostering Inclusive Classrooms Pop 'n' Olly: LGBTQ+ Equality 'Edutainment'
Filed under: Announcements, Book Reviews

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Pride PuppyWritten by Robin StevensonIllustrated by Julie McLaughlinPublished in May 2021 by Orca BooksISBN: 978-1459824843 Grades PK - 5 Book ReviewThis ambrosial alphabet book is a festive feast for the eyes - just in time for Pride month, 2021! Pride Puppy is a perfect pairing of prismatic pictures and alliterative prose that tell the story [...]

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People are sometimes shocked by the notion that teachers should address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) topics in elementary schools. Maybe they think children those ages are too young, that those conversations are better had at home, or that the whole topic is simply inappropriate. Such concerns often arise because people assume talking about people who identify as LGBTQ means talking about sex. That is not what we believe at all.

Instead, when we advocate for elementary school teachers to address LGBTQ topics, we simply want them to talk about the diversity of families and relationships and communities in ways that include LGBTQ people. After all, public schools are for everyone, yet many elementary schools are too frequently unwelcoming and unaccommodating of all children, especially children of LGBTQ parents or those who are or may be LGBTQ themselves. LGBTQ people exist in children's lives in myriad ways. If children themselves don't have LGBTQ parents, perhaps they have a peer with two moms at daycare or a relative who comes out as gay, or maybe they've heard a story about transgender rights on the news. Elementary school students are surrounded by these experiences, but their teachers are often underprepared when it comes to realizing why LGBTQ topics might matter to their work as elementary school teachers and how they might make their classrooms more inclusive.

As queer-identified women and former elementary school teachers who now work in universities as teacher educators, we've spent the past decade developing a range of approaches to help elementary school teachers integrate LGBTQ-inclusive practices into their teaching: expanding representations of LGBTQ people, questioning categories with regard to gender and sexuality, and questioning representations within LGBTQ-inclusive texts. We know that no two states, districts, schools, nor teachers are exactly alike; we know that what works one place might be impossible or ineffective in another. But we also believe that every teacher can do something to help make her or his classroom safer and more inclusive to better serve LGBTQ children and families.* These approaches provide options to help everyone find something that works no matter the context.

Below we explain why LGBTQ-inclusive elementary school instruction matters, outline the approaches we have developed and have used in real-life classrooms, and suggest resources for teachers as they do this work. This article draws from our book, Reading the Rainbow: LGBTQ-Inclusive Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom, where we also provide examples from our work as coteachers and researchers with second-, fourth-, and fifth-grade teachers in Michigan and Ohio to illustrate what each of these methods can look like in practice.

Why LGBTQ-Inclusive Curriculum Matters in Elementary Schools

Research shows that including LGBTQ topics in elementary schools makes a positive difference to the learning environment of a wide variety of students. For example, 75.2 percent of LGBTQ students in schools with an inclusive curriculum said their peers were accepting of LGBTQ people, compared with 39.6 percent of those without an inclusive curriculum. ¹ This acceptance is particularly important for the estimated 6 million people with one or more LGBTQ parents. ²

However, only half of elementary school teachers (49 percent) say a student with a lesbian, gay, or bisexual parent would feel comfortable at the school where they teach, and only 42 percent think that would be true for a student with a transgender parent. ³ Even though most elementary school teachers address family diversity generally, only 2 in 10 elementary students (18 percent) actually learn about families with two moms or two dads. ⁴ This silence sends a message to children with LGBTQ parents that their families are not "real" families and that their families are not accepted in schools.

Including LGBTQ topics in elementary school classrooms is also important for children who themselves identify as LGBTQ, whether they come out while they are young or, more commonly, later in life. After all, every LGBTQ adult was once a school-age child. Unfortunately, many of those children never see LGBTQ people included in the curriculum. And, too often, they see their teachers fail to intervene when other students use the term "gay" in hateful ways; sometimes they even hear such slurs from teachers themselves. ⁵

These behaviors also affect children who are bullied for being perceived as LGBTQ. Because LGBTQ people have historically been feared, hated, and discriminated against, words to describe LGBTQ people are often used by children to shame people of all identities whose behaviors fall outside the norm. What teachers do and say in response can have implications for children for years to come.

Elementary schools are also affected by the increased awareness about the lives and needs of transgender children. Transgender children are those who, having been assigned a gender at birth, consistently and persistently insist they are actually a different gender. ⁶ Sometimes children identify as a different gender as young as age 3. ⁷ Pediatricians and psychologists suggest, and recent research findings confirm, that supporting the gender identity a child asserts is an important part of healthy development. 8 This means elementary schools should be ready to affirm transgender children and their families in order to support children's mental health and development.

Lastly, including LGBTQ topics in elementary school classrooms is important to do for all children because we all live in a world with LGBTQ people. Children-even if they have a mom and a dad, identify as straight, and fit gender norms-will encounter LGBTQ people in their families, schools, workplaces, and communities. When teachers implement a curriculum that ignores these realities, students are left on their own to process what they hear about LGBTQ people in popular culture and to learn respectful language for talking about LGBTQ topics. Just as white people must be invested in ending racism and men must stand up for women's rights, non-LGBTQ people have an important role to play in making the world safer for and more inclusive of LGBTQ people. Schools teach children about the world and equip students to live in it; that world includes people who identify as LGBTQ, and therefore schools should include LGBTQ topics. The following approaches will help educators understand how to do that.

1. Expanding Representations with LGBTQ-Inclusive Texts

One of the best and most direct ways to make your classroom safer for and more inclusive of LGBTQ people and families is to have books that feature LGBTQ characters. As author Rudine Sims Bishop ⁹ first argued decades ago, books serve as "windows and mirrors." "Mirror books" validate for readers that they are not alone, that their identity or life experience is not strange, and that there is a community of people just like them out there. When readers receive mirrors for parts of themselves, they get the message that their experiences are worth writing about and are worth being read. "Window books," on the other hand, give readers insight into another person's experience. Rather than show readers more of themselves, these books show the way into other worlds that readers haven't seen firsthand but can learn from nevertheless. They remind students that not everyone is exactly like them, and they help prepare students for the complexity and diversity of the larger world. ¹⁰

As teachers, we need to remember that all readers deserve a balance of windows and mirrors. It is this balance that helps us feel affirmed while also moving beyond our own experiences. It helps children recognize they are not alone while at the same time reminding them that they live in a world with other people who are different from them. Both sides of this equation are important. Therefore, when we bring books with LGBTQ people and families into our classrooms-much like when we ensure we have books in our classrooms representing different races, ethnicities, and life experiences-we expand the number of mirrors available for LGBTQ students or children of LGBTQ families, while also expanding the number of windows available for everyone else.

So how does a teacher include a book with LGBTQ characters in her teaching? The short answer is just like you'd include any other book! You could put it on your shelf for a child to find on his or her own. You could recommend it to a child who you think would enjoy it or offer it as an option for literature circles, book clubs, or paired reading groups. Or you could read it aloud, maybe even highlighting it in your teaching. Reading a book can be a wonderful way to open up conversations about topics we don't often discuss in schools because the book can do so much of the work. You'll likely find that your adult worries about reading LGBTQ-inclusive books in the classroom are rarely shared by your students. After all, in addition to sending important messages about who belongs and who is worthy of being represented, many LGBTQ-inclusive books are also compelling and interesting reads that students and teachers alike truly enjoy. When Jill cotaught with a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher who read Alex Gino's George aloud, every time the teachers closed the book at the end of the day's reading, students would groan loudly and beg for "just one more chapter!" In a classroom Caitlin visited regularly, Patricia Polacco's In Our Mothers' House, Cheryl Kilodavis' My Princess Boy, and James Howe's Totally Joe were popular choices during silent reading time.

Reading LGBTQ-inclusive books doesn't have to be done on a special day or otherwise separated from your curriculum. When writing a book report on In Our Mothers' House, for example, a fifth-grade student we know read it independently, summarized the text, identified themes, evaluated the author's writing, and made both text-to-self and text-to-world connections. Because his teacher had included LGBTQ content in classroom discussions prior to his writing of this report, he was able to critically think about that content in sophisticated ways.

When teaching the expected content standards for your grade level, there are many opportunities for this kind of integration. LGBTQ-inclusive stories like Asha's Mums or Donovan's Big Day can be incorporated into language arts units on literary elements like understanding characters, comparing and contrasting, sequencing, understanding descriptive language, or finding the theme of a text. You could add King & King to genre studies of fairy tales and explore Lumberjanes or The Popularity Papers in investigations of graphic novels and/or series books. You could incorporate books such as And Tango Makes Three or Daddy, Papa, and Me or The Family Book into an exploration of family structures in social studies. In all these cases, you can teach required content while still providing important representations to your students.

2. Questioning Categories with Books You Already Use

If it's difficult for you, given your school or district, to read books with LGBTQ characters in them, you can make your classroom safer and more inclusive of LGBTQ people and families by discussing gender and relationships generally in broader ways, even when reading books you already teach. After all, gender is relevant for children of all ages. While gender and sexuality are not the same things, an idea called the heterosexual matrix ¹¹ shows how they become interrelated in our culture. We expect that women will have female bodies, will act feminine, and will want to date and partner with men. We expect that men will have male bodies, will act masculine, and will want to date and partner with women. Of course, in reality, all these categories are much more complicated, but we continually revert to these basic ideas. Ask almost any young child to draw a picture of a girl, and she will have long hair. We might know plenty of girls and women with short hair and boys with long hair too, but culturally, we teach that a way to distinguish boys from girls is, among other characteristics, to look at hair.

By expanding our ideas about any one piece of this puzzle-how boys or girls should look and act, for example-we make space in the whole system, creating more room for people who live any part of it differently than our stereotypes suggest. If we help students see there aren't strict rules about what girls and boys can do or how girls and boys should be, then we help to blur those divisions between categories. This blurring can help students learn to respect people who live those categories differently. When people disrupt any of the matrix categories through their gender identity, through their gender expression, or with whom and how they might fall in love, they are queering-disrupting and expanding-the heterosexual matrix to make more kinds of lives and loves visible.

Teaching in this way, a method that we call "questioning categories," means helping your students investigate how both people in the real world and characters in books disrupt the heterosexual matrix and to what effect. We believe such questioning helps students become aware of and more sensitive to the multiple ways of "doing gender" or being in relationships.

Why, for example, does Kate DiCamillo's Despereaux make his mother so disappointed that he isn't big and strong? Why does he get in so much trouble for being a mouse who doesn't act like other mice and who falls in love with someone he's not supposed to? Why is it a big deal for Charlotte Zolotow's William to have a doll? Why does his dad care so much and get so angry about it? Why is Jacqueline Kelly's Calpurnia Tate so worried about having no interest in "female" jobs such as cooking and sewing as would be expected of her, recognizing instead that her "nature" was leading her to be a scientist?

Books like these, as well as others, including Michael Hall's Red: A Crayon's Story and Tomie DePaola's Oliver Button Is a Sissy, provide indirect yet important opportunities to reflect on what we think about and how we treat people who don't behave in ways society expects. Such conversations can easily be connected to students' lives and real-world experiences in ways that can broaden their understanding of LGBTQ people and families, even without reading terms like "gay" and "lesbian."

Other considerations might also be useful when questioning categories and expanding the heterosexual matrix. For example, when reading nonfiction, students and teachers can consider how there are different expectations and assumptions made about a person based on gender, and how those expectations inform how we understand gender as a culture. Likewise, teachers can ask students to think about the kinds of relationships between people in the texts they are reading. Are they based in assumptions about who is "allowed" to be connected to each other? What knowledge does the author assume the reader has about how men and women or boys and girls act and relate to each other? Is a story shaped by the character's refusal to conform to social norms? How so? Does the way the character looks to others match the way he understands himself? What happens to people who don't fit in? Whose relationships do people make fun of and why? Questioning categories in these ways provides an important lens through which your students can engage with the characters in books, as well as develop critical reading and thinking skills.

3. Questioning Representations in LGBTQ Books

In her now-famous TED talk, Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie ¹² discussed what she calls the danger of the single story: the stereotype or surface-level picture of a person, place, or event. The problem with relying on such stereotypes, Adichie says, isn't that they're incorrect necessarily, but that they're incomplete. By treating a single representation of the story as the full story about a particular identity category, people create limited, ultimately inaccurate portrayals. Therefore, even though expanding representations by including even one book with an LGBTQ character provides new "windows and mirrors" for readers, the danger of the single story reminds us that it is only one specific portrayal and not a representation of an entire community.

One way to address this is to try to layer different representations in order to provide students the most nuanced, complex, thorough picture of a community. Therefore, the third approach, questioning representations, brings together the first two; it helps you include representations of LGBTQ people while still questioning norms and silences involved in those representations. In other words, this approach helps us move away from asking simply if LGBTQ people are represented and instead turn our attention more specifically to how they are represented and what the overall message is of those representations. This questioning of categories even within LGBTQ-inclusive texts can help students see more possibilities for other people and for themselves.

This work is especially important because many of the LGBTQ representations in children's books are of white, cisgender, partnered, middle-class adults. Helping students notice the (relative) absence of other, more diverse LGBTQ experiences within the books they read expands students' worldviews about who LGBTQ people are. In addition to books, you can layer representations with text sets, videos, newspaper articles of current events, and guest speakers. Such work also supports standards related to research skills, reading from multiple perspectives, the use of textual evidence, and comparing and contrasting to build understanding.

It's particularly helpful to identify books that show characters of different races, classes, religions, and gender expressions. An example we love and have read with students is Jacqueline Woodson's After Tupac and D Foster. When reading that text, we help students explore how the queerness of a black character like Tash informs that character's life in different ways than does the queerness of a white character such as James Howe's Joe in The Misfits and Totally Joe. Both Tash and Joe, like all of us, have intersecting identities ¹³: they are not just gay or just male, but are gay and male and belong to a specific race and class all at the same time in one body.

Because these books give readers the opportunity to enter the lives of very different people, students more easily see how multiple identities intersect. Just as important, the single story of being gay, too often understood in terms of how white wealthy people experience it, is interrupted. The richness of these texts deeply engages students and stimulates a desire to understand the worlds that the characters live in, while simultaneously supporting connections to their own lives.

Getting Started

Because including LGBTQ topics in elementary schools is still somewhat rare, we know you might have concerns about how it will work in your classroom. For that reason, it can be good to think through what concerns you have so you can brainstorm ways to meet those challenges. Sometimes teachers are worried about saying the wrong thing, or what will happen if they don't know the answer to a child's question. Trust us that everyone feels this way sometimes. Knowing all of the right words is not the goal. The willingness to try, to be open to continually learning, to revise the ways that we speak or label or present an idea, is what all good teaching is about, including LGBTQ-inclusive teaching. It's always OK to tell a child that you don't know something or that you aren't sure but that you can look up the answer together. It's also OK to say something like, "That's a better question for you to ask your families at home."

Another concern that we hear from teachers is that they fear resistance from parents of their students and/or from their school administrators. Each situation is different, of course, but at schools we've worked with, resistance has come from a very small number of parents; the vast majority have not minded and have even supported this work. ¹⁴ But the fear of parental resistance is real. Therefore, it is useful to have thought through and to be able to articulate to others why you are doing this work. We suggest relying on research, including the findings cited in this article and other statistics from GLSEN, about the power of inclusive classrooms. You may decide to send home a statement at the beginning of the year about how you are committed to ensuring that all students have a safe space to learn or about how your class will read and discuss a variety of identities and communities over the year. Responding to resistance may also involve understanding and communicating the ways the LGBTQ-inclusive teaching that you do connects to your mandated standards or is in keeping with district policies, particularly antibullying or nondiscrimination policies.

It's important to recognize that states have different laws with regard to LGBTQ inclusion in schools. You can learn more about your state's laws by visiting the Human Rights Campaign's website. There, you might note what protections are available in states that have LGBTQ-inclusive antibullying and nondiscrimination laws as well as any legal restrictions that apply to your state. If you teach in one of the seven states (Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas) that currently have some kind of "No Promo Homo" law that doesn't allow teachers to say the words "gay" or "lesbian," it might make more sense for you to use questioning categories (approach No. 2) to LGBTQ inclusion rather than expanding representations (approach No. 1). To ensure that you are up to date on your specific context, consult directly with organizations like GLSEN, the Human Rights Campaign, the American Civil Liberties Union, or a state-level LGBTQ advocacy group.

No matter where you teach, it will be helpful to build your knowledge and locate sources of support. Finding parents and other teachers who are interested in LGBTQ-inclusive teaching can be a way to build networks and generate new ideas. In addition to research, GLSEN offers lesson plans, professional development opportunities, and other resources for educators. The Human Rights Campaign's " Welcoming Schools" project is elementary-school focused and offers book lists, training opportunities, and lesson plans.
Many professional organizations also have statements that speak to the importance of LGBTQ inclusion and resources for teachers doing such work. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), for example, has an Intellectual Freedom Center to help teachers should any book they use be challenged or censored. NCTE's website contains policy statements, a rationale for reading banned books, and activities to use when teaching books that are frequently challenged. And, of course, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is another important source of support as you begin doing the work of LGBTQ inclusion in your classrooms. The AFT's website offers many such resources.

Elementary schools are a microcosm of our larger world, full of diverse identities, ideologies, and approaches to teaching and learning. Of course, this can cause messiness, false starts, redos, and unintentional errors, just like it does in the world outside of schools.

But when that diversity is recognized, incorporated, and celebrated in elementary schools, it can create learning spaces that teach all students how to treat one another and that are welcoming to all students and families, including those in the LGBTQ community. These are the elementary schools that students and families deserve. Let's work together to make them a reality.

Jill M. Hermann-Wilmarth is a professor of social foundations at Western Michigan University. Caitlin L. Ryan is an associate professor in the College of Education at East Carolina University. Parts of this article are excerpted from Caitlin L. Ryan and Jill M. Hermann-Wilmarth, Reading the Rainbow: LGBTQ-Inclusive Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom (New York: Teachers College Press). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2018 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.

*To learn how schools can help LGBTQ students thrive, see " More Than a Safe Space" in the Winter 2016-2017 issue of American Educator. ( back to article)

Endnotes

1. J. G. Kosciw et al., The 2015 National School Climate Survey: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth in Our Nation's Schools (New York: GLSEN, 2016).

2. G. J. Gates, "LGB Families and Relationships: Analyses of the 2013 National Health Interview Survey," Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, October 2014.

3. GLSEN and Harris Interactive, Playgrounds and Prejudice: Elementary School Climate in the United States; a Survey of Students and Teachers (New York: GLSEN, 2012).

4. GLSEN and Harris Interactive, Playgrounds and Prejudice.

5. GLSEN and Harris Interactive, Playgrounds and Prejudice; and Kosciw et al., 2015 National School Climate Survey.

6. J. Rafferty, "Gender-Diverse and Transgender Children," American Academy of Pediatrics (2018), www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/gradeschool/Pages/Gender-No...; and C. Meier and J. Harris, "Fact Sheet: Gender Diversity and Transgender Identity in Children," Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, American Psychological Association Division 44, https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/gradeschool/Pages/Gender-Diverse-Transgender-Children.aspx

7. S. A. Brill and R. Pepper, The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals (Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press, 2008); and S. F. Leibowitz and N. P. Spack, "The Development of a Gender Identity Psychosocial Clinic: Treatment Issues, Logistical Considerations, Interdisciplinary Cooperation, and Future Initiatives," Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America 20 (2011): 701-724.

8. Rafferty, "Gender-Diverse and Transgender Children"; Meier and Harris, "Fact Sheet"; K. R. Olson et al., "Mental Health of Transgender Children Who Are Supported in Their Identities," Pediatrics 137, no. 3 (2016): 1-8; and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, A Practitioner's Resource Guide: Helping Families to Support Their LGBT Children (Rockville, MD: SAMHSA, 2014).

9. R. Bishop, "Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass," Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom 6, no. 3 (Summer 1990): ix-xi.10. C. M. Tschida, C. L. Ryan, and A. S. Ticknor, "Building on Windows and Mirrors: Encouraging the Disruption of 'Single Stories' through Children's Literature," Journal of Children's Literature 40, no. 1 (2014): 28-39.

10. C. M. Tschida, C. L. Ryan, and A. S. Ticknor, "Building on Windows and Mirrors: Encouraging the Disruption of 'Single Stories' through Children's Literature," Journal of Children's Literature 40, no. 1(2014): 28-39.

11. J. Butler, Gender Trouble, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1999).

12. C. N. Adichie, "The Danger of a Single Story," TED, July 2009.

13. K. Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color," in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, ed. by K. Crenshaw et al. (New York: The New Press, 1991): 357-383.14. C. L. Ryan and J. M. Hermann-Wilmarth, Reading the Rainbow: LGBTQ-Inclusive Literacy Instruction in the Elementary Classroom (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018).

14. C.L. Ryan and J. M. Hermann-Wilmarth, Reading the Rainbow: LGBTQ Inclusive Instruction in the Elementary Classroom (New York: Teachers College Press, 2018).

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People are sometimes shocked by the notion that teachers should address lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) topics in elementary schools. Maybe they think children those ages are too young, that those conversations are better had at home, or that the whole topic is simply inappropriate.

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Ace Schwarz, of Teaching Outside The Binary, recently published an amazing blog post about introducing pronouns to students at the beginning of the year. We asked for their permission to share an accompanying blog post on our page about what you could modify to make to do this work with elementary s…

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Supportive educators save students' lives. Having just one visibly supportive educator in a school can ensure that LGBTQ students feel safe, welcomed, and encouraged to learn.

Show your support by displaying a Safe Space sticker and poster in your classroom. Learn how to discuss bullying, gender roles, or family diversity with elementary-aged students. Include positive representation of LGBTQ people in your curriculum. Inspire your students of all ages and all identities to be kind, support others, and speak up when they see bullying.

GLSEN's education team has created educator guides for each of our days of action, along with other resources for increasing LGBTQ visibility and affirmation in any curriculum. While GLSEN celebrates these days of action nationally at specific times during the year, all of our lessons, resources, and activities found here can be implemented at any time.

Check out the resources in the sections below for specific guides and tools related to GLSEN programs, days of action and more!

Join the thousands of educators who are helping GLSEN change schools across the country.

As a member of the GLSEN Educator Network, you'll receive emails that highlight GLSEN's resources and provide up-to-date information on GLSEN research. You will also receive current information on LGBTQ events and celebrations to help you plan for and implement a more inclusive curriculum, including direct information and new resources for GLSEN days of action like Solidarity Week.

Register to receive free GSA & school resources.

Join a national movement creating inclusive schools for all.

Educator Guides

Looking for ways to support Solidarity Week or the Day of Silence? Interested in finding ways to bring LGBTQ-visibility into your curriculum? You've come to the right place!

GLSEN's education team has created educator guides for each of our Days of Action, along with other resources for increasing LGBTQ visibility and affirmation into any curriculum. While GLSEN celebrates these Days of Action nationally at specific times throughout the year, the lessons, resources, and activities found here can be implemented at any time.

Check out the resources below for specific guides and tool related to GLSEN programs, days of action and more! Ready to supplement your curriculum? Explore our LGBTQ-Inclusive and Bullying, Bias & Diversity lesson plans.

Educator Guides and Resources

Policy and Advocacy Resources

Lesson Plans

Implementing GLSEN's free lesson plans and resources can help students develop the skills to interact in our diverse world with greater respect, empathy, and understanding.

Incorporate our lessons, found below, to:

Foster respect and understanding

Promote LGBTQ visibility and affirmation

Improve school climate

Build leadership

Encourage ally behavior

Ready for LGBTQ-specific lessons? Explore GLSEN's LGBTQ-inclusive curricular resources.

Teachers can be that figure you look up to. And when they are accepting of you, it means the world to you. To know that you're ok and that they are there for you. - Ximena, 9th grade

When educators are visibly supportive of LGBTQ students, everyone benefits. Through our Chapter-based Professional Development program, GLSEN offers tools and resources to thousands of educators who seek to make their classrooms and schools a safe place for all students. Based on 25+ years of experience and research, GLSEN boasts a robust educator training program with a series of modules curated to cover an array of topics suitable for a diverse range of audiences.

GLSEN research shows that the presence of supportive educators can have a significant positive impact on LGBTQ students' academic achievement, as well as on their psychological well-being and long-term educational aspirations. GLSEN Professional Development aims to empower educators to act in allyship with LGBTQ students.

Our Professional Development Workshops will assist educators in building the following skills:

Knowledge of LGBTQ student experiences in school

Understanding what allyship can provide for LGBTQ students

Awareness of the prevalence of anti-LGBTQ language and behavior in schools

Willingness and ability to intervene when anti-LGBTQ name-calling and bullying occurs

Willingness and ability to utilize curriculum inclusive of LGBTQ people, history and themes

Willingness to advocate for the rights of LGBTQ students and ensure safe schools for all

Access to resources and referral

NOTE: For GLSEN Professional Development Workshops, the term "educator" includes, but is not limited to: Current or future K-12 Teachers, Administrators, Counselors, Paraprofessionals, Librarians, Nurses, Bus Drivers, District Staff, School Resource Officers, Cafeteria Workers, etc
To bring GLSEN Professional Development to your school, please fill out the following form.

Safe Space Kit

Educators like you can make a big difference for LGBTQ students. Just one gesture can change a student's life for the better: Put up a Safe Space Sticker in your classroom to start a conversation about acceptance and affirming LGBTQ identity.

GLSEN's Safe Space Kit provides you with practical ways to transform your school into a safer space for everyone, particularly LGBTQ students, by supporting and educating students, sharing your knowledge with other educators and advocating for school-wide changes. The Safe Space Kit not only guides you through making an assessment of your school's climate and recommends affirming policies and best practices, but also outlines strategies that you may use to advocate for change, including posting a Safe Space Sticker or Safe Space Poster in your classroom or office. You can purchase them in the GLSEN Shop, or download digital copies for free here.

GLSEN Chapters also offer professional development opportunities that include our Safe Space Kit and support educators in creating safer and more affirming learning environments.

Rainbow Library

The Rainbow Library is a GLSEN program that sends LGBTQ+ affirming text sets to schools across the country - for free.

Any full-time staff member at a K-12 school in a participating state or county is welcome to request a Rainbow Library. All types of K-12 schools are eligible: district, magnet, charter, and independent. Each school that applies will be eligible for one Rainbow Library text set, and sets are provided on a first-come, first served basis.

Founded 25 years ago, GLSEN is the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe and affirming schools for LGBTQ students. GLSEN has volunteer-run chapters in 31 states.

School Year Calendar

The school year is full of opportunities to participate in GLSEN events, address LGBTQ and social justice issues, learn about diverse communities, and take action to create safer and more affirming schools for all.

Use this calendar to schedule your GSA meetings, lesson plans, student events, and staff development workshops, and as part of your ongoing diversity, equity, and LGBTQ-inclusion efforts. Follow us @GLSEN on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where we'll be sharing related resources and lesson plans for these events throughout the year.

Misgendering, Gender Terminology & Pronouns

Misgendering hurts. Support educators by teaching students how to respect each others' pronouns and bringing awareness to a wider range of gender terminology.

As a class and in small groups, students watch a video about pronouns, have a conversation about pronouns, and discuss misgendering. As a class, students discuss ways to combat misgendering and how they can make sure the gender pronouns of all students are respected.

For all of us, learning an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum can help us better understand our world and our differences. For LGBTQ students in particular, it can mean feeling safer at school and hearing homophobic and transphobic remarks less frequently, according to GLSEN research. Looking back at history is the easiest way to get LGBTQ-inclusivity into any curriculum. That's why we're sharing our resources below, which include an interactive timeline and coloring book as well as many other classroom resources suitable for a range of students ages K-12.

Recognizing these benefits, former GLSEN Chapter leader Rodney Wilson, with the support of GLSEN's founder Kevin Jennings and many others, founded LGBTQ History Month in October 1994. While you can use these resources every October, they're perfect for use all year, so that students see the benefits year round.

A great resource you can use to learn and teach about LGBTQ history is Making Gay History, the critically acclaimed and award-winning podcast that brings LGBTQ history to life through the voices of the people who lived it. Listen to the podcasts below to hear about the lives and legacies of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who were participants in the New York Stonewall riots in 1969.

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Supportive educators save students' lives. Having just one visibly supportive educator in a school can ensure that LGBTQ students feel safe, welcomed, and encouraged to learn. Show your support by displaying a Safe Space sticker and poster in your classroom. Learn how to discuss bullying, gender roles, or family diversity with elementary-aged students.

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You may think young children are too little to talk about gender, but kids get messages about gender from the day they are born!

Download a pdf version of this page here. Para ver esta página en español, haga clic aquí.

Children are taught gender ideas and expectations of their family, school, culture and faith community all the time; it is so pervasive that most of us don't even notice it. That's why it is important to determine what we want the children in our lives to understand about gender and to make time to talk about gender with them. You may be nervous about talking with young kids about gender, but gender doesn't need to be a difficult, serious topic. We want to teach kids that their experience of gender can be joyful - open to experimentation and play. We want to create space for them to explore and see what feels right for them. This is a great opportunity for you to learn about your child's gender and let them know they are supported no matter what! Here are a few key concepts about gender that you may want to touch on.

Everyone's gender is unique to them. How you see yourself and how you want to express your gender is personal -there is not just one way to be.

Things, like toys and clothes, don't have genders - people have genders.

You can't tell a person's gender just by looking at them.

Your body doesn't determine your gender.

General Tips

Be proactive about talking about gender; you don't need to wait for your child to bring it up or for an incident to arise.

Ask questions--this is a great way to hear the ideas kids already have about gender.

Talk about yourself, or things you encounter related to gender, so that children can express their thoughts without having to talk about themselves.

When you see media depicting gender, ask questionsthat encourage critical thinking: "Why is the mom the one making dinner and serving it?" "Who is strong in that show?" "Who is kind?"

Read and talk about books that address gender.

Be conscious about how you praise kids. Girls are often praised for their clothes or hairstyle, or for being sweet or kind, while boys are often praised forbeing big, or tough or independent. If you hear this type of praise coming from other adults, think about joining in with other types of praise.

Question and explore your own biases. For example, how do you feel about boys who wear nail polish, and girls who want to shop in the boy's department for clothes? What messages about gender expression were you given as a child?

Mix up gender language when reading stories to your kids.

For most kids, experimenting with gender will be just that - exploration and play. For some kids, though, it may feel more intense. If your child is insistent about their gender in ways that are outside of societal norms, they may be telling you something.

Practice and Have Fun!

Below are some situations that often come up with young kids around gender, with some ideas about how you might use the opportunity to explore gender with your child. Of course, these are just a few options. Finding what feels right for you is important - you'll find your way with some practice. Just remember to have fun!

Is that person a boy or a girl?

Well, we don't know just by looking at someone what their gender is. If we want to know, we would need to ask them. Is there a reason you're interested, or just curious?

I don't know - some people feel like they are either a boy, or a girl, and there are also kids who feel like they're both a boy and a girl, or they don't really feel like either one. Have you ever met anyone who feels that way? If someone asked you what your gender is, what would you say?

Is red a boy color or a girl color?

Do you think there are colors just for boys, and colors just for girls? Maybe colors are just colors- and everyone gets to like whatever colors they find beautiful!

I think the world is filled with so many beautiful colors and that we all get to enjoy them. How sad it would be to think that someone couldn't like a color because of their gender!

Boys Can't Wear Dresses!

There are lots of different types of clothes. Kids should get to wear what feels right to them and makes them feel good.

Sometimes I get confused about this too. Did you know that people used to say girls couldn't wear pants? That sounds silly now, but that's what people used to think. I think clothes are just clothes and each of us gets to decide what we like and don't like.

Girls Can't Play Football!

Do you think it is fair if someone is told they have to do something, or can't do something, because of their gender? I think kids can have any interest they want to have.

When I was growing up, sometimes people made fun of me because I was a boy who liked to bake; do you have any interests like that - something that others say you can't do, or be interested in, because of your gender?

Ella Isn't a Real Girl

Tell me what you think makes someone a real girl, or a real boy. Do you think we get to decide gender for others, or do each of us get to decide our gender for ourselves?

Ella knows her gender better than we do. If she says she's a girl, then I think she's a girl.

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Talking to Young Children - Gender Spectrum

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You may think young children are too little to talk about gender, but kids get messages about gender from the day they are born! Download a pdf version of this page here . Para ver esta página en español, haga clic aquí.

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Exploring Gender and Enacting Anti-Bias Principles

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Mittens and boots fly as 3-year-olds bundle up to adventure out into the winter snow. Tate, ready to go in the middle of the line, stands with no coat and bare arms. When Ms. Tiana, one of his teachers, approaches, Tate quietly shares that he did not have a coat he could wear to school that morning. She assures him that there are plenty of extra coats he can choose from for the day.

"Wow, this looks beautiful, and it's so fuzzy!" Tate says. He glows as he shows off the bright pink coat he's found in the box of extra outdoor clothing. It is a puffy coat complete with a faux fur leopard lining.

"No, no, that's a girl coat; I'm sure we have another you can use," Ms. Diane, another teacher, says. As she digs back into the box, Tate's face fills with embarrassment and shame. The only "boy" coat in the collection is dark blue and several sizes too small. When Tate tries it on, his discomfort is evident. "This one's too tight," he says. Seeing this interaction, Ms. Tiana steps in and assures Tate that he is welcome to wear any coat he chooses, including the pink one. Tate smiles, snatches up the pink coat, and hops back into line with his friends.

The example above demonstrates Ms. Tiana working to create a gender-inclusive space for Tate as he selects the jacket he prefers. Gender-inclusive spaces allow children to easily move between roles or materials commonly regarded as male or female without any gendered expectations or barriers. For nearly thirty years, proponents of anti-bias education have reminded us that "it is not human differences that undermine children's development but rather unfair, hurtful treatment based upon those differences" (Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2010, 3). Children's emotional safety may be compromised when adults or peers express disapproval of young children for supposedly incorrect gender expressions (Chrisman & Couchenour 2003). In this article, we argue that by working to create inclusive classroom environments and thus modeling acceptance of gender exploration in the early childhood classroom, we allow children the freedom to be their most authentic selves, regardless of how they come to identify themselves as adults.

Gender-inclusive classrooms promote an anti-bias atmosphere in which all children can explore and grow. Creating a space that promotes equity, safety, and respect for all members of a classroom community is a hallmark of good teaching and school leadership (Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2010; Mosso-Taylor 2016; Kroeger & Regula 2017). However, from early childhood through high school, children who do not conform to traditional gender roles and forms of expression are likely to be harassed, bullied, or physically assaulted-and all too often, teachers and administrators ignore these instances of harassment (Kosciw et al. 2012).

Youth who do not conform to traditional ideas about gender are less likely to finish high school or college, are overrepresented among homeless youth, and are more likely to have mental health concerns than their gender-conforming peers (Choi et al. 2015). Given these challenging social problems, we believe it is never too early to positively support young children's gender exploration and expression. Even in the most innocent-seeming moments, such as Tate's selection of a pink coat, our words and actions may affect children's emotional, social, and identity development.

We believe it is never too early to positively support young children's gender exploration.

For many years, anti-bias practices related to gender have tended to emphasize promoting a non-sexist atmosphere (Derman-Sparks & ABC Task Force 1989; Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2010; Campbell, Smith, & Alexander 2016). As Tate's story makes clear, however, combating sexism is only one small part of creating a gender-inclusive classroom. This article advances conversations about gender diversity and anti-bias education. It supports children and teachers in challenging gender-related bias, examining its personal consequences, and countering the "negative effects of bias on children, themselves, and their communities" (Gunn 2003, 132).

In this article, we use Tate's choice of the pink coat to discuss the practical underpinnings of gender and anti-bias decision-making in the classroom. We hope that after reading this article, teachers will be better equipped to work through their own biases before responding to young children who are exploring gender in nontraditional ways. Additionally, we hope to help teachers reflect on how seemingly minor things, such as a collection of pink dress-up clothes or a block area adorned mostly with dinosaurs and trucks, might feel like barriers for children who wish to play outside of stereotypical gender roles.

Gender-inclusive classrooms promote an anti-bias atmosphere in which all children can explore and grow.

Considering how to engage with children in more supportive and inclusive ways can start with learning gender concepts, intentionally reworking classroom materials, and being more thoughtful about communicating with children and families. We explore these three strategies in detail; for more ideas, see "Supporting Gender Diversity in Your Classroom".

Learning gender concepts

Ideas about gender and sexuality are constantly evolving. They overlap with anti-bias principles and can be confusing to educators (and families) (Derman-Sparks & ABC Task Force 1989; Derman-Sparks, LeeKeenan, & Nimmo 2015). Learning some terminology and current thinking about gender constructs can help.

The term gender brings together three notions-an individual's assigned gender (done at birth based on physical appearance), gender identity, and gender expression (Killermann 2018; Newman 2016; Human Rights Campaign 2017). The traditional view of gender is binary-male or female. Babies are assigned male or female at birth, and then are expected to identify and express themselves as such throughout their lives (Gunn & MacNaughton 2007). In contrast, more current thinking on gender is expansive. Rather than a binary notion or even a continuum (masculine to feminine), gender is considered multifaceted, interrelated with other aspects of one's identity (e.g., spiritual beliefs, race), and may be fluid (i.e., for some people gender identity is not fixed) (Ehrensaft 2012; Kroeger & Regula 2017). Note that this discussion of gender is not a discussion of sexuality, which is a separate concept regarding sexual and romantic attraction. In popular culture, concepts of gender and sexuality are often conflated (Gunn 2011). Neither gender identity nor gender expression determines sexual orientation (i.e., attraction).

When teachers reflect deeply on their understandings of gender, they can make more informed decisions and create opportunities to address inequity and bias.

In many ways, our society has already abandoned many of its more traditional ideas about gender-for example, we've accepted that women can be scientists and men can be nurses, moving away from the idea that certain behaviors, skills, and abilities are associated only with certain genders. But current thinking on gender goes further; it lets go of the idea that gender assigned at birth, gender identity, and gender expression must align and must stay the same over time. For example, a child assigned female at birth may identify as female but often choose to wear outfits (a facet of gender expression) that our society sees as male, like plaid shirts and cargo shorts; or a child assigned male at birth may identify as female but choose to wear plaid shirts and cargo shorts to avoid being bullied. As children mature, their gender identities and preferred forms of expression may change (Ehrensaft 2012; NASP 2014). Exploration of gender in the early years helps children form and reform their gender identities, discovering their interests and the many ways they can express themselves (Ehrensaft 2012; Kroeger & Regula 2017). Throughout children's explorations and changes, it is important for teachers, families, and other caregivers to remain open, responsive, and supportive.

Many educators find it helpful to study gender terminology and visual models of gender concepts (Human Rights Campaign 2017; Killermann 2018). Two websites we recommend with such resources for teachers of young children are GLSEN ( www.glsen.org/article/gender-terminology) and Gender Justice in Early Childhood ( www.genderjusticeinearlychildhood.com).

Reexamining the pink coat scenario

Opening up opportunities for children to express their gender more freely and reducing gender barriers (or biases) requires teachers to reflect critically on their thinking and practice (Derman-Sparks, LeeKeenan, & Nimmo 2015). Pedagogical change is more likely to succeed when teachers choose to make a change than when it is imposed on them by external policy demands (Gunn & MacNaughton 2007). When teachers reflect deeply on their personal understandings of gender, they can begin to make more informed decisions and create opportunities to address inequity and bias. Learning to support gender exploration in the classroom enables teachers to ensure that children feel safe and acquire more sophisticated understandings about gender as they learn and grow.

Reflecting on Tate's experience, we can see that what his two teachers personally defined as appropriate (or inappropriate) for young children guided their actions. We could say that for Ms. Tiana, Tate's sense of self, of autonomy, and of belonging in the classroom were prioritized. At first glance, it seems that for Ms. Diane conformity to traditional gender expression was more important than Tate's desire, warmth, or comfort-but perhaps she had not taken the time to examine her own biases or misconceptions surrounding gender. In any case, Ms. Diane's actions reinforced expectations for conformity to the gender expressions typically promoted in our broader society.

When we engage with children, we are constantly emitting subtle cues, whether we are conscious of our biases and values or not. Ms. Diane may have been worried about negative judgments from other teachers or from Tate's parents, or perhaps about other children teasing Tate. In other words, she may have been motivated by concern for Tate's emotional safety. She may also have felt an internal discomfort with Tate's choice and acted impulsively, unaware of the messages (e.g., boys don't wear pink) she might have conveyed to Tate and his peers.

Increasingly, work from mental health fields (including school psychology) indicates that it is important for young children to be able to explore gender in their earliest years by playing with their appearance (e.g., hairstyle, makeup, clothing, jewelry). This enables children to understand how external appearance or aspects of gender expression may or may not match internal gender identity or assigned biological sex (Ehrensaft 2012; NASP 2014). This is especially relevant for children who are engaging in nontraditional gender expressions and play, and all the more so for children who remain engaged in such expressions throughout childhood. Approaching children neutrally or affirmatively, as Ms. Tiana did, also creates space for children to freely and fully explore their interests. Ms. Tiana's actions led to Tate's emotional security, shown by his smile and his quickly lining up to play outside.

Reworking classroom materials

When teachers establish classroom spaces that support the traditional binary concept of gender (for example, putting the boys' photos and names on blue paper and the girls' on pink paper), they may inadvertently reinforce children's stereotyped constructions of gender and unintentionally create social conditions that limit children to traditional gender roles (Gosselin 2007; Chrisman & Couchenour 2003). To create neutral spaces for exploration, educators need to acknowledge how gender limitations and biases might exist in classrooms and deliberately avoid and/or counteract them (Freeman 2007; Sullivan 2016).

Offering open-ended materials

Materials are among the most important aspects to consider when creating an inclusive, gender-neutral classroom. We encourage teachers to select materials that invite exploration without imposing gender expectations. For example, one simple change is to avoid objects that reinforce gendered play, like those that suggest pink is for girls and blue is for boys. Toys and objects with neutral color palettes, such as an unpainted wooden doll house with gender-nonspecific figures, may help children feel more welcome to explore various roles, labels, and activities in their play. These neutral materials also enable more creative play, as children can decorate the house and design outfits for the figures.

Stocking the classroom with found materials and loose parts can encourage play that isn't limited by traditional understandings of gender.

Even when materials are specifically chosen (or created) for their neutrality or representational ambiguity, children bring their own expectations, assumptions, experiences, and memories to their play. One way that teachers may begin broadening children's perspectives is by incorporating more open-ended materials into classroom spaces. Fabrics of various colors and textures are an exciting alternative to premade tutus or firefighter jackets-and (like an unpainted dollhouse) they challenge children to engage in more creative play. Children can use fabrics to transform into any character and apply them to any dramatic play context, which can help reduce play fraught with gender expectations.

Stocking the classroom with found materials and loose parts (such as pinecones, cardboard boxes and tubes, wire, buttons, twine, and gears) can be another imaginative and inexpensive way to encourage play that isn't limited by traditional understandings of gender. Creating a gender-neutral makerspace with natural materials, for example, can inspire children to create sculptures, make books, piece together collages, or construct whatever they imagine. They may also create props of their own liking with these materials to enhance storylines they have created. These new materials and spaces can be presented as formal activities or as enticing provocations. When children see new opportunities for play and exploration that do not carry signals about gender, they may feel more welcome to engage and to collaborate with children they might not otherwise play with, breaking down gender barriers.

Selecting books and images

Thoughtfully choosing children's books is another way to contradict stereotypical gender roles. By incorporating and discussing books that depict characters whose gender identities and expressions are multifaceted, fluid and/or ambiguous, teachers can help children expand their understanding of what it means to be male, female, neither, or both. Sharing books that model positive reactions to gender exploration and nontraditional play in the classroom sends a message to the community of learners and advances the anti-bias principle of transformation for all (Gunn 2003; Sullivan 2016).

Supporting Explorations of Gender with Children's Books

These books help children develop an expansive, inclusive understanding of gender for ages preschool to third grade.

In addition to literature, images depicting diverse gender expressions and roles people take around the world can be a valuable classroom resource. Teachers can display photographs or illustrations that show clothing, occupations, and lifestyles around the globe that contrast with Western societies' traditional gender roles and expressions. For example, a teacher might display pictures of men and women in flowing fabrics or skirts (such as kilts or various types of sarongs, which are common in many parts of the world) to support male children who might enjoy trying on all of the different types of clothing in the dramatic play center. Photos showing the ways gender roles and expressions differ around the world contribute to children's understanding that gender is a social construct rather than a fixed and universal set of ideas, values, or behaviors.

Communicating with care

Young children do not have a negative view of others' diverse gender play unless someone communicates to them that it is inappropriate. Teachers' actions and words help shape the classroom culture and tell children how teachers feel about gender and gender exploration (Cahill & Theilheimer 1999). If children are given the autonomy to define-and redefine-their identities as they grow, rather than taking up our society's traditional gender expectations, biases may be reduced. If children do not condemn each other but see teachers allowing diverse gender expressions, biases may be reduced (Kroeger, forthcoming).

Acting and speaking inclusively

Teachers' actions and words help shape the classroom culture and tell children how teachers feel about gender barriers and gender exploration (Cahill & Theilheimer 1999). Inclusive practices and language help children who are engaging in nontraditional expressions of gender feel safe and welcome, and they also help their peers be accepting.

Exploring gender in the early years helps children form and reform their gender identities, discovering their interests and the many ways they can express themselves.

To remove gender bias from classroom practices and routines, teachers should examine their expectations for children and make sure all children are supported in using the most challenging materials. All children can excel in subjects such as math, science, engineering, reading, writing, and the arts. Predisposing particular children to play with materials that enhance knowledge and skills in certain subject areas-for example, guiding boys (but not girls) to play with construction materials that include gears and motors-perpetuates gender bias. By mindfully redistributing play materials and encouraging all children to pursue activities of different types, teachers can reinforce opportunities to play in gender-neutral, inclusive ways.

Similarly, teachers should beware of stereotyping classroom responsibilities. Ensure that all children participate in classroom routines (such as cleaning, carrying supplies, cooking, preparing snacks, and taking care of one another and materials), in outdoor and nature play (including climbing and other adventuresome activities), and in movement and music.

Carefully reflecting on the language used with children is also essential for reducing gender bias and ensuring that teachers are not inadvertently communicating unbalanced or restrictive expectations. Research has shown that girls tend to receive more comments related to their appearance and kind touch than any other communicative feedback, while boys are frequently acknowledged for showing strength or lack of emotion (Chick, Heilman-Houser, & Hunter 2002). Similarly, addressing boys as "little dude" or girls as "honey" perpetuates the view that young boys should be tough and young girls should be sweet. To avoid reinforcing these biases, teachers may want to spend a few minutes at the end of each day recalling and reflecting on how they spoke with different children in their classrooms. With time and effort, teachers can change their ways of speaking with children. One simple first step is to refer to children by their preferred names instead of other terms like "sweetie." When addressing an entire group of children, use neutral terms, such as "everyone," "children," "preschoolers," or "Room 9" instead of "boys and girls."

While singular instances of stereotype-reinforcing communications from adults might not impact a child, frequent use of biased language may compound over time to shape the ways in which children view themselves, others, and society's expectations about gender. A young girl who receives comments on her neatly braided hair every morning may come to think that she has a responsibility to make sure her hair is well groomed and visually appealing. This may cause her to internalize the belief that her physical appearance is the only aspect of her identity that matters to others. A boy repeatedly praised for his tough demeanor may not allow himself to express a range of emotions, resulting in his being perceived as lacking compassion or empathy for others or for himself (Rao & Seaton 2009). A child like Tate, who may or may not identify as a boy or girl and whose interests are often frowned on, may come to believe that a person has to fit neatly into a category in order to be valued.

Like all anti-bias efforts, changing how one feels, thinks, and talks about gender takes time. With reflection and practice, early childhood educators can remove gendered assumptions and messages from their language, making their classrooms more welcoming-and truly enabling children to explore their interests.

Fostering partnerships with families

Creating safe and inclusive spaces for children exploring gender may also impact the children's families. Teachers can encourage parents to be accepting of children's playful gender exploration (Kroeger & Regula 2017), and administrators can ensure educational settings are welcoming for children who do not identify with their gender assigned at birth (Kroeger, forthcoming; Mosso-Taylor 2016). When families feel that their children are respected and accepted, they are more likely to become active members of the classroom community (DeVries & Zan 2012).

If family members struggle to understand a child's nontraditional gender play or expression, a teacher's knowledge of basic concepts related to gender (and sexuality) may prove a valuable resource for supporting the family. With a teacher's understanding and with access to appropriate current resources (such as those provided by GLSEN and Gender Justice in Early Childhood), families can be coached on strategies to help make the home a safe haven for their children (Gender Spectrum 2018). By sharing resources with families, teachers can extend anti-bias practice beyond the classroom walls to encourage healthy development in all parts of a child's life.

Here are some additional tips for engaging with families:

Take your time building engagement among families on the topic of gender. Recognize that communities and families will differ in their readiness for rethinking gender; be conscious of pushing too fast.

Recognize cultural influences on gender (such as a family's religious beliefs), and try to find common ground with a wide variety of community members.

Draw on what children notice and ask about regarding gender in the classroom to inform conversations with families, including conversations about the various roles associated with gender in their homes or communities.

Be willing to answer or discuss family members' questions about gender openly and honestly. Model lifelong learning for families by sharing how you are exploring and deepening your own understanding of gender. If possible, arrange a workshop with local experts to support families with a desire to learn more about gender.

Consider the safety of children and families who confide in you and take care not to betray their trust, whether or not you agree with the ideas they have expressed.

Learn about local issues and politics; reflecting on communities from multiple perspectives may influence your strategies for making change.

As early childhood educators learn about current thinking on gender, work to eliminate gender bias, and reflect on their classroom materials and practices, they can embrace the development of gender-inclusive communities. We believe that working to create safe spaces for gender exploration is essential to advancing anti-bias education.

By encouraging children to play freely, without regard to traditional gender limitations or biases, teachers can provide children who express gender in nontraditional ways with many opportunities to learn about gender fluidity, express themselves in different ways, and understand their developing sense of identity. With sensitive support from teachers, those children's peers will learn that they too can play as they wish, and that they can accept their classmates no matter what toys or roles they find interesting.

Within the field of early education, much of the previously accepted wisdom about gender has guided teachers to stay within boundaries that are historically stereotypical and unwelcoming to many young children. With anti-bias principles in mind, teachers can reflect on gender and rethink their actions. Recognizing their own and other's gender biases and beliefs allows educators to consciously counteract inequity in their practices, classroom materials, and language.

It's time to let Tate wear the pink coat.

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Tate and the Pink Coat: Exploring Gender and Enacting Anti-Bias Principles

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Gender-inclusive classrooms promote an anti-bias atmosphere in which all children can explore and grow.

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This History UnErased podcast is funded by the New York City Council. The Pilot Season and Season One are produced in partnership with Making Gay History.

For K-12 educators who want to create LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms, getting started can be confusing - and quite often prompts some fear. What if I say or do the wrong thing? What if there is pushback? And where do I even begin?

Our Pilot Series and Season One provide real-world advice and reasonable, practical strategies on how you can create LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms.

Series Intro: As We Learn, We Realize How Much More There Is to Know

Ep 1: How K-5 Teachers Can Dismantle Stereotypes Featuring Chip James

Ep 2: Navigating the Spectrum of Gender Diversity in Your Classroom Featuring Amber Joseph

Ep 3: Everyday Opportunities to Create LGBTQ-inclusive Schools Featuring Dr. Steve LaBounty-McNair

Ep 1: The "Power of a Pink Cup" in a 3rd Grade Classroom Featuring Chip James

Ep 2: Introducing LGBTQ-inclusive Books in Your Classroom Featuring Kathleen Barker

Ep 3: Ways of Being in the Ancient World Are Returning Featuring Stephen Guerriero

Ep 4: The Belonging Blurb for Every Classroom Featuring Dr. Heather Brown-Hudson

Ep 5: Navigating Pushback with Compassion Featuring Triana Wilson

Intersections & Connections: Deep Dives and Backstories

In Season Two, hosted by Kathleen Barker,* you will meet a few history-makers featured in our Intersections & Connections curriculum and hear some fascinating and empowering backstories!

Youth Equity Podcast: Amplifying Youth Voice

Our youth equity programming is a semester-long podcast project funded by the New York City Council and in collaboration with Houses on the Moon Theater Company. We believe real human stories spark transformation and that students' unheard stories have the power to create real change in our world.

Our pilot season dropped on July 2nd, 2022. Have a listen!

Ep 1: "Don't Say Gay?" Featuring Prism Club Students from Aviation High School

Ep 2: "Art Class Matters!" Featuring Students from the Bronx High School for the Visual Arts

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This History UnErased podcast is funded by the New York City Council. The Pilot Season and Season One are produced in partnership with Making Gay History. For K-12 educators who want to create LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms, getting started can be confusing - and quite often prompts some fear.

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Disrupting Anti-Blackness & Homophobia in Schools

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Gender Disrupted During Storytime- Critical Literacy in Early Childhood Education

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Gender Disrupted During Storytime- Critical Literacy in Early Childhood Education.pdf

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If I Can’t Opt My Kid Out of the Homophobia She Will Experience, You Shouldn’t Be Able to Opt Your Kid Out of Reading Books with LGBTQ Characters

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Teaching students to question assumptions about gender and sexuality

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Teaching students to question assumptions about gender and sexuality - kappanonline.org

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If public schools are to promote a just and equitable society, they have a responsibility to teach all students to think critically about prevailing gender norms. On a Saturday afternoon, Summer and her partner were doing yardwork when an unexpected educational opportunity arose.

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The Importance of Supporting Gender-Expansive Students

By Esperanza Anderson

Illustrator: Colin Laurel

Warm and cozy, lying in bed, his head rested on my shoulder. My son's pudgy little 4-year-old arm was wrapped around my chest as I read the picture book Jacob's New Dress at his request for the umpteenth time over the past week:

"'There are lots of ways to be a boy,' Jacob's mom said."

I paused and looked at my son.

"Do you believe that, Simon?"

I paused again and did not get a reply.

I tried rephrasing my question: "How is school going? Do kids say anything about the dresses you wear?"

He took a deep breath and replied, "No."

Sensing something was weighing on him I followed up: "Do you believe that there are lots of ways to be a boy? That boys can wear dresses?"

He finally replied, "Yeah," and I followed up with "Do you feel like a boy?"

"No, mom. I'm a girl."

My daughter's statement could not have been more direct, honest, and clear. In that moment I glimpsed how deeply gender-expansive people feel who they are, no matter what society has labeled them as at birth.

All schools have gender-expansive students, whether they are "out" or not, affirmed or chastised. In Pittsburgh, researchers found that nearly one in 10 students in more than a dozen public high schools identified as gender-expansive. That is five times the current national estimates. In my 10 years as an elementary school teacher, I have had four gender-expansive students who I know of, and there are currently nine gender-expansive students who are "out" in our elementary school of 250 kids.

Often on people's minds is a huge question, as it was on my mind when my 4-year-old was adamant about being a girl: Can a child this young actually know if they identify differently than their assigned gender at birth?

Yes.

"Do you feel like a boy?"

"No, mom. I'm a girl."

My daughter's statement could not have been more direct, honest, and clear. In that moment I glimpsed how deeply gender-expansive people feel who they are, no matter what society has labeled them as at birth.

This is not to say I have always felt this way. I have questioned, pushed back, and dealt with grief and anger when processing my own child's gender identity. What I have come to understand is how a person identifies is not about others' perception, it is about how they are authentically themselves. I have done research, met with a gender clinic counselor at Kaiser Permanente, taken a class on the gender spectrum at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, and with all my being believe the answer to that question is yes. Young children absolutely know inside how they experience gender. They may need help finding the words to express themselves, and people who will truly listen, see, and support their authenticity, but 100 percent young kids know.

The American Academy of Pediatrics outlines the stages of gender identity development and by age 4 most children have a stable sense of their gender identity: "The point is that all children tend to develop a clearer view of themselves and their gender over time. At any point, research suggests that children who assert a gender-diverse identity know their gender as clearly and consistently as their developmentally matched peers and benefit from the same level of support, love, and social acceptance."

Before my own child came out, I was supportive of gender-expansive children in my classroom, trying to do my best to affirm their gender. I changed gendered teaching practices like using boy/girl circles as a quick and easy way to mix up seating patterns. (This practice is not only gender non-inclusive but sexist, assuming that if students of the same gender don't sit next to each other they won't talk as much.) I also advocated for gender-expansive students by helping other teachers use correct pronouns and think about classroom routines and practices that are not inclusive. However, until the journey with my own child, I did not fully understand the depths of the pain people experience when not affirmed, nor the tremendous joy when they are.

A 2018 study conducted by the Human Rights Campaign and the University of Connecticut found:

* Less than a quarter of transgender and gender-expansive youth can definitely be themselves at school.

* Only 16 percent of transgender and gender-expansive youth always feel safe at school.

In the week following my daughter vocalizing who she is, I asked her if it was important for others to know. On the way to school one morning, she told me to tell her teachers. So, upon entering the classroom filled with little people playing with blocks, pouring sand, dressing up, and shrieks of disagreement and bubbles of laughter, I did. The teacher thanked us for sharing and asked what pronouns to use.

I was thrown. I didn't know how to answer.

As a teacher this would have been my question too, but as a parent I wasn't yet able to process the immense mental shift needed to fully see and affirm my child. Having this simple question reflected back at me made it real. I knew that I had to take my daughter's authenticity seriously.

The majority of resources use the guidelines that when a child is consistent, insistent, and persistent, they are gender-expansive. It is important to note that gender identity is different from gender expression. Gender identity is how a person experiences their gender - how they feel inside. Gender expression is a person's behavior, mannerisms, and appearance that are usually associated with societal expectations of femininity and masculinity. Before my daughter came out, I thought she was experimenting with gender expression. For nearly six months before announcing she is a girl, she had asked to grow out her hair and would only wear dresses.

With the direct and clear message my child was giving, in addition to the months of shifting gender expression, within the week after that October night when she looked me in the eye and said, "I am a girl," and with lots of reading and discussions with her father, she transitioned socially. We started using female pronouns.

Then there was the issue of her name: Simon.

After school one day, kids burst out of the classroom, running into their caregivers' arms, dropping coats, lugging backpacks half their size. A grandmother next to me said, "What's your daughter's name?" As my daughter walked up with her hot pink space-themed tulle dress, I said "Simon."

"Nice to meet you, Simona!" she replied.

The rest of the conversation is a blur. All I could think about was how I didn't correct the grandmother. My heart ached as I knew I had not protected my daughter. I let my own desire to not make someone else uncomfortable, along with a mixture of my own uncertainty, get in the way of supporting this brave child.

This experience forced me to grapple with my own fears and also how important it is for young gender-expansive people to be taught explicitly about the language used to describe who they are and how society is set up to have people fit into a binary. For example, just how gendered names are.

On the walk home we talked.

I mostly talked:

"How was the day?

"Did you get the dinosaurs out during outdoor play?

"What songs did you sing?"

She was not very talkative.

Then I stopped. I had to apologize.

I knelt down so I could be eye to eye with my daughter.

"I should have corrected that grandma when she called you Simona. I am sorry."

She was quiet and stared at the sidewalk.

"I think she called you Simona because it sounds like Simon and it's a girl's name."

At this point, I knew we had to talk about how names are gendered.

"Dad and I named you Simon when you were born because we thought you were a boy. We were wrong. You absolutely can keep that name and if people get confused I will do better to correct them. You can also choose a new name to try out. A girl's name."

At this her eyes lit up and she smiled.

She wasn't sure what to choose so I asked if she wanted help. I shared that we would have named her Simone if we'd known she was a girl.

Simone it is.

On that crisp fall day, on the sidewalk by 7-11, Simone was affirmed.

The journey we are on has lots of joy but also pain.

The world we live in is not safe for gender-expansive people. As reported by PBS in November of 2021, "With nearly two months left, 2021 has shattered the record of transgender homicides in a year with 45 to date - most of them Black or Latinx - according to the Human Rights Campaign. Last year held the previous record with 44 trans murders." This number does not account for those attacked or brutally beaten who survived.

Not just the physical threats but the emotional pain gender-expansive people often feel is immense, and the risk of suicide or self-harm is high if people are not affirmed. Simone made comments before feeling affirmed about not liking her body that speak volumes to how much pain people feel when their gender identity does not match what society has deemed acceptable for the gender they are.

Wanting my child to feel gender congruence, the feeling of harmony with one's gender, I did as much research as I could, including joining a parent support group, and I continued to support Simone with the language she needed to understand the gender spectrum. There are children's books that break down the gender binary for ways to talk about bodies and gender identity. Thankfully, in addition to the resources I've used, and as more people in her life affirmed and understood who she is, now at age 7 she has stopped saying negative things about her body or wanting to harm it. What has also been shown through research is that gender-expansive youth who report having at least one gender-affirming space were 25 percent less likely to attempt suicide in the past year.

My advice: Be willing to grow, change, and make mistakes. Own our mistakes and keep growing.

As teachers, we can create gender-affirming school spaces by honoring students' pronouns and helping all students and families understand the gender spectrum. There is a wide range of picture books that have characters who are gender-expansive, ranging from gender expression that does not match the binary to transgender kids going through a social transition.

In addition to helping all students understand the wide range of how people experience gender, we can make sure gender-expansive children have a bathroom they are comfortable using at school. Advocating and establishing gender-inclusive restrooms is ideal but if a school's leadership is not responsive to this, the next best bathroom option is to make sure they have access to a single-user restroom (usually those that are designated for adults/teachers). There are also resources that provide checklists for gender-expansive students and can be used by teachers and parents.

One of the most transformative ways we can support gender-expansive students is to keep learning. Most of us have grown up in a traditional setting that is overwhelmingly binary; our mindsets need to expand. Terminology is also shifting as communities change and gender-expansive people share more about their experiences.

My advice: Be willing to grow, change, and make mistakes. Own our mistakes and keep growing. Below are a few organizations that outline how schools and classrooms can support students of all genders and they provide helpful information for understanding the gender spectrum.

* Gender Inclusive Schools

* Gender Spectrum

* Human Rights Campaign's Welcoming Schools

I will never fully grasp my child's experience or those of my gender-expansive students. The marginalization they face in an overwhelmingly binary world is intense. I am inspired by gender-expansive people authentically showing up in a world that tries to erase their existence.

As a cisgender woman I don't know what it feels like to fight for my existence. However, I do know the importance of believing gender-expansive people and supporting them. Gender-expansive people are strong and their existence and willingness to let others know who they are is a revolutionary act. As teachers and parents, especially those of us who are cisgender, we can use our privilege to make the world a more inclusive and safer place.

We must face the fact that our school systems systemically damage gender-expansive people, people who do not fit in the nice little box of blue and pink, boy or girl.

Even though we live in a world that overwhelmingly does not affirm and actively tries to oppress and harm gender-expansive people, those living authentically also experience tremendous joy. As teachers we can be co-conspirators and advocates for creating spaces that will allow our gender-expansive students to thrive just like we hope for all our students.

Want more content like this? Subscribe now to Rethinking Schools! A one-year subscription is just $24.95 and helps support our efforts to provide antiracist and social justice curriculum and articles for educators everywhere.

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Can a 4-Year-Old Know Her Gender Identity? Yes.

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"Do you feel like a boy?" "No, mom. I'm a girl." My daughter's statement could not have been more direct, honest, and clear. In that moment I glimpsed how deeply gender-expansive people feel who they are, no matter what society has labeled them as at birth.

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Creating SAFE SPACE for ALL GENDERS in Public and Educational Settings involves a way of speaking that fundamentally includes everybody all the time and interrupts the cycle of gender stereotypes and assumptions.These agreements are designed to support adults in modeling gender-inclusive practices for kids. The Protocol also negotiates and respects...

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Tips for Explaining & Introducing Pronouns

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It’s hard to believe it, but for some, back to school is already around the corner! As we prepare to set up our rooms and routines, it is important to consider how we can make our classes inclusive for LGBTQ+ students. Creating an inclusive classroom does not need to be a big or massive production. You don’t need to buy a fancy curriculum or do a complete overhaul of what you’re currently implementing. Many of the ideas I’m going to share are simple changes that can be made quickly and easily.

Educate Yourself

First and foremost, education is a really powerful tool. It is important to understand the vocabulary and terms that exist within the LGBTQ+ community (asexual, pansexual, etc.), as well as the ones society reinforces (i.e. the gender binary). I am not telling you to memorize every single term. However, I am encouraging you to seek out these terms and at least become familiar with them.

Joe Tong is in the process of releasing his animated series #100daysofqueer. He is taking terms from QMUNITY’s Queer Terminology publication and creating helpful animations that break down and define those terms. Check out the series on his Instagram page. These would be great to share out to your staff/co-workers in a daily email.

Get Rid of Gendered Language

Phrases like “boys and girls,” “you guys,” or “ladies and gentlemen” are so common in classrooms. According to GLSEN’s report on Trasngender Youth in American Schools, it is estimated that 150,000 students between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as transgender or gender non-conforming. Therefore, many students do not fit neatly into the gender labels we so often use in class. Using gendered language can subtly alienate students, so we should work to avoid using these phrases.

Try these instead:

Everyone

Students

Learners

Name of your school’s mascot (i.e. Cougars)

Scientists/Mathematicians/Readers

It will definitely take some practice, and you’ll probably mess up (I still do sometimes). Spend the rest of the summer using gender neutral language in everyday conversations. If you mess up in front of students, self-correct with a gender neutral phrase and move on. Practice makes perfect!

Be Mindful of How You Sort/Group Students

When you assign student seats, do you alternate boys and girls? When you divide the class for an activity, do you have boys go to the one side of the room and girls to the other?

Again, when we ask students to put themselves into a male/female box, we reinforce the gender binary and tell them they have to choose one or the other. Consider other ways you can group students.

Ask for Student Pronouns...

We shouldn’t assume someone’s gender identity based on how they look or act. It is so important to normalize asking for pronouns so students learn not to make those assumptions too. You can do this by adding a section on your “Get to Know You” sheets that you hand out during the first week of school. If you aren’t doing something like this already, I highly recommend it. You can learn so much about your students through these sheets.

...But Don’t Force Them to Share Their Pronouns Publicly

I am comfortable in my identity. However, when I first started using they/them pronouns, it made me very anxious to announce that in a room full of people because more often than not, I was the only non-binary person in the room. It automatically made me “different.” Imagine that same scenario for a college student. A high school student. A middle school student. Some students are not ready to announce their pronouns, and subsequently, their identities, to the class. And we need to be mindful of this.

Let’s go back to the “Get to Know You” sheet. When you ask for student pronouns, you can add these follow-up questions:

May I use your pronouns in front of other students? Yes/No

May I use your pronouns when I contact home? Yes/No

May I use your pronouns when I talk to other teachers? Yes/No

Would you like to follow up with me about any of the information you’ve given? Yes/No (or give them a space to write)

When you frame it like this, you give students so much power and autonomy over their identities. You also allow them to tell you their comfort level with their pronouns. Some students may be ready for their peers to know but not their families/caregivers.

I highly recommend checking out @teachlikeagirl’s post about creating name plates. She discusses a subtle, inclusive way for students to opt in (or out) when it comes to visibly sharing their pronouns. You can also read more about this topic here.

Include LGBTQ+ Stories in Your Classroom Libraries

Books are windows, mirrors, and doors for our students. They need to be able to see themselves as well as others who are different from them in the texts they read. If you are unable to purchase books for your own classroom library, try and work with your school library to include more LGBTQ+ titles.

It is super important to note that these books should not be labeled “LGBTQ+” or placed in a special LGBTQ+ section. These stories exist within every genre and should not be singled out.

Here are LGBTQ+ book lists I created to help get you started:

Elementary School

Middle School

High School

Bilingual

These lists are definitely not comprehensive. Check out your local libraries and see what LGBTQ+ titles they have in their collections. You can borrow them for your classroom too! Gender Inclusive Classrooms also has a phenomenal book list for grades K-5.

Incorporate LGBTQ+ Themes Across Contents

Incorporating LGBTQ+ themes and ideas into your curriculum doesn’t need to be a big or difficult task. In fact, many content areas naturally lend themselves to this integration.

I hosted an Instagram series where I posted suggestions about how to incorporate LGBTQ+ narratives in different content areas. I encouraged others to comment with what they do in their own classes, and the response was amazing! I learned so much and have new ideas on how I can incorporate more this year.

Check them out here:

Math

Social Studies

English Language Arts

Science

Art

Foreign Language

Music

Stop Bullying in Its Tracks

LGBTQ+ students experience significantly more bullying compared to their heterosexual peers. Approximately 70% of students are bullied because of their sexual orientation (HRC) and 66% of students heard phrases like “that’s so gay” being used negatively in classrooms (GLSEN).

I cannot stress enough how important it is to stop bullying behavior as soon as it starts. However, you need to make students part of the process. Simply telling a student, “Don’t say that” isn’t enough. This does nothing to explain to the student why what they’re saying is wrong. When students understand the “why” and learn to develop empathy, they are less likely to engage in these behaviors.

When you hear homophobic remarks, follow these four steps (adapted from Julie Olsen Edwards):

1. Find out what students think

Listen, ask questions, pay attention to ideas

Why did they say it? What were they trying to accomplish?

Let students know they’ve been heard

2. Tell the truth

Give accurate information and check to see what students are thinking/feeling/understanding

Do students understand why the phrase is harmful? Do they understand what their words mean?

Phrase it in terms of justice/injustice

Why was the statement fair/unfair?

3. State the justice issue

What is kind/hurtful? How do we know?

4. Speak your values

“In this classroom we don’t use that phrase because…”

This definitely isn’t a comprehensive list of every possible thing you can do to create an inclusive classroom for LGBTQ+ students, but it is an awesome start. I would also like to take a second to acknowledge the privilege some educators may have over others. Unfortunately, support for LGBTQ+ students is not equal in many areas. I am fortunate to be able to implement all of these strategies in my classroom, but I know that is not the case for every teacher. I promise, even if you are only able to implement one or two of these ideas, you are making a difference.

While this blog post focuses specifically on LGBTQ+ inclusive classrooms, it is important to remember that there are many other ways to create safe and inclusive classrooms for all students. Check out these additional resources below!

Jillian Starr’s podcasts on ADD/ADHD and Safe Learning Environments

Mx. Tooley’s lessons on building community during the first twelve days of school

Liz Kleinrock’s lesson on teaching students about consent and boundaries

Teaching Tolerance’s lessons on bullying and bias

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Blog-original - Teaching Outside the Binary

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Asking for pronouns does not just benefit transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming students. It benefits cisgender students as well because they learn the importance of a) not making assumptions about people based on their name or appearance and b) normalizing the practice of asking for pronouns.

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The more we understand and break down our own misconceptions, the more we will be able to create inclusive lessons and a space for ALL learners to flourish.

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English

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Heinemann. A division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!" "Girls line up on the left and boys on the right." Repeated in classrooms every day, statements like these send a subtle message to students who might not relate to the gender binary: You're not included. Curriculum and instruction can reinforce that message, too, when gender stereotypes or inequities go unchecked in classroom texts, topics, and talk.

How, then, can teachers be more sensitive to the way gender is presented in their classrooms? By reflecting on how their own experiences with gender shape their practices and questioning the biases they see and hear, they can begin to shift the culture to be safer and more inclusive. These strategies can help teachers move from awareness to action.

According to a 2016 survey from J. Walter Thompson Intelligence, 56 percent of U.S. Gen Z'ers (13 to 20 years old) said they know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns such as they, them, or ze. This generation eschews traditional gender roles, the survey adds, with fewer shopping for clothes assigned to their own gender and more agreeing that public spaces should provide access to all-gender restrooms.

Despite a seismic shift in how youth perceive gender, "there still is a very strong binary culture that most of our educators grew up in," says Joel Baum, senior director of professional development for Gender Spectrum, an Oakland-based nonprofit. "Almost like a fish is in water-you don't even know that it's there, but it is, and it's being reinforced all the time."

Gender Spectrum's website features a number of educator resources for creating gender-inclusive environments and outlines questions for personal and professional reflection. For example, "How have issues of gender and gender diversity 'shown up' in your work as an educator or in your role at school?" Or, "What is your own comfort level with discussing issues of gender diversity with: Colleagues? Parents? Students?"

Once educators explore how their biases and assumptions shape their teaching-and gain a foundation of gender literacy-Baum suggests examining their practices. For instance, "How are you using language?" Are phrases like ladies and gentlemen or boys and girls part of your daily vernacular?

Rebecca Alber, an instructor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education, encourages her graduate students (who are novice teachers) to use nongendered terms in their classrooms, addressing kids as folks or you all (or even students or scholars) and staying away from phrases like you guys. Alber also leads discussions about using they, them, and their when providing examples during lessons instead of he and she.

Similarly, think about how students are organized: Are you lining kids up or grouping them by gender as part of your classroom management routine? Gendered language and categorization "reinforces that gender is a strict binary," says Baum, which limits the roles all students can access in school. These practices can make some students feel "invisible," he explains. "And when they feel invisible, they most likely feel unsupported and unsafe."

Deborah Best, a psychology professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who studies gender stereotypes in young children, says this could also pit students against one another. "If you make a point of categorizing kids into different groups based on gender, then you're going to set up competition [between them]."

Best, whose research suggests that children as young as five already have fixed ideas about gender, says that rigidity starts to "loosen up as they see violations of traditional roles and behaviors." She advises teachers to call out "opposite traits" that challenge the myth that "boys are aggressive and assertive and dominant, and girls are sweet and thoughtful and kind." Point out that "Johnny is being kind" or that "Suzy is being a leader."

In a recent Edutopia article, " Gender Equity in the Classroom ," Alber explains that this "aggressive male" and "passive female" stereotype silences girls as they grow older, which ultimately influences whom teachers call on. She has noticed that in elementary schools, most girls eagerly raise their hands, share their ideas, and volunteer to read aloud. But "something just happens once middle school hits," she says. "Around 7th or 8th grade, the girls just get quiet."

In high school, "the boys are way more outspoken," she adds. "They're conditioned to share more." Research by Fengshu Liu suggests that because of this, "teachers often unconsciously rely on male students as their target or go-to responders and volunteers."

When observing the classrooms of her student teachers and first-year teachers, Alber typically sees fewer females being called on. In a 35-minute discussion, for example, one female student might speak up. When bringing this to the attention of her graduate students, they are often surprised by what they hear. "They have a blind spot" about participation patterns, she says.

"One thing teachers can do is slow down and not pick the first or second person who raises their hand, who are usually male," Alber suggests. "Add more wait time and think time." If one of your students protests, "Wait, I had my hand up first!" then gently remind him, "Well, we've already heard from you a couple of times." Another way to encourage diverse participation is to enforce a "three then me" rule: "If you've already shared, you [then] have to wait for three more people to share before you share again." This also clears air space for more reserved male students to contribute.

In some districts and states (most recently, Washington), teaching about gender identity and expression is part of the health curriculum. Districts like Montclair Public Schools in New Jersey, and the state of California, add another element, requiring schools to explore gender roles and stereotypes. But because most teachers don't work in systems that provide time and resources for these lessons, "we encourage you to integrate notions of gender into content you're already teaching," says Baum.

For instance, when giving a spelling test, use sentences that challenge gender stereotypes: "The word is festive. He threw a festive party for his dolls." Or "The word is competitive. She became very competitive when she played football." Alternately, Baum suggests assigning a writing prompt that incorporates gender concepts, like "How do issues of gender and power inform the #MeToo movement?" Or, have students explore how women are portrayed in the media and how toxic masculinity plays out, by studying films like Miss Representation.

In social studies, teachers can introduce two-spirited people as part of Native American culture or teach about historical figures like One Eyed Charlie who defied gender norms in the 1800s. Science teachers can talk about biodiversity-that some fish change sex depending on the conditions or that some animal behaviors defy traditional gender norms, like lionesses who do the majority of hunting for their pride.

Alber also encourages teachers to audit the curriculum to ensure that a diversity of voices is being represented, even engaging students in the exercise. In her research, she found that female voices were largely absent from the language arts textbooks used by the Los Angeles Unified School District: less than 30 percent of the authors in the 8th grade language arts textbook were female.

Many of Alber's graduate students work in underresourced, urban public schools and serve primarily students of color. To be fully inclusive, she suggests supplementing the curriculum with female authors and protagonists of color, as well as stories from the LGBTQ community.

"You want students to have an experience of mirror text. That's how we fall in love with reading-we connect in some way with the story being told, or the character, or the theme."

Finally, model how to question inequities in the curriculum you're presenting, says Alber. Look at the materials through a gender-conscious lens: How are females and males being portrayed? Are the male protagonists in novels "seen as heroic, while the female characters are [depicted as] helpers"?

"I do 'naÏve' questioning when I see something that is marginalizing a female or applying a stereotype to a male," Alber explains. For example, if her class is analyzing a primary document about George Washington that references "Mrs. George Washington," Alber might stop and ask, "Wait, I wonder why they don't say her name. Why don't they tell us what her name is?"

"It's just like calling out when we see a racist or stereotypical depiction of someone because of their ethnicity," clarifies Alber. "Question it and encourage students to question and dispute and disrupt that." When teachers challenge gender bias, they create the space for students to do it themselves.

Saying nothing, Alber notes, is unacceptable: "An inaction around that is an action."

Teachers also need to intervene every time they hear a student put down a classmate with gender-biased language, like "You're such a girl." In the 22 years she's been working in public schools, Alber has routinely observed teachers overlooking these comments.

Baum says interrupting such remarks can be done in an educational, rather than punitive, way. He encourages teachers to provide a counternarrative to stereotypes or expressions of toxic masculinity. If a student comments, "Pink is a girl's color," contest that with, "I know boys who like pink" or explain to the class that "colors are colors. There is no such thing as boy colors or girl colors."

"This is climate work," says Baum. "Yes, there's a social justice aspect to it, because the data are clear that kids who are perceived to be at the margins or extremes of gender diversity are endangered and unsafe. But it's not just about those kids; it's about the learning conditions for all kids."

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"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!" "Girls line up on the left and boys on the right." Repeated in classrooms every day, statements like these send a subtle message to students who might not relate to the gender binary: You're not included.

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"Some people may argue that such concerns are unimportant, but if you consider that language is the primary filter through which we perceive the world, it's obvious that it affects how we relate to and make judgments about one another," Dowd tells Teen Vogue. "Until now, history has been written and told by men, to the detriment of others. Part of any attempt to create a society in which all people - regardless of gender, sexuality or race - have equal opportunities and freedoms is to use language that no longer excludes certain groups or creates unconscious bias."

Just because a nonbinary person isn't present doesn't make it OK to use binary language.

Many nonbinary people aren't as vocal about their identity and pronouns as others, and you can't know someone's gender by looking at them, Hoffman-Fox stresses. Nonbinary people reflect a wide variety of gender expressions and are sometimes still identified as male or female because they don't present as androgynous.

"It's fairly common for people to assume that a nonbinary person isn't in the room," Hoffman-Fox said. "The truth is, there is no way someone could know that, unless they have had conversations with every person in the vicinity and have asked them if they use binary terms to describe themselves."

Hold those around you accountable.

Don't be afraid to correct those around you, such as your classmates and even teachers, about using exclusive, gendered language, but do understand not everyone receives criticism in the same way.

"Some people will be comfortable with being very direct, like: 'Excuse me, but when you used ladies to describe our friend group, it leaves out those who are uncomfortable with being gendered as female,'" Hoffman-Fox tells Teen Vogue. "Some may want to take a more subtle approach, such as repeatedly using a gender-neutral term within earshot of the person using binary language."

Pay attention to which responses work better for certain people.

"Depending on the situation, you can address the situation with the person publicly or privately, in person or through a message," Hoffman-Fox adds. "Try to keep it as simple as possible, explaining briefly what binary language is and how it can often result in people feeling invisible."

Remember that binary language also harms cisgender and binary transgender people.

Nonbinary people aren't the only ones hurt by binary language. Binary transgender people (or trans people who aren't nonbinary) and cisgender people are also affected - and often harmed - by the gender binary and how ingrained it can be in our language. For instance, many women prefer not to be lumped into a group of "ladies" because of society's expectations of how a lady should act.

"There are people who aren't nonbinary who are uncomfortable with binary gendered terms, thanks to these terms also being experienced as stereotypical," Hoffman-Fox says. "Shifting to gender-neutral language is of benefit not only to those who are nonbinary but to many others in society who feel that binary terms are inaccurate ways of describing them."

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The Gender-Neutral Words You Need to Know for Back to School

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"Some people may argue that such concerns are unimportant, but if you consider that language is the primary filter through which we perceive the world, it's obvious that it affects how we relate to and make judgments about one another," Dowd tells Teen Vogue.

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Transgender Students and Policy in K-12 Public Schools: Acknowledging Historical Harms and Taking Steps Toward a Promising Future

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Transgender and nonbinary (collectively referred to here as “trans”) students are ill-served by most school environments. They experience challenges trying to navigate institutions that, at best, are poorly designed to support them and that often work against them. Although some districts and states…

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For the longest time I was tricked into believing that being a transgender man was my greatest source of weakness. I was told this lie time and time again from the cisnormative society in which I was raised. As I became more comfortable with my identity I began to push back against the stigma surrounding transgender people.

The seemingly ever-present mockery and belittlement of transgender people seemed almost paradoxical to me, as the very same cisgender people who were oppressing us were the ones who taught us as children to be the best possible versions of ourselves. Yet when we put that concept into practice they immediately outcast us and shunned us for daring to step out of the suffocating confines of the binary label. A label that they had placed on us.

It's #TransAwarenessWeek, a week to celebrate transgender people and lift up and take action around the issues impacting the community. https://t.co/ouD975nVvP pic.twitter.com/jXNa7Ot99b
- GLAAD (@glaad) November 13, 2020

Being transgender means looking into the depths of one's soul, seeing what's on the inside, and then being brave enough to accept and embrace our most authentic selves. I am honored each and every day to be a part of the transgender community and to have the opportunity to be an advocate alongside so many others.

Advocating for the transgender community has come in many forms for me, with my latest accomplishment being that I was successful in convincing my Congressman in New Jersey to recognize Transgender Day of Remembrance for the first time. That may seem like a small victory, but it can and, oftentimes, does mean the world to those of us who see, perhaps for the very first time, that other people are listening to and caring about our lives and stories as transgender individuals.

Being heard and represented matters for trans people. Hearing our stories is an important part of understanding our community's needs. In celebration of Trans Week, GLAAD asked 8 of us transmen and transmasculine people about being a part of the trans community and the importance of allyship. Check out our advice and experiences below.
What is your favorite thing about being a part of the trans community?
The support and the love. The space for authenticity. The celebration of differences and acceptance of expression. The room to play, to learn, and to be supported regardless of the way we look or act or feel. There is a freedom and shared liberation in transgender communities that bring me joy, inspiration, and empowerment every single day.
How can people be better allies to trans people?
Seek out transgender representation in your life! Follow us on social media, read books by trans authors, watch films by trans directors, and listen to the trans people in your life. And I don't mean exclusively on the "transgender experience" - by normalizing transgender people, you are being a better ally. In general, diversity the representation around you and educate yourself on intersectional issues so that collective liberation can be achieved! Also - HIRE US!
What do cisgender people get wrong about transgender people?
I think something people get wrong about the transgender community is the idea that we haven't been around for centuries. Trans people have been present since the dawn of time. We need to break away from the language of "this is so new" to "I finally see you" when speaking about trans folks.
What is your advice to trans youth?
Some advice I'd give trans youth would be to allow your identity to take any shape it needs too. Something I felt during my early years of transition was that I was "doing it wrong." It is impossible to transition incorrectly. Once we stop comparing our growth to others, we can celebrate how far we've come.
What is your favorite thing about being a part of the trans community?
My favorite thing about being a part of the trans community is the freedom of self-expression and the incredible people, who are so supportive. I think that the community encourages self-acceptance and only wants to spread love.
How can people be better allies to trans people?
I think something that trans allies can do to improve could be to always put your pronouns in your bio, as well as, if you are unsure of someone's pronouns you can offer your pronouns first, to show you are a safe person.
How can people be better allies to trans people?
Listening. There are a lot of ways to be an ally to trans people, but the act of listening - to trans activists, to the trans people in your life, to trans people, really - is how you learn. This means being able to admit that you may have made a mistake, as uncomfortable as it can be! What's important is working on educating yourself.
What is your favorite thing about being a part of the trans community?
Being able to choose my family and those who I surround myself with. My chosen family has been there for me ever since I came out and it's what has kept me going.
What do cisgender people get wrong about transgender people?
A lot of people think that gender isn't a spectrum. It's not just one or the other, there are so many identities out there.
What is your advice to trans youth?
One day you will grow up to be the person you needed when you were younger. Continue to be that person for those that come after and before you.
What is your favorite thing about being a part of the trans community?
Connecting with other trans people who show me just how incredibly powerful and impactful using our voices to encourage positive change can be is my favorite part of being in the trans community. I am constantly in awe of the amazing achievements that my trans peers are accomplishing!
How can people be better allies to trans people?
I wish that people knew that trans people do not have to physically transition in order to be considered trans. Only affirming trans people who "pass" as cisgender feeds into the stereotype that all trans people wish to be perceived as cis and that is their main goal. Many trans people are proud to be visibly trans and including and affirming all different types of trans people in conversations can help change the narrative into one that is more inclusive and representative of the trans community at large.
What is your advice to trans youth?
You are strong, brave, and valid. I know it may be tough right now, but I promise you that there are so many people that are cheering for you and that love and accept you just the way you are.
What is your favorite thing about being a part of the trans community?
[My favorite thing is] That life gets easier knowing you aren't alone. Because there are so many others out there who have experienced the same confusion and pain from being lost for so long, simply trying to find out who they are in this world that, oftentimes, doesn't want to make room for them.
What do cisgender people get wrong about transgender people?
Trans and gender-nonconforming individuals are not an enigma to be figured out, a threat to you or anyone, and, most importantly, they are not a burden. A small difference in gender identity is by no means an excuse to be treated with any less than what is to be expected, respect.
How can people be better allies to trans people?
If you're unsure, ask for pronouns. Even consider giving your own because not only does this normalize a small, polite gesture, but it helps create a much more inclusive environment for trans people to feel more comfortable to eventually share theirs. Because if this simple act can make all the difference for someone, shouldn't we be doing it more often?
What is your favorite thing about being a part of the trans community?
My favorite thing about the trans community is the level of strength and perseverance we all have, as well as the talents and uniqueness that makes our community shine.
How can people be better allies to trans people?
I want allies to be more active in helping us. Especially when it comes to trans People of Color. We, as trans people and as allies, need to listen better and work on solutions to end violence and stigma.
What is your advice to trans youth?
Keep your chin up as much as you can. You are valid, you are seen, you are beautiful.
Jake Attias is a GLAAD Campus Ambassador and junior at American University studying Political Science. Jake is passionate about LGBTQ+ issues and empowering young people to engage in activism. After completing his studies, Jake is interested in pursuing a career in the non-profit sector.

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Trans men and trans masculine people share advice to youth and allies

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For the longest time I was tricked into believing that being a transgender man was my greatest source of weakness. I was told this lie time and time again from the cisnormative society in which I was raised. As I became more comfortable with my identity I began to push back against the stigma surrounding transgender people.

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Asexual (Ace) Awareness Week in 2020 runs from October 25th through October 31st, and is a week to honor and celebrate the Asexual community and the asexual people in our lives. Asexuality is a legitimate, lived identity, but is commonly misunderstood. The lack of understanding about asexual identities does, unfortunately, have concrete negative effects on ace people. The Trevor Project found that asexual youth face higher rathes of anxiety and depression than LGBTQ youth overall.

Asexual identities can intersect with other lived identities: someone may be asexual and biromantic, asexual and Latinx, asexual and disabled, etc. In fact, The Trevor Project found that a larger sample of asexual youth identities as transgender or gender-nonconforming than LGBTQ youth in general. Asexual identities also exist among other sexual orientations, and being asexual is just as valid as being gay/lesbian, bi, or straight.

#AceWeek is an important time to educate yourself and your community on #asexuality

In our sample of over 40,000 LGBTQ youth, 10% identified as asexual or ace spectrum. Read the full research brief: https://t.co/bpupTmGTaV pic.twitter.com/4f4QYR0WWk
- The Trevor Project (@TrevorProject) October 27, 2020

Like any other identity, the most important thing about understanding asexuality is that the focus should always be on each individual person. Different asexual people experience their ace identities differently: some asexual people are interested in romantic relationships while others do not; some asexual people sex-averse and have a negative view of sex while other asexual people are simply not interested in sex but don't have a negative view of it, and some even engage in sexual activity. When learning about asexuality and respecting ace people, it's most important to make sure to listen to ace people when they talk about their identity and respect their experiences.

In that spirit, GLAAD spoke to 7 young asexual people to talk about their ace identities, common misconceptions about asexuality, and about the community that they have been able to find among other ace people.
What does being asexual+ mean to you?
Being asexual means that I get to have a word that brings validation to the way I feel and gives me a community of people that feel like me. Being asexual means I get to set my own boundaries and I get to define my place in any given relationship.
What is your favorite part of your asexual+ identity / being on the asexual-spectrum?
My favorite part of being asexual is the community. Asexual people tend to get each other in a way that is incredibly unique and incredibly rewarding. I remember the first time I learned about asexuality, I immediately started crying. Other people thought like me. I wasn't weird or wrong. And when I came out, I was immediately surrounded by fellow asexuals that continue to validate me and give me support.
What is something people get wrong about people with asexual+ identities?
Many people tend to assume that asexual people are just innocent, or don't know what they're missing out on. This is absolutely untrue. We aren't broken, we aren't naive, and we aren't just waiting for the right person. Our identities are valid, and we do belong. We are here, we are queer, and we aren't going to change our minds any time soon.
What does being asexual+ mean to you?
Being a part of a community that is proud of what makes us different! Even though we can be forgotten or disregarded in a lot of spaces, aces are all about embracing your identity and differences.
What is your favorite part of your asexual+ identity / being on the asexual-spectrum?
I really love being able to educate other people about what it's like being asexual. It's a totally different experience than someone who is allosexual (experiences sexual attraction) and it's really cool to have the opportunity to teach people something new.
What is something people get wrong about people with asexual+ identities?
Asexual people can still be in successful relationships with allosexual folks! And no, we don't "reproduce asexually."

What does being asexual+ mean to you?
It was hard to come to terms with being asexual. I felt broken and like no one would want to be with me. For a long time I thought there was something medically wrong with me. I have grown from what I initially felt when I realized my sexuality and now think that is great that I can connect with my partner on different levels that don't involve sex. While it can still be a challenge to meet people who are also asexual, I know that I will find the right person and have a great community around me.
What is something people get wrong about people with asexual+ identities?
A lot of people seem to think that asexual people do not want any form of a relationship with someone. While that may be true for some, I hope to find a romantic partner that I can share my life with.
What does being asexual+ mean to you?
I have the freedom to prioritize my mental wellness and sexual health while refusing to give in to the intense social pressures to date and have sex, which I've never been interested in. When I turned 19, I thought there was something wrong with me for going this long without any interest in dating or sex. I thought I was just a late bloomer. But my disinterest in dating and sex persisted.
What is your favorite part of your asexual+ identity / being on the asexual-spectrum?
Not having to answer to anybody but myself. I can live my life comfortably and with ease, without the added pressure that comes with feeling like I'm obligated to date or have sex. If I date or engage in sexual activity just because I feel obligated to, and not because I genuinely want to, then I would be doing a disservice to myself and my hypothetical partners.
What is something people get wrong about people with asexual+ identities?
There are misconceptions that asexuals are just late bloomers, that we've never experienced sexual or romantic attraction before, or our experiences all look the same, which couldn't be further from the truth. Asexuality is a spectrum, and many of us experience attraction (or lack thereof) in different ways. Many Ace people I know, myself included, are also very sex-positive.
What does being asexual+ mean to you?
Being comfortable enough with myself to know my boundaries and proudly speak on them.
What is your favorite part of your asexual+ identity / being on the asexual-spectrum?
Having a deeper connection with people.
What is something people get wrong about people with asexual+ identities?
[People think] that it's not a spectrum and is the same experience for everyone. There is no "right" way to be asexual, only what feels right to you.
What is your favorite part of your asexual+ identity / being on the asexual-spectrum?
The colors of the pride flag. [Also] everything positive about my relationship with my partner can be traced back to our communication, not our sexualities (as I hope is the standard).
What is something people get wrong about people with asexual+ identities?
Assuming that all ace people are celibate.
What does being asexual+ mean to you?
Being ace to me means that I do not experience attraction, specifically sexual attraction in the way society expects me to.
What is your favorite part of your asexual+ identity / being on the asexual-spectrum?
I am empowered to know that I can define relationships and my experience of attraction in new ways.
What is something people get wrong about people with asexual+ identities?
People misunderstand that people with asexual+ identities don't ever have sex or want to have sex. Having a libido and being asexual are not mutually exclusive. There are many reasons we may have sex with a partner, even though we experience sexual attraction in a different way.

Mackenzie Harte is the GLAAD Media Institute Coordinator of Engagement and Training. Mackenzie joined the GLAAD team full time in June 2017, managing logistics surrounding Institute courses and workshops, contributing to curriculum and planning, and takes part in conducting courses and workshops. Mackenzie's Twitter and Instagram is @MackHarte.

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7 young people discuss their ace identities and what people get wrong about asexuality

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Asexual (Ace) Awareness Week in 2020 runs from October 25th through October 31st, and is a week to honor and celebrate the Asexual community and the asexual people in our lives. Asexuality is a legitimate, lived identity, but is commonly misunderstood. The lack of understanding about asexual identities does, unfortunately, have concrete negative effects on ace people.

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There's no such thing as "looking nonbinary."

This article is part of In Session: The Teen Vogue Lesson Plan. Find the full lesson plan here.

When people see me or hear my name, they usually assume I'm a woman and go by she/her pronouns. But they'd only be partially right. I do identify as a woman, but I also identify as nonbinary (yes, you can be both - more on that later) and use they/them pronouns as well. Unfortunately, being nonbinary is an identity that many people still misunderstand.

What does it mean to be nonbinary?

Nonbinary sex educator and therapist Aida Manduley, MSW defines a nonbinary person as "someone who does not identify as a man or a woman, or solely as one of those two genders." It's often used as "an umbrella term for other identities that fall outside the man/woman dichotomy and may be more specific," they add. "However this person identifies their gender, it does not neatly follow the binary of man and woman."

That definition's pretty broad because being nonbinary means different things to different people. To me, it means that I reject the whole concept of gender. Growing up, I never felt people were wrong when they called me a woman, but it felt like a label imposed on me rather than one that fit. Then, in college, I learned about nonbinary identity, and that did fit. Sure, I have likes and dislikes that some might label "feminine" or "masculine," but I don't feel any need to label them that way. The gender binary has made me feel pigeonholed, and I don't want to identify with it.

Here are some things people tend to get wrong about being nonbinary, in my own experience and that of other nonbinary people.

1. There's No Such Thing As "Looking Nonbinary"

Most people understand that you don't have to wear dresses to be a cis woman or wear pants to be a cis man. Yet many people seem to believe you need an androgynous style to be nonbinary, creating the assumption that I and other nonbinary people who wear women's clothes must be women. But you can't tell how someone identifies based on what they look like, which is why it's so important to ask.

"I wish that people wouldn't automatically use she/her pronouns just because of how I present," says 19-year-old Kelley Cantrell. "They need to stop gendering people's presentations."

"I wear my hair long, and I'm coded as feminine, read as a cis woman. That doesn't invalidate the fact that I'm nonbinary," agrees 24-year-old Alaina Leary. "There is no one specific way that it looks to be nonbinary. Nonbinary people have all types of gender presentations just like women and men do."

2. Being Nonbinary Doesn't Mean You Can't Have Any Other Gender Identity

Some people identify as nonbinary and as a man or woman or trans or something else. I personally identify as a nonbinary woman because, to me, this identity acknowledges both that I don't have an innate identification with any gender and that I've been socialized as a woman.

Having more than one gender identity means different things to others, though. 24-year-old Rey Noble identifies as both nonbinary and a woman to acknowledge that she loves her female-coded body but doesn't always feel it accurately represents her.

Some people also identify as both nonbinary and trans. They may take hormones or undergo gender-affirming surgery, but this doesn't take away from their nonbinary identity. Others are unable to afford these kinds of medical treatments, and some are interested in certain interventions (like perhaps laser facial hair removal) but not others, says Manduley. "And things can also change over time," they add. "The way people relate to their bodies changes over time, regardless of their gender identity."

3. Being Nonbinary Doesn't Mean Feeling Uncomfortable in Your Body

There's a societal misconception that if your genitals and identity don't "match," you will feel uncomfortable with your body. But in reality, there's no such thing as "matching" when it comes to gender and genitals. Who's to say that having a penis or a vulva doesn't "match" a nonbinary identity? Since there's no one way to be nonbinary, this identity can match all kinds of bodies.

Some believe that nonbinary people don't want to be touched on their chests or genitals by sexual partners, says Manduley. "While trans, nonbinary, and/or gender-nonconforming people are more likely to experience gender-related dysphoria, there are tons of people who otherwise don't want their genitals or chests touched during sex anyway," they explain. Instead of making assumptions, they suggest asking "are there any parts of your body you want me to pay more or less attention to?" or "what words do you prefer I use (or prefer I avoid) for the body parts we'll be using for sex?"

4. Not All Nonbinary People Go By They/Them Pronouns

Nonbinary people can also have a variety of pronouns. Some go by they/them, some go by she/her or he/him, some go by both, and some go by more than that. The only way you can know is to ask.

Similarly, some nonbinary people will go by any pronoun, while others have a strong preference and feel deeply unacknowledged when it's not honored. 21-year-old Yven likens it to being called by the wrong name. "There's a real physical pang when someone calls me by the incorrect names," they say.

5. We Are Not All Intersex, Transgender, or Anything Else People Assume We Are

There's some confusion about what it means to be nonbinary. Some equate it with being intersex - that is, having a variety of sex characteristics that fall outside the traditional understanding of male or female - but it has nothing to do with your biology. Others equate being nonbinary with being transgender, i.e. identifying with a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth. Are nonbinary people trans? Some nonbinary people feel this definition applies to them, but others don't. Nonbinary people have a variety of gender expressions.

6. We Have a Variety of Sexual Orientations

Similarly, sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate things. Someone can be cisgender and queer, and they can also be transgender or nonbinary and straight. Or, they can have any of these gender identities and choose not to label their sexual orientation. Sexual orientation generally refers to what gender(s) you are attracted to, whereas gender identity refers to what gender(s) you identify as.

In addition, if you're attracted to a nonbinary person, that doesn't determine what your own sexual orientation is. Sexual orientation is a complex aspect of someone's identity that may involve who they're attracted to, who they date, who they sleep with, what communities they feel they fit into, and what label simply resonates.

7. Nonbinary Identity Is Not Just a Quirk or Trend

Being nonbinary is not just a personality trait or phase; it's a real identity that's existed for thousands of years.

"People are becoming more accustomed to the idea of transgender people, since it's easier to explain the idea of feeling more attuned to the 'opposite gender,' but something that's in the middle or completely absent from the gender spectrum at all is still difficult," says Yven. "I have people asking me what that feels like and then dismissing it when I describe it, or trying to say it's more of a personality quirk rather than a genuine experience." Manduley also comes across the idea that nonbinary identity is just a trend - or, as they put it, "a Tumblr invention."

But some cultures that have long acknowledged people outside the gender binary.

8. We Don't All Feel We Were "Born in the Wrong Body"

This is a common narrative about transgender people as well as nonbinary people, and while it's true for some, it doesn't make the identity of someone who does not relate to the "born in the wrong body" narrative less valid.

I personally don't feel I was born in the wrong body; I feel I was assigned the wrong gender based on people's misconceptions about my body. My nonbinary identity isn't the result of my brain chemistry; it's a reflection of my disagreement with the whole system of gender.

"There's no nonbinary card people have to get validated via distress about their bodies," says Manduley. "Relatedly, dysphoria can be common and is sometimes influenced by the ways in which society (at large and even LGBTQ-specific spaces) often pushes people to gender binaries and leaves nonbinary people feeling broken, confused, and unsettled, like they're doing something wrong for 'not picking a side already.'"

Similarly, nonbinary people don't always feel they were "born that way," Manduley adds. "For some people, their realization (or even discomfort with a binary assignment of man or woman) doesn't materialize until later in life," they explain. "For some, there's little to no distress, and just an internal acknowledgement that their gender is different and/or more complex than man or woman."

9. You Don't Have to Be Equally "Masculine" and "Feminine" to Be Nonbinary

"I'd like people to know that nonbinary isn't just 'you are 50% man and 50% woman,'" says 23-year-old Kay Bashe. Nonbinary people identify as feminine and masculine to different degrees, just like men and women, and that may even change from time to time. Some don't identify with masculinity or femininity at all.

It's not possible for anyone else to say how "masculine" or "feminine" someone is. Masculinity and femininity are just arbitrary labels we give certain traits. What seems masculine to one culture or person might seem feminine to another. And none of them are right or wrong.

10. You Don't Have To Prove You're Nonbinary

I used to feel like a fraud for saying I was nonbinary because I didn't do anything differently from when I identified as a woman. I dressed the same, I acted the same, and I didn't talk about being nonbinary with many people.

Being nonbinary doesn't have to be a huge deal, though. You don't have to do anything special or come out to anyone or behave any differently than you did before. The thing about gender is that it's totally personal to you.

"Being nonbinary isn't as difficult or complicated as it might seem," says Noble. "It's messy and weird in the fact that it's hard to think outside of the box that society constructed for us, but ultimately, it's a term that is welcoming and accepting of whatever you need for it to mean to you. It's something you can create for yourself."

11. Our Gender Identity Is Not All (and, Often, Not Even a Big Part) of Who We Are

Since calling yourself nonbinary is a choice that makes you stand out from the crowd, people may focus on this and see it as the biggest part of who you are. And for some people, it is. But the same way that being a man or woman doesn't always have to mean very much to someone, neither does being nonbinary.

Personally, I think of myself as an individual above all else. My gender identity is a small part of me that says little about my personality, my interests, or my values. I've always thought it was silly to assign people different roles, qualities, and professions due to their gender, and being nonbinary doesn't change that!

12. Learning All These Things Isn't Excessive Political Correctness - It's Part of Being a Nice Person

Why is it worth our time to unlearn these assumptions, educate ourselves about nonbinary identity, and try to understand how the people in our own lives identify? Because it makes us more supportive friends, partners, family members, and human beings.

"For people who don't identify as something outside of their assigned at birth gender, it can be difficult to understand the experience nonbinary and trans people as a whole go through," says Yven. "But learning to accept that people have completely different lives and experiences is part of being human. Supporting that someone is trying to be more comfortable in themselves is something that society should strive for and encourage."
This article was first published in 2018 and has been updated to include more information.
Related: Photo Series Shows Nonbinary People as They Want to Be Seen
Check This Out:

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12 Things People Get Wrong About Being Nonbinary

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There's no such thing as "looking nonbinary." This article is part of In Session: The Teen Vogue Lesson Plan. Find the full lesson plan here . When people see me or hear my name, they usually assume I'm a woman and go by she/her pronouns. But they'd only be partially right.

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Hidden Voices: LGBTQ+ Stories in US History

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Hidden Voices_LGBTQ+ Stories in US History

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LGBTQ Heritage Theme Study - Telling All Americans' Stories 

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The cover of the publication LGBTQ America
Designed by Beth Pruitt

Theme Study Contents
LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History is a publication of the National Park Foundation for the National Park Service and funded by the Gill Foundation. Each chapter is written and peer-reviewed by experts in LGBTQ Studies. For more information on the theme study, please read the LGBTQ Theme Study Fact Sheet. To preview all chapters at once, visit the series home page.

The theme study is too large for us to host as a single document. It is available here as individual chapters, or as two documents: Volume 1 [PDF 14.1 MB] and Volume 2 [PDF 15.8 MB].

Front Matter [PDF 1.6 MB]
Introduction: The chapters in the Introduction section give context to the rest of the theme study. This is the context for the contexts, as it were. This section gives background on the LGBTQ Heritage Initiative, defines terms commonly used throughout the theme study, provides information on how the theme study fits in within the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks programs, and provides a broad social history of LGBTQ in America. What you read in this introductory section will resonate throughout the rest of the theme study. Preserving LGBTQ History: The chapters in this section provide a history of archival and architectural preservation of LGBTQ history in the United States. An archeological context for LGBTQ sites looks forward, providing a new avenue for preservation and interpretation. This LGBTQ history may remain hidden just under the ground surface, even when buildings and structures have been demolished. Inclusive Stories: Much of the existing scholarship on LGBTQ history in America focuses on white, middle-class, largely male, urban communities. These are important histories, but for structural and cultural reasons, they have become the main story (dominant narrative) that people think about when they think about LGBTQ history. Authors of the theme study were asked specifically to broaden their narrative to include other communities that fall under the LGBTQ umbrella. Inclusion, however, isn't enough to describe the geographic, economic, legal, and other cultural factors that shaped these diverse histories. In response, we commissioned chapters providing broad historical contexts specifically for two-spirit, transgender, Latino/a, African American, and Asian American communities (as well as those who live in Rural areas, presented in the Places section of the theme study). These chapters, read in concert with the chapter on Intersectionality, serve as examples of how limiting an exclusive master narrative is and how rich a multi-faceted narrative is when considering the full history of the United States. Themes: The chapters in this section take themes as their starting points. They explore different aspects of LGBTQ history and heritage, tying them to specific places across the country. Places: Unlike the Themes section of the theme study, this Places section looks at LGBTQ history and heritage at specific locations across the United States. While a broad LGBTQ American history is presented in the Introduction section, these chapters document the regional, and often quite different, histories across the country. In addition to New York City and San Francisco, often considered the epicenters of LGBTQ experience, the queer histories of Chicago, Miami, and Reno are also presented. In addition, a chapter on rural LGBTQ heritage challenges the oft-implied assumption that LGBTQ history is an urban one. Finally, an archaeological context describes ways of accessing and thinking about important LGBTQ history that may remain hidden just under the ground surface, even when buildings and structures have been demolished. Legacy: People engage with history in many ways, not just through reading books and reports. The chapters in this section are designed as resources for NPS interpreters, museum staff, teachers, professors, parents, and others who do applied history work and who wish to incorporate LGBTQ history and heritage into their programs, lessons, exhibits, and courses.
Appendix A: Places Identified in the Text [PDF 2.3 MB]

Index [PDF 1.7 MB]

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LGBTQ Heritage Theme Study - Telling All Americans' Stories (U.S. National Park Service)

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Theme Study Contents LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History is a publication of the National Park Foundation for the National Park Service and funded by the Gill Foundation. Each chapter is written and peer-reviewed by experts in LGBTQ Studies.

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LGBTQ+ Visibility & Integration in Elementary

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LGBTQ Inclusion at the Elementary Level - NAESP

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In celebration of Pride Month, an elementary school principal outlines in this Principals’ Voices in School Equity blog post steps to make schools a safe space for LGBTQ students.

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Closets, we learn at a young age, are for winter coats, monsters, and hiding our messiness in darkness. The darkest of spaces are not meant for identities, love, or truth. Closets are not meant for perfectly powdered faces, rainbow flags, pronouns, PrEp conversations, sequins, love letters, or brunch plans. They are not meant to hold our potential and brilliance, yet this world encourages many of us otherwise. Many LGBTQ+ educators and students exist in these closets at home, at school, and in their communities. Sometimes our closets just make us feel comfortable, but too often they are necessary in a world that refuses to validate or affirm our identities.

We leave our closets in hopes of freedom, and we are often greeted with the responsibility of making our schools more inclusive for students and teachers just like us.

The research is clear: LGBTQ+ students benefit from curriculum and classrooms that are safe, inclusive, and affirming of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Our most vulnerable students deserve to be seen, heard, and acknowledged in our schools. They deserve to have the nuance and intersectionality within their identities recognized and included in conversations. Even more so, we know that LGBTQ+ students benefit from having teachers with a shared identity-educators who also identify as LGBTQ+. The indicators are there. So, it is quite easy for our larger educational community, especially on days like National Coming Out Day, to place the onus of inclusion and support of LGBTQ+ students on people like me-LGBTQ+ educators.

I get it. Our plates are full. Each day, we grapple with disrupting and reimagining transformative schools for our students while often dealing with a myriad of other issues-accountability measures, a lack of resources, and never-ending to-do lists. Our lives as teachers have taught us that prioritization and delegation are necessary for survival and sustainability. However, too often we depend on the presence and labor of staff from underrepresented populations to solve our problems. Underneath our championing of diversity in our field is also an assumption that educators from underrepresented populations will solve the problem.

Today we celebrate National Coming Out Day. Members of our communities choose to bust down their closet doors and disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity to friends, families, and strangers. It is a day confettied with courageous vulnerability and pride, but it's also a day of brokenness, darkness, and silence in our community. Sometimes the world isn't ready to receive our light. Sometimes it is necessary to keep our light within us as LGBTQ+ folx. The freedom associated with "coming out of the closet" is sometimes met with a world not ready to receive us or, even more troubling, with the immediate responsibility and burden of making this space more inclusive for people like us.

Famed novelist Toni Morrison once said, "If you are free, you need to free somebody else." As an out queer educator, this sentiment guides my work every single day. Every decision I make is rooted in freedom and liberation; I work to create more space for folx who look and identify like me. As a black queer person, I choose to do this work. However, we cannot depend on LGBTQ+ educators to create the space that they (and their students) deserve and need in our schools. Furthermore, our work to make our schools more inclusive must not be predicated on the visibility of LGBTQ+ students and staff. The presence of LGBTQ+ characters in books, inclusive language, and affirmation of identity should not depend on our perception of our LGBTQ+ student/teacher population. On this National Coming Out Day, I want to charge us with rethinking "ownership" in the work to make our schools more inclusive.

We can't all be out. Reports and suggestions that LGBTQ+ youth need out LGBTQ+ educators often overlook the nuance and intersectionality of our experiences. Just this week, the Supreme Court began to hear arguments on workplace protections for LGBTQ+ people. For various reasons, many of us choose not to be out. In many schools, educators remain in the closet to ensure they can remain in the classroom, particularly in states without protections for LGBTQ+ people. Others choose to keep their personal and professional lives separate (like many who don't identify as LGBTQ+). In 1978, San Francisco politician Harvey Milk said:

Gay brothers and sisters, you must come out. Come out to your parents. I know that it is hard and will hurt them, but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives. Come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your fellow workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop. Come out only to the people you know, and who know you, not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths. Destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake.

Harvey Milk is a legend, but even he missed the mark. Sure-the hope is that our pride will evoke raging allyship among our colleagues, friends, and family, but coming out is a lifelong process that should never need to center the needs of others, particularly allies.
We must no longer depend on the outness of LGBTQ+ educators to make our schools more inclusive for LGBTQ+ students. We must no longer depend on the outness of LGBTQ+ educators and students to determine the need for inclusion in our learning spaces.
As a community, we are all responsible for inclusion and making our LGBTQ+ students feel seen, heard, and affirmed (regardless of their visibility). As LGBTQ+ educators, our worth in this work should no longer depend on our outness. And our community must stop demanding our visibility as a means to support LGBTQ+ students.

Sometimes our closets just make us comfortable and sometimes they are necessary. Sometimes the world is not ready for our light.

Not all of us can be out and not all of us are. Love us anyway.
Not all of us can be out and not all of us are. Make your classrooms, curriculums, and professional development more inclusive of our identities anyway.

On this National Coming Out Day, I celebrate the beauty, brilliance, and resilience in our community. I acknowledge our worth and work regardless of our "outness." To my LGBTQ+ family, I see you even if your identity is not visible and I will continue to work to make space for all of us.

I charge our allies to do the same.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

If you are looking for more resources on supporting LGBTQ+ educators and students, consider the list below.

shea martin is a lit teacher, consultant, and researcher whose work is rooted in antiracist pedagogy, intersectional feminism, and creating liberatory learning structures for BIPOC students. shea's research examines the current educational landscape of America's southern cities with a particular focus on how gender and race inform successful BIPOC student-teacher relationships in underresourced communities. A native of the D.C metro region, they began their teaching career in Florida and recently relocated to Massachusetts to pursue graduate studies. Outside of their work in education, shea is known for making the dopest mixtapes and never bailing on a brunch date. Find them on Twitter at @sheathescholar

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I'm Coming Out (As A Queer Educator Who Will No Longer Do This Work Alone)

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Closets, we learn at a young age, are for winter coats, monsters, and hiding our messiness in darkness. The darkest of spaces are not meant for identities, love, or truth. Closets are not meant for perfectly powdered faces, rainbow flags, pronouns, PrEp conversations, sequins, love letters, or brunch plans.

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How to Have Justice-Centered Conversations

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Sam Blanchard is an educator and current PhD student at UCLA.Learn More

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How to Have Justice-Centered Conversations

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By Sam Blanchard In 2021, there are a record number of proposed laws and policies attacking the rights of LGBTQ+ people across the United States. A large portion of the bills are targeted at trans you

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Exploring Gender Identity and Expression with Children

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Here are some tips to get started discussing gender identity, gender expression and sex assigned at birth with the young children in your life.

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"No, Nayla! Look at the picture! That's not a boy! That's a girl! That's glitter!" Korey shouted at his partner as they were reading a book about a boy who likes sparkles. Nayla looked over at me, expecting me to jump in and support her in this conversation. I had been watching the interaction between the partners for a few minutes, knowing it would reach this point.

From a distance I met eyes with Nayla and gave her an eyebrow raise and an encouraging nod. I knew she had the language and skills to handle this on her own. She stared back for a moment, so I nodded again. Her eyes dropped and she took a deep breath. I could tell she was thinking of what her next move would be. As she lifted her gaze to turn back to Korey, a subtle confidence strengthened her posture.

"Anyone can wear sparkles. We can't assume someone's gender because they are wearing sparkles. Anyone can be who they want to be. The book is calling him a he/him boy, so he's a boy and that's all. It's not even our job to decide. It's our job to be respectful."

With that, Nayla grabbed the book and turned the page. She began reading in a way that signaled the discussion was over. Korey was still for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders and followed Nayla's reading. When she finished the page, she glanced back at me. I was still watching. She smiled proudly. I smiled back. They continued to read with no further argument.

In my classroom, the discussions around gender and pronouns begin early and happen often throughout the year. As with many other topics, this is an area where I have received a lot of pushback from caretakers and school personnel. I have been told that third grade is "too young" to be discussing gender and that by teaching about pronouns and gender, I am setting my students up for a world of confusion.

The first time I can remember crying about my gender was in first grade. My pronouns are she/her/hers, but I am someone who is often misgendered and assumed to use he/him/his pronouns. At the beginning of each school year, as I am meeting new students and adults, I am often called "sir" or "mister." For many of us, waiting to discuss gender is not an option. We are being misgendered now. We are being mistreated now. We are hurting now.

As a teacher, I feel it is important to create opportunities that empower student agency. I want the classroom to be a space where students feel supported in exploring the power of their voices. Likewise, I want students to practice respect and empower each other by listening openly and with empathy. When Nayla hesitated, then reacted with confidence, it was a small but pivotal moment of testing her potential. As I watched Korey listen, I knew he saw it, too.

When these conversations are normalized in the classroom, students are much more equipped with the confidence, language and skills to discuss and solve their own problems. Nayla thought for a moment to compose herself, but she had the words she needed to convey her ideas to Korey in a respectful way.

As I reflect on their interaction, I am proud. I am proud of Nayla for taking a moment and then finding the confidence to use her words and take action. I am proud of Korey for pausing and listening. I am proud of the two students for solving the problem on their own and then continuing to read and work together respectfully. Our students are ready and capable of having these conversations and understanding others with empathy.

No student is too young to learn to be inclusive and respectful of all people.

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Standing Up and Speaking Out About Gender

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"No, Nayla! Look at the picture! That's not a boy! That's a girl! That's glitter!" Korey shouted at his partner as they were reading a book about a boy who likes sparkles. Nayla looked over at me, expecting me to jump in and support her in this conversation.

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Standing with Pride Alongside the Queer Community

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This podcast is for teachers who are passionate about working with multilingual learners. Some links are Amazon Affiliate links. The podcast receives a tiny commission at no expense to buyers.

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Ep 115: Standing with Pride Alongside the Queer Community | Teaching MLs

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We hear from Dr. @JoseMedinaJr89 about the need to stand with our queer students, family members, & queer colleagues if we want to be truly equitable. You can connect with Tan on Twitter at @TanKHuynh and TanKHuynh.com. You can learn more about my courses at https://tankhuynh.com/courses.

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A Queer History of the United States for Young People_Guide

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Contents

Note to Educators

Important Note About Terminology

Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Grades 6–8

Activities & Discussion to Accompany the Introduction (pp. 1-12) & Present the Topic

Section I: America — New Beginnings, New Identities: 1500–1860

Section II: American Freedom Begins to Bloom — Change and the Civil War: 1860–1875e

Section III: New Americans — Boldly Challenging Society: 1875–1900

Section IV: A New Century of Freedom — Radical Visions, Revolutionary Actions: 1900–1960

Section V: Revolutionary Changes — The Seeds of Protest Begin to Bloom: 1960–1977

Section VI: Backlash — Years of Struggle and Resistance: 1977–1990

Section VII: Moving Closer to Liberation — The Future Is in Sight: 1990–Present

Beyond the Book: Follow-Up & Extension Activities

Additional Resources

Download the Teachers’ Guide

Note to Educators:

In the prologue to A Queer History of the United States for Young People, Michael Bronski notes that the “official” history of our nation often ignores certain groups of people, or erases parts of their identity, when they are mentioned in textbooks. He states, “For LGBTQ people—and especially youth and people just coming out—it’s not as easy to find out our true history. It’s not taught in schools” (p. xviii).
It is extremely important for all students to understand the accomplishments, achievements, and contributions that lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and other queer (LGBTQ) individuals have made to United States history. LGBTQ students need role models that reinforce it is okay to be queer and that they are not alone. For the non-queer student, it is equally essential to learn that LGBTQ individuals were fighting for many social justice and issues throughout US history. Bronski acknowledges, “If we are erased from the history books, then how can we ever know who we are? This absence, this erasure, denies us the right and the ability to use our history as a guide, to feel pride in the heroism and accomplishments of the LGBTQ people who came before us. And it denies us the ability to use this history as a guide to the future so we can follow in their footsteps” (p. xix).

A Queer History of the United States for Young People, adapted by Richie Chevat, provides a glimpse into some of the many contributions that queer people have made throughout our history. Loosely organized according to time period, the book offers biographical sketches of important queer figures in US history. Students have learned about some of these individuals, such as Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman, in other contexts but may not know that they were queer. Other figures, such as Gladys Bentley, Kiyoshi Kuromiya, or Sylvia Rivera, will most likely be new to students. The time period in the book begins in 1500 CE and continues through today.

This discussion guide offers educators an opportunity to introduce queer history through a social justice lens and provides activities that extend Bronski’s book to other online and print resources for more in-depth discussions and conversations. Activities are tied to Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for grades 6–8 but can be modified for grades 9–12. An initial section identifies the specific CCSS in English Language Arts, Writing, and Literacy in History/Social Studies addressed throughout. The guide continues with activities that prepare students to think about the power of labels and words used to describe the queer community. The subsequent activities follow the main sections of the book, and the guide concludes with suggestions that extend topics and encourage students think critically about silenced voices.

back to contents

Important Note About Terminology

Bronski provides some basic explanation of words and terminology used by queer people in the introduction and then provides additional definitions in the glossary. Many of these terms have changed over time, and what was once an acceptable label is now considered offensive. The author notes throughout the text when he applies a queer label to a person that may not have been in use during the specific time period. The word “queer” is used throughout this guide to represent the LGBTQ community. While once considered an offensive term by this community, it has now been embraced by some parts of the LGBTQ population as a preferred catchall label.

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Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Grades 6–8

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for grades 6–8 addressed in this discussion guide are listed below. The anchor standard is provided for English Language Arts, Writing, and Literacy in History/Social Studies. Specific grade level standards for a subject area can be found at the URL listed in each CCSS subject area. The abbreviation for each specific standard that will be found after recommended activities is located in bold italics after the description of the standard.
CCSS English Language Arts Standards: Reading: Informational Text and History/Social Studies
Anchor standards are listed below. Specific grade level standards are available at this URL by clicking on the corresponding grade: Reading Informational Text, and History/Social, Studies.

Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Interpret words and phrases as they are used in the text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning and tone. CCSS.ELA- Literacy.RI.6- 8.4; CCSS.ELA- Literacy.RH.6-8.4

Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6

Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6-8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.9; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.9

CCSS English Language Arts Standards: Writing
Anchor standards are listed below. Specific grade level standards are available here by clicking on the corresponding grade:

Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.1

Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2

Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6-8.3

Use technology, including the internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.6

Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.7

Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6-8.8

Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.9

back to contents

Activities & Discussion to Accompany the Introduction (pp. 1-12) & Present the Topic

These activities are meant to introduce the book’s topic and to create an open environment for conversations. Educators may want to pick and choose the activities best suited for their students.
Pre-Reading Activities & Ice Breakers:

Understanding Labels: Share the following with students: “Sometimes we give labels to people, places, and things as a way to better understand the world around us. Labels allow us to group like things together but sometimes only represent one of many aspects or traits that could be used to describe them.”

Read aloud the children’s picture book Red: A Crayon’s Story, by Michael Hall. In this book a blue crayon named Red is mislabeled with a wrapper that reads “red.” Everyone thinks the crayon is supposed to be red and criticizes him when he is unable to create red objects. Eventually, with encouragement, the crayon decides to create blue objects and succeeds, realizing that he is actually Blue Crayon. Educator’s Note: This picture book is an excellent way to introduce the topic of labeling to middle school students and to spark a general discussion about harmful labels.

Discussion Questions

Labels can be wrong, such as the label given to Blue Crayon. Have you ever been given a label? Describe a time when you were given a label that you did not like. How did that make you feel? Compare this to a time when you were given a label that you did like, explaining why you liked the label.

What is a label that you have heard other people use to describe another person? Do you think the label “fit” the person? Was it true? Explain.

Describe what you could do to help or support someone who has been given the wrong label.

What Is Normal?: Share the following with students: “Bronski writes about what is normal. The world ‘normal’ is a label that we use to describe things that a large number of people think is acceptable. ‘Normal’ can also be used to describe something that our parents, our teachers, and other adults believe is a trait that many people have in common based upon what they were taught by their parents or other adults. Sometimes our ideas of what is normal can change over time as we learn new things.”

Centering Activity to Be Led by the Educator:

Pick an attribute related to clothing or jewelry that you decide is “normal” and write it on the board. For instance, wearing socks with flip-flops or wearing a nose ring.

Tell students that this attribute is the new normal and that every student who is not currently wearing socks with their flip-flops or a nose ring will be penalized in some way. Alter this to fit the climate of your school. For instance, if students usually get a study period, state that students without socks and flip-flops or those without a nose ring will not get a study period for the rest of the month. Instead, these students, who are not normal or who are “abnormal” will have to spend that time cleaning the underside of desks and tables in the classroom with a toothbrush. Hold up a toothbrush for effect.

Discussion Question:

If you benefit from this new rule, how do you feel? If you don’t benefit from the new normal, how do you feel? Explain.

Explain that what is determined to be “normal” can be changed at any time by persons in power or authority.

Descriptive Writing Application to Topic: Share the following with students: “Throughout history, LGBTQ people have often been described as behaving in ways that are not normal. This was because they were in the minority, meaning there were more people that identified as heterosexual, or because people in power decided that being LGBTQ was abnormal.”

What would happen if today someone flipped a switch and it was normal in the United States to be LGBTQ but not normal to be not-queer? What if other countries in the world still considered straight to be normal?

Ask students to write a brief letter to a friend describing their reaction to the “new normal.” CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6-8.3

Am I Blue?: Read aloud the short story “Am I Blue?” by Bruce Coville from the book Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Bauer. In this short story, the main character, Vince, is bullied by one of his classmates for being gay. He is rescued by his fairy godfather, Melvin, who grants him three wishes. For one of the wishes, Vince requests that all gay people turn blue. Magically, he notices people around town that are different shades of blue, including the school bully.

Writing Prompts:

Describe how you would feel if you were Vince and had the ability to see people in shades of blue? Would this change how you acted around blue people?

What would you say to the bully once you could see him as bright blue?

Some people believe the myth that all homophobic bullies are actually closeted LGBTQ individuals as described in this story. Think about bullies and homophobic people that you know or have encountered in other books or television shows. Are they all queer? Using your own experiences and information taken from resources in the library, create an argument that explains why all homophobic people are not queer. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.1

Explain to students that being blue is now normal. Have them write a short, imaginary blog post that recounts Vince’s story and describes their own reaction to waking up either (a) blue or (b) not-blue. The post should include descriptions of what it is like to be considered normal or not normal. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6-8.3; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.6

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Section I: America — New Beginnings, New Identities: 1500–1860

The term “two-spirit” is used in this section.

Discussion Questions:

What does it mean? What are some of the Indigenous words used by native populations to describe two-spirit persons? Some Indigenous people also choose to use the term “two-spirit” as a contemporary umbrella term. Explain why they might use this word along with, or in place of, other terms.

Activity:

Show Will Roscoe’s Two-Spirit Slideshow, which provides additional information about two-spirit persons.

Ask the following questions: How are two-spirit persons portrayed in this slide show? What else do you learn about two-spirit persons in history that is not shared in Bronski’s text? Describe what you think life is like today for two-spirit people? Explain your answer. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6-8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Show the short (2-minute) trailer for the PBS film The Bravest Choice Is To Be Yourself. In this clip, students learn the name of a contemporary 16-year-old two-spirit person who was murdered, and they also see several historical images of two-spirit persons.

Working in small groups, have students visit the school or public library to research additional information about contemporary two-spirit persons. Ask students to create a brief presentation with images that shares information about contemporary two-spirit persons. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.7

Ask students to share the presentation in class. After the presentations have finished, lead a discussion of comparing/contrasting two-spirit persons of the past and present. Educator’s Note: This is an extremely important point to explore with students, as they may erroneously believe that two-spirit persons are in the past, a concept often unintentionally promoted and reinforced about Native Americans throughout the curriculum.

On pages 19-20, the author shares passages from a journal and diary entry describing how two European men felt about two-spirit Native Americans.

What type of writing style do these men use? What words in the journal and diary entry are used to convey (or show) each man’s disgust? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.4; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.4
Neither of these European men are Native American. How might their point of view on two-spirit identities change if they were Native American? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6

Do you think these men might have been afraid of, or disturbed by, two-spirit Native Americans? Explain.

Describe other passages from this section that show dislike for queer people. Why do you think queer people were hurt and mistreated? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

A photo of We’Wha, a Zuni native two-spirit person, is shown on page 16. But Bronski does not provide any information about We’Wha. Who was We’Wha?

Show Logo’s short online clip (45 seconds) about We’Wha as a way to introduce further exploration.

Provide students with background information about We’Wha.

Maya Christina Gonzalez’s gender blog series and her entry for Indigenous history

Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition

The Smithsonian Institute has archival photos of We’Wha available. Search their collection here.

Writing Activity: Using information shared in these informational sources, have students create a short 200-word biographical entry about We’Wha that could be included in the Bronski text to accompany the photo. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2; CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6-8.8

No Room for the Merry: The Merrymount Colony Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.4; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.4

Why did the Puritans feel threatened by the Merrymount Colony?

What are the roots of the Puritans’ religious beliefs system? What were some of the beliefs of the Merrymount residents? How did they conflict with Puritan beliefs?

What did the Puritans think was wrong with the maypole that the Merrymount people used in their celebration?

In chapter 2, the author states that the idea of Merrymount “has always been present in the United States and is with us today as well” (p. 27). What does Bronski mean by this statement? Describe examples of Merrymount ideas in society today.

Religion played a big role in the way that the Puritans felt about Merrymount. Describe how religion influences the ways—both positively and negatively—some people feel about the LGBTQ people and community today.

Public Universal Friend Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Who was Public Universal Friend and why did Friend have a huge following?

What were some of Friend’s religious beliefs?

How did the colony established by Friend differ from that of Merrymount? Using a graphic organizer, compare and contrast the two colonies. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2

Although Friend was said to be a friend to all, describe how you think Friend would have reacted to queer individuals. Provide evidence from chapter 3 to support your thoughts.

Deborah Sampson is presented by the author as an example of someone who fits today’s label “queer.” Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Why is Sampson considered queer in Bronski’s text?

Do you think Sampson would welcome this label and being profiled in a book about queer American history? Explain.

Both Sampson and Friend resisted traditional gender expectations during their lives. Using a graphic organizer, compare and contrast Sampson and Friend. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2

In chapters 5-7, the author describes how two men or two women would often develop close friendships with each other. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

What examples from the text are given to explain why these close friendships developed?

In each of these chapters, readers are introduced to famous men who wrote letters to other men and to famous women who wrote letters or poetry to other women. Does expressing your feelings to someone of the same sex or same gender mean “that you love them or are sexually attracted to them”? Explain.

The terms “intersex” and “bisexual” are briefly mentioned here (and in the glossary at the back of the book).

According to the text, what do these terms mean?

Using a resource such as the definitions provided by Trans Student Educational Resources or those provided in The ABC’s of LGBT+ by Ashley Mardell, have students define “intersex” and “bisexual.”

Have students compare and contrast the different definitions of these terms and participate in a large group discussion. If it does not come up, prompt students to look up the word “hermaphrodite” and discuss how sometimes “hermaphrodite” and “intersex” are thought to be the same thing, but they are not.

Educator’s Note: You might also find this to be a good time to introduce the Gender Unicorn, created by Trans Student Educational Resources, to visually depict the difference among the terms “sex,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression.” Educators might also consider introducing students to the historical overlap of various LGBTQ terms, as well as how the terms have changed over time as we have acquired a more nuanced understanding of biology and identity. One useful resource is Safe Zone Project’s LGBTQ+ Vocabulary Glossary of Terms.

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Section II: American Freedom Begins to Bloom — Change and the Civil War: 1860–1875

In chapter 8, we learn about Albert Cashier, a retired soldier from the Civil War, who was assigned female at birth and identified and dressed as a man. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

What was Cashier’s birth name and where was the soldier born?

o How did Cashier end up in a state mental hospital? Why was Cashier forced to wear dresses?

According to the text, some retired soldiers supported Cashier’s desire to wear trousers and traditional “men’s” clothing. Write a persuasive letter to the state hospital, from the point of view of one of the soldiers, asking that Cashier be allowed to wear the clothing of his choice. Include your own reasons but also be sure to cite specific examples from the chapter given as reasons why the soldiers supported Cashier’s choice. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6-8.3

On page 67, Bronski states that “there are over four hundred documented cases of women who dressed as men to fight in the Civil War.”

Using the school or public library’s print and online resources, identify one of these women and create a one-page biographical profile that describes the person’s life before, during, and after the Civil War. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2; CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6-8.8

Be sure to include at least one visual, preferably a photograph of the individual if it is available.

Creatively present your biographical profile to the class.

Charlotte Cushman was considered one of the greatest American female actors in the mid-1800s.

Discussion Questions: Although the term “lesbian” was never used in this chapter to describe Cushman, what specific evidence from the text does the author use to suggest that she was a woman who loved women? Does the author make a convincing argument that Cushman was a queer woman? Explain. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Play all or a portion of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s podcast “I Will Assume Thy Part in Some Disguise”/“Charlotte Cushman: When Romeo Was a Woman”

Have students identify additional information about Cushman from the podcast that is not included in chapter 8. What new information did they learn from the podcast? Why do they think this information was excluded from chapter 9? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Exploring Types of Writing: Show students the online article “Breaking: Is Charlotte Cushman Cheating on Her Wife Emma with Her Gal Pal Emma?” Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.9; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.9

From the title of the article, how do you think information about Charlotte Cushman will be presented? What style of writing does the Autostraddle blog use to introduce readers to the life of Cushman?

Although the writing style of this article is different from Bronski’s, is it less credible? Support your stance with specific examples from the article and chapter 9.

Explain when the writing style of the blog would be more useful. Also describe when the writing style of Bronski’s book would be better.

Educator’s Note: Some of the content on Autostraddle may not be appropriate for all middle school students. Concerned educators might consider printing and distributing the article to their students or speaking with their students about how to determine what is an age-appropriate resource.

In chapter 11, Rebecca Primus and Addie Brown are introduced as a potentially lesbian or bisexual couple. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Cite specific examples from the chapter that the author uses to suggest Primus and Brown were a couple.

Writing Prompt: Both women were African American. What challenges might they have faced both being Black and loving women? Use information from the text as well as information found from other informational sources (online or print) to support your answer. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.9

On page 88, Bronski describes “the battle over who is American” and the formation of the Know-Nothing Party and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Why were the Know-Nothing Party and the KKK formed? Why were certain groups of people targeted by the KKK or the Know-Nothing Party?

Writing Prompt: Primus, Brown and other African Americans would have been targets of the KKK. Write a persuasive letter to the government urging it to protect these targeted groups from the KKK. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.3

The “battle over who is American” is still present today. Using current news stories from reliable information sources, write a contemporary trends blog article that describes which groups of people are considered by some people in the United States as not being true Americans. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.8

Extension Discussion: Throughout its history, the KKK has targeted racial minorities, religious groups such as Jews and Catholics, and queer individuals. In 1937, it attacked the La Paloma night club, which was associated with the Cuban and Caribbean community, in Miami, Florida. Share with students the Time magazine article “Why a Forgotten KKK Raid on a Gay Club in Miami Still Matters 80 Years Later.” Lead a discussion on the following:

Why do you think the La Paloma attack is not as well-known as the raid on the Stonewall Inn or the Pulse nightclub in Orlando?

What are some other examples of the KKK attacking the LGBTQ community? Using informational sources from the school or public library, create a timeline of various contemporary events that demonstrate attacks by the KKK, as well as by other hate groups, on the queer community. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.3; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.7

Educator’s Note: Topics about hate groups have the potential to be traumatizing for groups targeted by these groups. Educators should practice mindfulness to ensure that students of color and queer students feel supported during these discussions.

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Section III: New Americans — Boldly Challenging Society: 1875–1900

Victoria Woodhull was an outspoken, free-thinking woman during a time when many women did not have the right to vote and often endured restrictions based upon their class, race, social standing, and marital status. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Using information presented in this chapter, describe some of the important “firsts” that define Woodhull’s life. How did these accomplishments set her apart from other women?

What was the Free Love Movement, described in chapter 12? What was Woodhull’s role in this movement, and why was she called Mrs. Satan in a political cartoon in Harper’s Weekly?

Looking at the primary source of the political cartoon on HarpWeek.com, notice the caption that was published with the cartoon on February 17, 1872. What does this caption mean when used along with the cartoon? Is this meaning the same as the one that Bronski uses under the cartoon in chapter 12? Describe why you think Bronski did not show the original caption. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.9; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.9

Using credible informational sources found online, determine if the Free Love Movement is still active today and how it changed over time. Write a brief summary of your findings, including a timeline of events. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.8

Woodhull was asked by the Equal Rights Party to run for president. What issues did this party support? Who did Woodhull choose as her vice presidential running mate? Why was this choice important during this time period?

Using the text from the primary source document Equal Rights Party Platform (1872) found on Teachinghistory.org, describe other reasons the Equal Rights Party chose Woodhull. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.9; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.9

Woodhull was not a lesbian. What was her role in queer US history? Do you think it was an important one? Use specific examples from the text to support your argument.

Both Jane Addams and Lillian Wald made significant contributions to living, work, and health conditions for lower socioeconomic communities. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Cite specific examples from the text that describe each of these women’s roles in improving life for the poor.

Addams had multiple aspects of her identity that made her an outsider. Identify these aspects and describe how they may have influenced the work that she did.

There is considerable, historical information about Addams available online. Divide the class into small groups and have students further explore the life of Addams and the contributions she made to society in general. Ask them to use a graphic organizer to compare and contrast the ways that Addams is presented in these sources vs. in Bronski’s chapter. Also have students identify which sources mention her romantic and sexual relationships with women and which ones don’t. Ask students to describe why this part of her identity might be glossed over in some of these information sources. Possible sources include

Jane Addams Papers Project

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

Jane Addams Peace Association, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Julian Eltinge was famous for his female impersonations. Bronski states that Eltinge was the “most famous cross-dresser in America” during his lifetime. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.4; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.4

Describe specific examples of Eltinge’s success, mentioned in chapter 14.

The chapter states, “William Julian Dalton spent a lot of time confusing people.” What was confusing about him? Is Bronski’s use of the word “confusing” meant to be an insult or a compliment? Explain.

Show students an example of Eltinge’s performances, which can be found online as part of the New York Foundation for the Arts’ project “Lady Bill . . . The Story of Julian Eltinge.” Educator’s Note: This website includes several parts of a video documentary about Eltinge with considerable information about the performer. After showing students some of the performances by Eltinge, continue with the following questions:

Julian insisted that he was not gay, even though people may have thought this because he performed as a female impersonator. Why might others assume that cross-dressing on stage means someone is gay?

Julian insisted he was a “real man.” What do you think he meant, in the time he was living, by this label? Do you think he meant that “real men” aren’t gay or that “real men” don’t enjoy wearing women’s clothing? Explain.

How do you think queer people, at the time, might have felt about Eltinge’s performances and statements? Explain using details from the book.

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Section IV: A New Century of Freedom — Radical Visions, Revolutionary Actions: 1900–1960

Chapter 15 describes some of the accomplishments of Marie Equi, the doctor and radical activist. Discussion Questions:

Equi had many similarities to Jane Addams. Compare and contrast the lives of these two women who loved other women and fought for the rights of struggling people.

Equi is one of the few queer mothers covered in Bronski’s book.

Have students use biographical information about Equi provided in the book and additional information available online via educational resources to gain a better understanding of her many accomplishments.

Ask students to write a journal entry from the point of view of Equi’s daughter, Mary, where she describes one of her mother’s accomplishments from a teenager’s perspective. Students should include a reference citation at the end of their entry to any historical fact mentioned. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.3; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.7

Several terms or labels to describe the queer community, such as “pansies” and “bulldaggers,” are introduced in chapter 16. These terms were used within and outside the queer community. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.4; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.4

What do each of these labels mean? When used by non-queer people, do you think these labels were meant to be demeaning?

These labels—often originating in mainstream culture—were used by the queer community to describe themselves. How do you think people in that community felt about the labels being used by others? Why did they adopt these labels to describe themselves? Are any of these labels still used today?

According to Bronski, Gladys Bentley was “billed in Harlem as Broadway’s Queen of Song and Jazz.” Show photographs of Bentley from this time period using the Smithsonian Year of Music resource “Gladys Bentley: Blues Singer.” Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Provide specific examples from the text that show Bentley was respected as a musician.

Bentley both recorded music and performed songs on stage. In her recorded music, she sang about women loving men, but in her live music she would change pronouns to sing about women loving women.

Explain why Bentley changed her song lyrics.

Listen to an online sample of Bentley’s music and rewrite the song, changing the pronouns. Describe how the message of the song changes, just by replacing one or two words. Educator’s Note: Some of Bentley’s songs may contain descriptions and language that may be uncomfortable for some students. Be sure to preselect songs for students to analyze. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.6

Bentley had a thriving career in Harlem during a time when systemic racism influenced the lives of all African Americans. While there was racism in the North, many African Americans in the South faced more pervasive discrimination, as well as the ever-present threat of violence and death.

Describe how Bentley’s life would have been different if she lived in a Southern state versus in New York City.

Using informational sources from the school or public library to learn more about the lives of Southern African Americans during this time period, construct a graphic organizer that compares and contrasts Bentley’s life in Harlem to what it would have been like if she grew up in a Southern town like Birmingham, Alabama, or Jackson, Mississippi. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.9

Later in life, during the 1950s, Bentley began dressing more like other women during performances and married a man.

On page 125, Bronski notes, “We don’t know exactly why Bentley changed as she got older. Perhaps she felt pressure from the push for socially conservative attitudes in the 1950s.’ According to the African American Registry online, Bentley gave very specific reasons for changing.

Read the article “Gladys Bentley, More Than a Liberated Singer.” Using specific examples from the text, explain why Bentley changed. Why might she turn to religion? Why do you think this information is not specifically explained in Bronski’s chapter? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.9; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.9

What other populations were being targeted by “witch hunts” during this era in history?

Write a private journal entry from the point of view of Bentley where you express your feelings about having to change your identity in order to save your life. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.3

On page 132, Bronski states, “World War II was a turning point for LGBTQ people and their community.” Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Provide specific examples from the text that demonstrate how the lives of LGBTQ people changed during this time period.

Do you think it as important today, as it was following WWII, for queer people to live in communities with a large LGBTQ population? Describe the advantages and disadvantages of living in communities with a large LGBTQ population.

Mattachine Society. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

What was the Mattachine Society and how was it formed? Using specific examples from chapter 18, describe the role this society played in queer US history.

Numerous chapters of the Mattachine Society were formed across the United States. Watch the brief (1.5 min.) archival film clip from PBS, What Was the Mattachine Society? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Describe why you think the president of the Florida chapter, Richard Inman, denies being gay.

Inman also states that homosexuals do not want to be married or adopt children. Why might he say this in the era of the pre-Stonewall 1960s? Do you think this is true? Based upon information from Bronski’s book, provide an example of homosexuals adopting children or having entered into marriage-like relationships.

If some queer people during the mid-century said they did not want be married or adopt children, why do some people in the queer community today want to adopt or marry? What has changed?

Daughters of Bilitis. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

What was the Daughters of Bilitis organization and how was it formed? Using specific examples from chapter 19, describe the role of this organization in queer US history.

Why were the Daughters of Bilitis founders critical of the Mattachine Society?

Listen to the interview with Phyllis Lyon on GLSEN.org about how Daughters of Bilitis was created. What additional information do you learn from the interview?

Compare and contrast the perspective of the recorded interview vs. Bronski’s text. Do you find one format more engaging than the other? Explain. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Explain when the format of an interview would be useful. Also describe when the format of Bronski’s book would be better.

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Section V: Revolutionary Changes — The Seeds of Protest Begin to Bloom: 1960–1977

Pauli Murray was an advocate for many marginalized groups during this time period. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Describe some of these groups and how Murray worked for their civil rights.

How do you think Murray’s own identity influenced her decision to work for equal rights?

Many queer people, often from discriminated or marginalized communities, have fought for equal rights for marginalized people. Choose another individual introduced in Bronski’s book and compare and contrast that person’s civil rights work with Murray’s work. Use a visual organizer as needed. Be sure to include specific examples from the text. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2

Murray coined the phrase “Jane Crow.” How is “Jane Crow” different from “Jim Crow”? Using print and digital informational sources from the library, write a news article that describes some of the US laws or social beliefs and policies today that specifically exclude particular marginalized groups of people. How have current social conditions changed for these groups compared to the time period in Section V? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.9

Murray’s life was positively influenced by religion. Using specific examples, describe how she was treated by the church compared to other queer persons mentioned in Bronski’s book.

Bayard Rustin was an African American gay man who was very active in many different civil rights movements for marginalized populations. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Create a timeline of Rustin’s work with these movements, noting influential people in his life. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2

While working in some of the civil rights organizations throughout his life, Rustin was frequently asked to “abandon his homosexuality.” Explain why he refused to act straight.

Carl Wittman wrote Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto in 1969, which took ideas and language of other civil rights movements and applied them to the queer community in a public, political statement.

Exploring the Manifesto: Divide students into small groups. Using the archived digital version of Wittman’s manifesto, have each group choose a different section of it and examine the text to identify politicized, emotionally charged, or potentially controversial words. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.4; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.4; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6

Have students create a list of these words, as well as any definitions provided in their section.

Ask students to consider why these specific words might have been used by Wittman and the influence these words had on the overall message of the manifesto.

Wittman’s manifesto was radical for its time. Much has happened in queer history since the manifesto was written. Is it still relevant today? Using information about more recent queer history in other sections of this book, choose an issue identified in the manifesto and create a persuasive argument that shows how the issue is still important in our current society. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.1

Understanding the National Organization for Women and the Lavender Menace. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Why was the National Organization for Women (NOW) important for equal rights for women?

What was the Lavender Menace and what role did it play in queer history?

Using information from the text, describe why some women in NOW did not like the Lavender Menace.

The Lavender Menace also had an important role in feminism. What does the word “feminism” mean? Using a Venn diagram, show where feminism and the Lavender Menace overlapped. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2

In chapters 23 and 24, the author describes the important contributions of Rita Mae Brown and Gloria Anzaldúa. During this time period and in the decades before, James Baldwin’s work also was equally important to queer history. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.9; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.9

Provide students with selected works of Baldwin, Brown, and Anzaldúa (these can be excerpts). Have them read over these selections and identify any passages, stories, etc., that might have been important to the queer community and describe why these were important.

What can readers learn about queer culture from the works of these authors? Have students provide specific examples.

All three of these authors had other aspects or parts of their identity that made them a minority. What are some of these aspects? Are any of these aspects described in their written work?

Both Anzaldúa and Baldwin write about their racial and ethnic identities in their work. Describe how their race and ethnicity impacted or intersected with their queer identities?

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Section VI: Backlash — Years of Struggle and Resistance: 1977–1990

In chapter 25, Bronski describes how different types of music are embraced by different types of people. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

During the 1970s, what types of music were popular with the queer community? What specific music artist(s) are mentioned as being enjoyed and celebrated by the queer community?

What contemporary musical artists are embraced by the queer community today? Using print and online informational sources from the school or public library, identify a contemporary musical artist and describe why their music is popular with the queer community or why the queer community looks up to them. Do any of these artists identify as queer? Do you think this makes a difference in their popularity? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.7

Anita Bryant is mentioned as a musical artist who opposed the queer community and legal equality for queer people in the 1970s.

Using information from the chapter, describe why she felt that queer individuals were dangerous to society. Be sure to explain specifically what she did and how she made her views publicly known.

Describe how the queer community responded to Bryant and expressed their discontent toward her views.

HIV and AIDS began appearing in the queer community in the early 1980s and by the ’90s, many queer people and gay men, including men who had sex with men, had died from the complications resulting from an HIV infection. Bronski’s text provides some information about the AIDS crisis. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

According to this chapter, what caused the spread of HIV/AIDS to the point that it became a national health crisis? Describe how the US federal government responded. How was this response similar to the response of many who were not part of the LGBT community? What was the influence of these responses on the spread of HIV/AIDS? Explain if AIDS is still a problem today.

Explore the topic further: Have students read the book VIRAL: The Fight against AIDS in America by Ann Bausum.

How is the writing in Bausum’s book different from Bronski’s text? What specific language does she use to make the reader sympathize with people with AIDS/HIV? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.9; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.9

What topics does Bausum bring up in her book that are not covered in Bronski’s text? Have students brainstorm a list of these topics and then choose one topic that they think should be added to Bronski’s section on HIV and AIDS. Ask students to create a brief paragraph, using expository writing, that introduces their topic and could be added to Bronski’s book. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.3

San Francisco was considered to be a safe place for the queer community in the late 1970s. However, both Robert Hillsborough and Harvey Milk were gay men murdered in San Francisco, in 1977 and 1978, respectively. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Why were each of these men murdered? Using information from the text, compare and contrast the two murders and the sentencing of the killer for each of these men.

Using credible informational sources from the school or public library, identify queer people today who have been murdered because of their identity. If the people convicted of these crimes have been sentenced, how does it compare to the sentencing for the killers of Hillsborough and Milk? Are people given more or less time now for murdering a member of the queer community? Do you think the sentencing has anything to do with how current society views queer people? Explain. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.8

In chapters 27-29, Bronski presents the lives of three people of color—Essex Hemphill, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kiyoshi Kuromiya—who were instrumental during this time period in the fight for rights for persons of color as well as queer individuals. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Using examples from these chapters, describe how each of these individuals worked to bring about unity and understanding.

Is racism still a problem today in the queer community? How do communities of different races and ethnicities, including white communities, engage in queerphobia today? Use information from Bronski’s book, as well as credible information sources from the library, to support your argument. Educator’s Note: A helpful resource on this topic would be We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation, by Matthew Reimer and Leighton Brown. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.8

In the Prologue (xi–xx), Bronski describes his experiences during this time period and through the time period covered in the next section. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6

How is the author’s description of historical events or groups such as the Gay Liberation Movement different in the prologue compared to those in Section V, VI, or VII?

Identify specific examples of language use or writing style that demonstrate how information is presented differently.

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Section VII: Moving Closer to Liberation — The Future Is in Sight: 1990–Present

Bullying is a problem that many LGBTQ students have experienced in the past and today. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Who is Jamie Nabozny and why was he bullied in school? Describe how his teachers and school faculty responded to his bullying.

Nabozny eventually filed a lawsuit against his school. What was the outcome of the court case and how did it help with the fight for queer equality?

Imagine you have a classmate like Nabozny who is bullied for being queer. Brainstorm ways that can you help them. Describe what it means to be an ally to someone who is queer. Identify online resources that you could share with queer classmates to help them get help. Educator’s Note: This is a great opportunity to share multiple anti-bullying resources available online. One example is GLSEN’s free Safe Space Kit. Also check out the Trevor Support Center, part of the Trevor Project, which provides a host of topics with questions and answers that LGBTQ youth would find helpful. It Gets Better has hundreds of videos of celebrities, teens, and everyday people offering words of encouragement to queer youth. It also has a page of national hotlines where queer youth can get help.

Jack Baker and Michael McConnell were the first gay couple to be legally married in the US, decades before it was legal for two people of the same sex to marry. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Using information from the text, describe how the couple was able to marry.

Watch the short (approx. 4 min.) online clip “The Longest-Married Gay Couple in the U.S. Tells Their Story.” The clip introduces the couple, shows footage of their wedding, and follows an interview with them about their story. Describe the type of storytelling or narrating used in the news story. How is it different from that of the Bronski chapter? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Now that you been introduced to the couple through the clip, what are things you notice about them? Think about an older heterosexual couple such as great-grandparents or another couple. How are Baker and McConnell like them? How are they different?

Both Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson are important trans figures in queer history and played a role in the Gay Liberation Movement. Discussion Questions: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

What were the Stonewall Riots and how did they start?

Describe the role of both Rivera and Johnson in GLF, the first radical LGBT political group, and in queer history. Be sure to mention S.T.A.R.

Why do some people in the queer rights movement—historically and currently—ignore the rights of trans people?

Watch the short (5 min.) online clip about the lives of Rivera and Johnson from People magazine. Compare and contrast the way the duo is portrayed in the clip versus the portrayal in Bronski’s chapter. What new information do you learn? How is the information presented differently? Is the audience for these two informational sources the same? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Many queer people choose to come out while others do not. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1

Using the information in chapter 33, describe some of the queer people who came out and the reaction of others (their family, friends, the public) when they heard the news. Why do you think others acted the way that they did? Why do some people support the queer community but others do not?

Contemporary Biographies Activity: There are many contemporary queer individuals that have made a lasting impact or brought about significant change in the queer community. Some of these people are briefly introduced in this section while others are not. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.8

Have students brainstorm a list of additional contemporary queer individuals who have made a difference in the queer community.

Tell students that the class will create an updated digital biography collection of contemporary queer figures. Note that the word “subject” is used to describe someone who is the focus of a biography.

Using informational sources found online or in print resources from the school or public library, have students use research skills to find biographical information about a contemporary queer individual/subject. This can be someone brainstormed in class or a new person. (One helpful online resource for identifying subjects is GLSEN’s LGBTQ+ History Cards Bios. A useful print resource to identify subjects is Queer Icons from Gay to Z: Activists, Artists & Trailblazers, by Patrick Boyle. Educators can consult the bibliography to this guide for other recommended resources that profile queer heroes.

Have students draft a brief (300-400 word) biographical description of their chosen person that could be added to the class digital biography.

Ask students to use persuasive language to create a short statement as to why their person/subject should be included in the class digital biography.

Using Adobe Spark, PowerPoint, or another digital tool, have students create a presentation that highlights the biographical description of their selected person and is accompanied by photographs.

Subject Smackdown: Each student will introduce their chosen subject to the class via their presentation. Using their persuasive statement, students will try to convince the class why their subject should be added to the class digital biography. After everyone has presented, the class will cast anonymous ballots to select a specified number of subjects for the digital biography. If they think all subjects should be included, then they should provide a persuasive rationale.

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Beyond the Book: Follow-Up & Extension Activities

Missing My Face: Bronski’s book defines many words and labels used to describe the LGBTQ community. However, in the introduction, it does not introduce readers to the labels “asexual” or “intersex,” which is how some members of the queer community describe themselves. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.2; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.8

Using a resource such as GLSEN’s Key Concepts and Terms or Welcoming Schools’ LGBTQ Definitions for Adults, define each of these words and other terms that may be missing.

Ask students why they think the author might not have included these labels in the introduction.

How would someone who is part of the LGBTQ+ community feel if their identity and subgroup was missing from a queer history book?

Working with the school librarian or local young adult public librarian, have students use informational sources to identify a notable asexual or intersex person.

Ask students to use expository writing and create a brief entry for this individual that could be included in an expanded edition of Bronski’s book. Remind them to cite their information sources.

Educator’s Note: You might consider having a discussion with students about the different ways that Bronski defines some terms compared to the way these terms are defined by other resources such as GLSEN or Welcoming Schools. This could lead to a discussion about the use of language, changing terminology, etc. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.4; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.4

Queer Teen Fiction vs. Nonfiction Comparison: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.1; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6- 8.6

Identify a historical fiction novel with a queer character that is either featured in Bronski’s text or lived during a time period covered in Bronski’s text.

Read the novel.

Create a blog post for a classroom blog on queer literature for teens that compares and contrasts the way the topic is presented in the novel versus the Bronski text. Be sure to identify literary devices used by the authors to present the information and describe how this influences the reader.

Educator’s Note: Two examples of potential books are Ziggy, Stardust and Me by James Brandon and Soldier’s Secret: The Story of Deborah Sampson by Sheila Solomon Klass. Additional books can be found on literary blogs of queer YA literature such as YA Pride, via booklists such as the Rainbow Book List, or book awards like the Stonewall Book Awards.

Trans History Visual vs. Written: This book briefly introduces a few key historical moments for trans people. This is also accomplished online in digital sources such as films. Lead students in a discussion about how the medium for sharing information influences the way the audience responds. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.7; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7

Show the short (4 min.) online film A Trans History: Time Marches Forward and So Do We. This film, produced by the ACLU and narrated by Laverne Cox, briefly introduces the problems faced by the trans community, noting trans heroes such as Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Sketchnoting is used in the film to capture the essence of Cox’s narrative.

Ask students to respond to the film. What do they like/dislike?

How does the information in the film differ from the information presented in the various sections of this book?

Does the digital format make the film more interesting than the information presented in the book format? Explain.

Do the creators of the video use any persuasive devices or techniques to encourage viewers to like it? Does Bronski use any persuasive devices throughout the book to encourage readers to like it? CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6- 8.6; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6

Which source would be better for a school report on the topic of trans history? Explain.

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Additional Resources

This list contains both print and digital resources used in this educator’s guide, as well as supplemental sources to further explore topics and themes related to LGBTQ history. Some titles are meant to be background reading for educators and others are meant for use by students with various reading abilities in grades 6-8.
Print Resources:

The ABC’s of LGBT+, by Ashley Mardell. Mango Media, 2016.

Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Bauer. Harper Collins, 1994.

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin. Candlewick, 2014.

Gay & Lesbian History for Kids: The Century-Long Struggle for LGBT Rights, by Jerome Pohlen. Chicago Review Press, 2016.

The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, by Lillian Faderman. Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, edited by Howard Chiang. Charles Scribner & Sons, 2019.

LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field, by Kristin Cronn-Mills. Twenty-First Century Books, 2016.

Pride and Joy: LGBTQ Artists, Icons and Everyday Heroes, by Kathleen Archambeau. Mango Media, 2017.

Queer Icons from Gay to Z: Activists, Artists & Trailblazers, by Patrick Boyle. Smith Street Books, 2019.

Red: A Crayon’s Story, by Michael Hall. HarperCollins, 2015.

Representing the Rainbow in Young Adult Literature: LGBTQ+ Content since 1969, by Christine Jenkins and Michael Cart. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018.

Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by Annika Butler-Wall, Kim Cosier, Rachel Harper, Jeff Sapp, Jody Sokolower, and Melissa Bollow Tempel. Rethinking Schools, 2016.

The Routledge History of Queer America, edited by Don Romesburg. Routledge, 2018.

Soldier’s Secret: The Story of Deborah Sampson, by Sheila Solomon Klass. Henry Holt, 2009.

Stonewall: Breaking Out for Gay Rights, by Ann Bausum. Speak/Penguin Random House, 2016.

The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History, by Marc Stein. NYU Press, 2019.

Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History (The Harvey Goldberg Series for Understanding and Teaching History, 2nd ed., edited by Leila J. Rupp and Susan K. Freeman. University of Wisconsin Press, 2017.

VIRAL: The Fight against AIDS in America, by Ann Bausum. Viking Books for Young Readers, 2019.

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation, by Matthew Reimer and Leighton Brown. Ten Speed Press, 2019.

We Make It Better: The LGBTQ Community and Their Positive Contributions to Society, by Eric Rosswood and Kathleen Archambeau. Mango, 2019.

What Was Stonewall?, by Nico Medina. Penguin Workshop, 2019.

Ziggy, Stardust and Me, by James Brandon. G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2019.

Online Resources:

The Bravest Choice Is to Be Yourself: Trailer for video created by the Public Broadcasting Service on contemporary two-spirit individuals.

“Breaking: Is Charlotte Cushman Cheating on Her Wife Emma with Her Gal Pal Emma?”:
Autostraddle blog post on Charlotte Cushman
Defending Intellectual Freedom: LGBTQ+ Materials in School Libraries: Developed by the American Association of School Librarians, this guidebook provides information for school librarians wanting to develop services for queer students and making connections in the community with other organizations serving queer youth.

Equal Rights Party Platform (1872): Teachinghistory.org’s historical article on the Equal Rights Party Platform.

“Gay Is Good”: Digital Collections in LGBTQ US History: Article by Lisa N. Johnston that provides a list of free digital archives of LGBTQ oral histories and primary source materials that could supplement discussion on queer history. September 2019, College & Research Libraries News.

“Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!”: Online primary source of the 1872 political cartoon from Harper’s Magazine about Victoria Woodhull.

“Gladys Bentley, More Than a Liberated Singer”: Biographical article from the African American Registry Online.

Gladys Bentley: Blues Singer: Smithsonian Year of Music online archival collection.

GLSEN: Geared toward educators, this organization offers suggestions for making schools inclusive for LGBTQ students and offers educator guides, lesson plans, biography cards, and much more. Note: Several portions of the GLSEN website were mentioned in this guide, but only the general website is listed here.

“I Will Assume Thy Part in Some Disguise“/“Charlotte Cushman: When Romeo Was a Woman”: Podcast created by Folger Shakespeare Library on Charlotte Cushman.

It Gets Better Project: Project provides over 60,000 motivational webstreams for LGBTQ youth and adults (including celebrities) meant to encourage queer students.

Lady Bill . . . The Story of Julian Eltinge: New York Foundation for the Arts online project.

LGBTQ+ Vocabulary Glossary of Terms: Part of the Safe Zone Projects resources for educators, this list provides definitions of various LGBTQ terms, including outdated terms.

The Longest-Married Gay Couple in the U.S. Tells Their Story: Online video provided by global news that provides an interview with Jack Baker and Michael McConnell.

Rainbow Book List: Compiled by the American Library Association’s (ALA) Rainbow Roundtable, this booklist includes high-quality fiction and nonfiction youth titles featuring LGBTQ topics.

Refugees from Amerika: The Gay Manifesto: by Carl Wittman, 1969, digital archival copy.

Stonewall Awards: Presented by the ALA’s Rainbow Roundtable, this annual award is given to books that positively and accurately represent the experiences of queer individuals. Categories include adult fiction, adult nonfiction, and children/teens.

Teaching LGBTQ History: Instructional Resources for California Educators, Students, and Families: Compiled by Our Family Coalition, this online resource offers educator lesson plans on LGBTQ history and topics that can be searched by theme and grade level.

Teaching Tolerance’s Gender and Sexual Identity Educator Resources: Provides a searchable database of free lesson plans related to gender and sexual identity to use with students across grade levels. An additional resource by Teaching Tolerance is their Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students.

A Trans History: Time Marches Forward and So Do We: Online film, produced by the ACLU and narrated by Laverne Cox.

Trans Student Educational Resources: Provides definitions of queer terms for students and includes the Gender Unicorn infographic, which can be used to teach students about the difference between gender identity, gender expression, and sex.

The Transgender Heroines Who Started a Revolution: Online film, produced by People magazine, that provides historical information about trans heroines Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

“Transgender Spotlight: We’Wha”: Online article from the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition about We’Wha.

Trevor Project: National nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and support education for queer youth.

Two-Spirit Slideshow: Online PowerPoint by Will Roscoe with considerable factual information about two-spirit individuals.

We’Wha Photos: A collection of archival photos of We’Wha from the Smithsonian Institute.

We’Wha video clip: Produced by Logo TV and narrated by Laverne Cox, this online clip introduces the famous Native American two-spirit individual We’Wha.

“Welcome to Indigenous History Week”: Online post by Maya Christina Gonzalez on her gender blog series about gender in Indigenous cultures.

Welcoming Schools: Created by the Human Rights Campaign, this online resource provides educator resources on queer topics including definition sheets, lesson plans, recommended books, and more.

What Was the Mattachine Society?: Online archival video from the Public Broadcasting Service.

“Why a Forgotten KKK Raid on a Gay Club in Miami Still Matters 80 Years Later”: Time magazine news article on the La Paloma raid.

YA Pride: Literature review blog focused on LGBTQIA+ representation in young adult books. Includes a “master list” of tween and teen books with LGBTQIA+ characters.

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This teaching guide was created by Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo, Foster-EBSCO Professor at the University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies. Jamie researches and consults regularly on topics related to LGBTQIA+ children’s and young adult literature and library services to Rainbow Families. He has worked with teens and children in both school and public libraries. Additional information about his work can be found at

Download the Teachers’ Guide

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Beacon Press: A Queer History of the United States for Young People Discussion Guide

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The Effects of Homophobia and Transphobia on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Students

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Inside the Book: Alok Vaid-Menon (BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY)

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Sexual Orientation: A Spectrum Of Attraction

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This post was written by NCTE member Summer Pennell, a former member of the NCTE LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee.
As Cody Miller and I wrote in 2020, readers are looking for nostalgia to escape from the ongoing global pandemic and political events such as the recent attempted coup. We're tired, and we need something to briefly take our minds off the chaos while we wait for our turn to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Young Adult literature can be a great escape. Here I recommend two queer YA titles inspired by television shows or movies.

As a queer reader myself, I enjoy reading books inspired by other stories that alter the narrative to focus on queer characters. While some television series use queer-baiting to draw in an LGBTQ+ audience, suggesting there will be queer relationships that then never happen or are not fundamental to the plot, the books highlighted here center queer relationships. These titles can be great additions to classroom libraries when it is safe to return to in-person schooling, and in the meantime, can be recommended to students looking for a fun escape.

The Gilmore Girls was a television series created by Amy Sherman Palladino that aired from 2000 to 2007, and then had a four-episode Netflix reboot in 2016 called " A Year in the Life." The show centers on a " freakishly linked" mother and daughter pair, Lorelai and Rory, and is still popular 20+ years after it debuted. While Rory had several boyfriends throughout the show, her most constant companion was her prep school and college classmate and frenemy Paris Gellar. To many queer viewers, myself included, Rory and Paris are the OTP (one true pairing). Their chemistry on screen inspired a lot of fanfiction ( The Best of It is my favorite). Lucky for fans of this ship, there's a fun YA book inspired by them: Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi.

Safi's dedication reads "For Amy Sherman Palladino. Thank you for never giving Rory Gilmore a decent boyfriend. She's always had Paris," setting the tone for a delightful imagining of what a Rory and Paris relationship could have been like through her characters Sana Khan and Rachel Recht. Sana is the perky, aspiring medical student and cheerleader to Rachel's antisocial film-obsessed character. They're both ambitious, and it's a joy to read this enemies-to-lovers and opposites-attract romance plot play out. While the Gilmore Girls series had terrible representation for people of color, Safi's main characters offer authentic representation of a Muslim, Persian, Indian girl in Sana and of a Jewish Mexican girl in Rache-characters who have their own rich backgrounds separate from the elements inspired by Rory and Paris.

Any reader who loves enemies-to-lovers and opposites-attract romances, smart feminist main characters, and girls speaking up for what they want will enjoy this book. Being a Gilmore Girls superfan just makes it more fun, as seeing how Safi played with the characters' relationships and plots from the show adds an extra layer. All the chapter titles are also tongue-in-cheek pop culture references, making this a great book for xennials like me to read with teen students or family members, so we can annoy them by over explaining all the inside jokes.

, released in 1978 (and based on a 1971 musical), tells the story of Sandy and Danny who shared a summer romance in the 1950s. When goody-two-shoes Sandy unexpectedly transfers to Johnny's high school for their senior year, she learns he has a tough guy persona that differs from the sweet boy she dated. This film remains a teen classic, as a prequel is currently in the works, showing the longevity of this story's appeal.

Sophie Gonzales's Only Mostly Devastated takes the summer romance between Sandy and Danny and reimagines it as a romance between two boys: jock Will and musician Ollie. When Ollie's family decides to stay in North Carolina to help care for his Aunt Linda and her two young children, Ollie finds himself transferring to Collinswood High School. Immediately, he falls in with a group of three girls (Gonzales's version of the Pink Ladies from Grease) who take him to a party where he sees Will, only to learn that Will is not out. This narrative has fewer direct ties to Grease than Tell Me How You Really Fell has to the Gilmore Girls series, but it is still fun to see the nods to the film and how it is transformed into a contemporary teen romance.

This novel will appeal to readers who have experienced grief and who like coming-out stories, secret romances, complex friendship dynamics. The cast of characters is also racially diverse, although race does not play a large part in the plot or character development. There is, however, careful attention to fat phobia and beauty standards.

While these novels could be used to teach adaptation, they also make for excellent escapes from the world. Recommend them to your teen readers who are looking for queer contemporary romances and who enjoy nods to pop culture. Reading a queer romance in which you know from the start that things are going to work out romantically between the main characters is relaxing. Readers may have differing opinions about characters' choices, but in these novels, you don't have to worry if the main pairing ends up together, and can instead enjoy the journey of how they find their way to each other. In our increasingly uncertain world, that can be comforting.
Summer Melody Pennell is a former member of NCTE's LGBTQ Advisory Committee and is the past chair of NCTE's Genders and Sexualities Equality Alliance (GSEA). She is an assistant professor of English education at Truman State University, where she works with preservice English teachers, and also teaches an undergraduate LGBTQ+ YA Literature course for all majors. She can be contacted via email at spennell@truman.edu and found on Twitter @summerpennell. It is the policy of NCTE in all publications, including the Literacy & NCTE blog, to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, the staff, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified.

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Queer YA Inspired by TV and Movies - NCTE

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This post was written by NCTE member Summer Pennell, a former member of the NCTE LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee. As Cody Miller and I wrote in 2020, readers are looking for nostalgia to escape from the ongoing global pandemic and political events such as the recent attempted coup.

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Common Challenges When Teaching Identity*

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Common Challenges When Teaching About Equity & Social Justice*

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Evaluation and Selection of Instructional Materials and Library Books 

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U.S. Department of Education Confirms Title IX Protects Students from Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

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"The Department of Education strives to provide schools with the support they need to create learning environments that enable all students to succeed, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation. Equity in education means all students have access to schools that allow them to learn and thrive in all aspects of their educational experience," said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Suzanne B.

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Educator Resources Integrating Gender Diversity Into Everyday Curriculum

While institutional and interpersonal practices are important to creating more gender inclusive conditions, there is nothing more powerful than seeing the diversity of gender appear in curriculum.

Integrating Gender in Your Classroom

Today's content standards leave little room for additional topics in the curriculum. While lessons are plentiful, unless part of a social-emotional framework, advisory program or thematic day or week, teachers may be hard pressed to include gender explicitly into their instruction.

However, because it crosses so many different aspects of our lives, gender can be easily integrated into existing content teachers are already covering. In many ways, when gender simply shows up in a content area, it can be more influential than some sort of grand gesture or event. Regardless of discipline, hearing gender themes woven into a lesson or activity serves to reinforce the ways that gender is an integral part of virtually every aspect of our lives. It also further demonstrates an institution's level of intentionality when it comes to gender.

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Are you finding ways to integrate gender in your classroom? Have ideas you hope to try? Share your ideas about units, approaches, materials and anything you use to integrate gender themes on your social media, tag us (@GenderSpectrum on Facebook and Twitter, @gender_spectrum on Instagram) and we will share with our followers.

Language Arts

Gender in literature: as students read various novels, ask them to be mindful of the ways in which gender norms are influencing the characters. How do expectations about gender mirror the period in which the book is set? How do they reflect societal beliefs at the time the novel was written?

Student writing: Regardless of genre, prompts related to gender can serve as an inspiration for your student authors.

Personal narrative writing prompts:
Consider a time in your life when someone talked about your gender and the things I could or could not do.
Describe an experience in which someone confused your gender or when you confused another person's gender.

Persuasive essay writing prompts:
Girls should not be allowed to play on the football team.
When gender roles were more clear, there was less conflict and confusion in society.

Expository writing prompts:
Describe the ways in which portrayals of gender in the media have affected our society's understandings of gender.
Describe ways that gender is marketed to kids

Creative writing:
Imagine waking up one day and everybody's gender different.
Use gender themes to create Haikus or other forms of poetry

Reading comprehension:
Use a short piece like "The Dimensions of Gender*" or another article describing gender and have students answer questions about content

Responding to literature:
Various young adult reading titles* raise topics related to gender diversity, roles and stereotypes

Grammar & Spelling: Correct any of the mistakes in the following sentence. Alex and shannon, were discussing the auditions for the school play when both girls was starteled by the loud noise?

Any lesson focused on using pronouns

"The word is 'Extract.' Denise was trying to extract the doll from her brother's firm grip. Extract"

Social Studies/History

When studying various indigenous and first nation communities, examine how notions of gender influence the culture. In what ways are they similar to how we see gender today? In what ways are they different? How have colonization or other forces shaped how gender was understood in those societies?

For any historical period, how have gender norms influenced the narrative? What did it look like to transgress gender during that period? What are some historical examples of individuals who did so? How were these individuals viewed by their society? What were the consequences of not adhering to prescribed gender norms?

What are some of the ways gender is understood in different cultures? How do these understanding of gender connect to other aspects of these cultures, such as religion, art, or language?

What is the relationship between gender and issues of power in a given society? How has that relationship shifted over time?

What role did gender play in various social movements such as emancipation, civil rights, women's suffrage or others?

Science

Exploring biodiversity among various organisms

How has our understanding of physical sex evoved over time?

What role do genetics play in determining a person's sex and gender?

In what ways do notions of gender diversity need to be accounted for when teaching untis focused on puberty or sexual health

Mathematics

When doing story problems, use examples beyond the binary:
Your math club has 12 students who identify as boys, 10 who identify as girls and 2 who identify as nonbinary. What is the ratio of boys to girls? Girls to gender expansive students? If the raions remained the same, but there were 5 nonbinary students, how many students of the other gender would there be?

A survey was conducted recently. 373 students identified as male, 396 identified a female, 13 identified as transgender, and 27 identified as other. Graph these results. What percentage of the students identified as male? Female? Transgender? What percentage did not identify as either male or female?

Data and Statistics: Why is it difficult to come up with solid statistics about people who don't identify as male or female?

Physical Education

How are PE programs organized? Are students divided by gender? In what situations? What is the purpose for doing so? Can those objectives be met with our dividing by gender?

Are there different expectations in place for aspects such as competitiveness, physical contact, stamina, strength, teamwork and/or sportsmanship based on students' gender?

When teaching specific skills, does gender influence the manner in which it is being taught?

Are there ways that the program intentionally challenges students to step

The Arts

Various projects where students have to portray something using the lens of gender

Allow students to play any part in various theater productions, rather than basing on gender

Discuss how certain dances have "male" and "female" parts. Why might that be challenging for some people?

In what ways do the instruments that students are playing reflect patterns related to gender? What are some ways to highlight individuals playing instruments across all genders?

Songs celebrating gender diversity

World Languages

If the language is particularly gendered, distinguish between the rules of a language and a nonbinary understanding of gender.

What might it be like for someone who identifies as nonbinary to speak a language that uses masculine and feminine forms?

What do you think the basis might be for certain words being maculine or feminine? Are they gendered in the same way in other languages?

Some languages actually include additional pronouns other than "he" and "she." Some don't use any pronouns at all. What impact might that have on those societies' use of language and understanding of gender?

As with English, many people are exploring ways to make language more gender inclusive. What does that work look like in the language being taught?

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Integrating gender diversity - Gender Spectrum

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Educator Resources Integrating Gender Diversity Into Everyday Curriculum While institutional and interpersonal practices are important to creating more gender inclusive conditions, there is nothing more powerful than seeing the diversity of gender appear in curriculum. Today's content standards leave little room for additional topics in the curriculum.

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Small & Big Deltas - Adapting Biology for All Genders

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Inspirational Non-Binary People_by Brittany Jeltema, Skye Tooley & Ace Schwarz

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LGBTQ+ Individuals throughout US History

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Marsha "Pay it No Mind" Johnson (1945-1992) was a Black trans woman who was a force behind the Stonewall Riots and surrounding activism that sparked a new phase of the LGBTQ+ movement in 1969. Along with Sylvia Rivera, she established the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in 1970--a group committed to supporting transgender youth experiencing homelessness in New York City. Marsha P. Johnson was tragically murdered on July 6, 1992 at the age of forty-six. Her case was originally closed by the NYPD as an alleged suicide, but transgender activist Mariah Lopez fought for it to be reopened for investigation in 2012. Marsha P. Johnson is now one of the most venerated icons in LGBTQ+ history, has been celebrated in a series of books, documentaries, and films. Her actions and words continue to inspire trans activism and resistance, and will continue to do so well into the future. Learn more about Marsha P. Johnson through the work of Tourmaline and Sasha Wortzel here.

Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) is one of the most notable Stonewall veterans and fierce trans activists of the late twentieth century. Sylvia Rivera refused to accept conformity to the status quo, constantly calling out the mainstream "gay rights" movement for being complacent in perpetuating systems that continued to specifically disenfranchise people of color. Even as the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance started gaining force and momentum post-Stonewall, Sylvia Rivera did not back down. The most popular video of Rivera is her fiery speech at the NYC Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in 1973 where she stressed the criticality of supporting trans people, people of color, and low-income people, particularly those who are in jail or experiencing housing instability. She fought hard against the exclusion of transgender people from the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York and was a co-founder of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR)-a group committed to providing shelter to trans youth experiencing homelessness in New York City. Sylvia Rivera continued to be an important player in trans activism until she passed away in 2002. Learn more about Sylvia Rivera here.

Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) was a Civil Rights organizer and activist, best known for his work as adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the primary organizer of the March on Washington in 1963. Throughout his life, Rustin was engaged in several pacifist groups and early civil rights protests, with a particular passion for non-violent resistance. Due to his high-level status as an organizing figure, he was arrested several times for civil disobedience, as well as for being a gay man. Despite this, he never stopped fighting for equality for Black and LGBTQ+ people. He also sought to bring both the worlds of queer resistance and racial justice together, being the first person to bring the AIDS crisis to the attention of the NAACP in 1987. That same year, Bayard Rustin passed away, just four days prior to the 24th anniversary of the March on Washington. Learn more about Bayard Rustin here.

Laverne Cox is a Black transgender actress, dancer, and activist. Her breakout role was as Sophia Burset in the acclaimed Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, landing her an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series"--the very first transgender person to do so in history. Laverne Cox continued to break down barriers, appearing in several other TV shows, hitting national news, and then being featured on the cover of TIME Magazine in 2015. Laverne Cox remains a popular and venerated media and cultural icon, continually bringing trans struggles to the forefront of U.S. and global mainstream news. She is a leading face of the trans rights movement and inspires trans youth all over the world. Learn more about Laverne Cox here.

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a feminist, lesbian, poet, and civil rights activist. Initially a librarian for New York Public Schools in the 1960s, Lorde eventually carved her way into the academic world as a radical Black, queer woman, publishing her canonical essay, "The Master's Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master's House." In the 1980s, along with Barbara Smith, she founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, dedicated to further the writing of Black feminists. She is most well known for her speech at the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Learn more about Audre Lorde here.

Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, also known as Kumu Hina, is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) teacher, cultural practitioner, and community leader. She was the founding member of Kulia Na Mamo, a community organization established to improve the quality of life for māhū wahine (a Hawaiian identity similar to trans woman), and served for thirteen years as the Director of Culture at a Honolulu public charter school dedicated to using native Hawaiian culture, history, and education as tools for developing and empowering the next generation of warrior scholars. Kumu Hina is currently a cultural advisor and leader in many community affairs and civic activities, including Chair of the O'ahu Island Burial Council, which oversees the management of Native Hawaiian burial sites and ancestral remains. Learn more about Kumu Hina here.

Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004) was a queer Chicana poet, writer, and feminist theorist most known for her book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, a groundbreaking piece of work for the canons of cultural, feminist, and queer studies. Much of her work focuses on her experience growing up on the border of Mexico and Texas. She was the recipient of the Lambda Lesbian Small Book Press Award, a Sappho Award of Distinction, and an NEA Fiction Award. Another notable piece of hers is The Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, co-edited with Cherríe Moraga.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a Mexican painter and polio survivor known for her creative self-portraits, namely The Two Fridas (1939) and Self Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940). Beyond her art, Frida became a world-renowned figure for being openly bisexual and often dressing in traditionally masculine clothing. She is known for painting with vibrant colors with influences from indigenous Mexican cultures, as well as Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Her self-portraits are understood today as symbols of her relationship with herself, and her gender and sexuality. Learn more about Frida Kahlo here.

Angela Davis is a Black political activist, academic, and author who also identifies as a lesbian. Her work continues to focus on the intersections of race, gender, and economic justice. She first emerged as a leader within the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and continues to work today as an intellectual on the frontlines, and at the intersections of racial, gender, and class justice movements. As a scholar, she has authored five books. Her writing offers an in-depth and intersectional account of resistance, most recently through her book, "Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement." Learn more about Angela Davis here.

Cece McDonald is a Black trans woman activist who brought national attention to the discrimination and violence imposed on trans women of color by the carceral system. McDonald was assaulted in an anti-trans, anti-black hate crime in 2012, and was consequently imprisoned for defending herself. She made national headlines when she accepted a 41-month plea bargain for second-degree manslaughter was forced to serve her sentence in a male prison. Since then, she has sought to unveil the structural violence and discrimination imposed on trans women of color through the carceral system in the United States and across the world when fighting for their lives. McDonald continues to be a well-respected figure in trans resistance across the country, most recently for her work alongside Joshua Allen with the #BlackExcellenceTour.

Dr. Rev. Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a queer Civil Rights leader, lawyer, women's rights activist, and one of the first African-American woman Episcopal ministers. As a lawyer, Murray's work set legal precedent for both Brown v. Board of Education and Reed v. Reed, both cases integral to the Civil Rights and women's rights movements. As a women's rights activist, Murray also worked alongside Betty Friedan to co-found the National Organization for Women. Learn more about Dr. Rev. Pauli Murray here.

Gavin Grimm is a trans activist who came out during his sophomore year in high school. After being denied entry into the boy's bathroom at his high school in 2015, he was thrust into the national spotlight as the face of transgender student rights. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Grimm sued his school. His case was set to be heard by the Supreme Court, but then was sent back to the lower courts because of the Trump administration's position on how Title IX should be interpreted. Despite having graduated, Grimm continues fighting for the rights of trans students today. Learn more about Gavin Grimm's case here.

David Jay is the founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). AVEN is a grassroots organization which hosts the world's largest community for people who identify as asexual, grey-a, and demisexual ( definitions found here). He works to promote ace awareness in sex education, mental health services, and the media, as well as creating spaces where ace individuals can discuss their experiences without judgement or shame. He has a vision for a world that asks all of us to work on building a society which celebrates any kind of close human relationship, whether or not it involves sex. In his work, he strives for both asexual and sexual liberation. Read some of David Jay's writing here.

In 1988, Kevin Jennings became the faculty advisor of the first Gay-Straight Alliance led by students at Concord Academy in Massachusetts. Two years later, Kevin founded the LGBTQ+ education organization, GLSEN, seeking to end discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity and/or expression in K-12 schools. Today, Kevin Jennings serves as the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education. He continues to be a strong advocate and spokesperson for gay rights and LGBTQ+ youth.

Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014) was as an anti-racist, white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, revolutionary communist. Feinberg is best known for writing the book Stone Butch Blues in 1993, following hir experiences as a self-identified working-class dyke. Feinberg's other notable pieces are Transgender Warriors (1997) and Transgender Liberation (1992 & 1996). Beyond hir writing, Feinberg spent decades fiercely advocating for a wide spectrum of marginalized groups, including people with disabilities, the working class, women, and the LGBTQ+ community.Learn more about Leslie Feinberg here.

Margaret Cho is a bisexual Korean stand-up comedian, actress, fashion designer, author, and singer-songwriter. Cho is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially regarding race and sexuality. She is a three-time Grammy and Emmy nominee, and has received several awards for her work advocating for the LGBTQ+ community. Learn more about Margaret Cho here.

Harvey Milk (1930-1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay elected official in the history of California on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was assassinated almost eleven months into office in San Francisco's City Hall by a former member of the city's Board of Supervisors. He was responsible for passing several key gay rights ordinance for San Francisco and was known as and effective and popular member of city government before his life was cut short. In 2009, Milk was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama as a stern fighter of discrimination. Learn more about Harvey Milk here.

Andrea Jenkins is an American policy aide, politician, writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. In 2017, she became the first Black, openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States, and started serving on the Minneapolis City Council in early 2018. In her community, she is particularly known for addressing youth violence and working with community members to provide resources to small business owners, artists, and community advocates. Learn more about Andrea Jenkins here

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a Black trans activist, Stonewall veteran, and community leader for the rights of transgender people of color. She is a survivor of Attica State Prison and credits her radical political stance on issues like Black liberation and abolition to that experience. Until 2015, she served as the Executive Director for the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, assist trans folks in the carceral system, in which they are disproportionately impacted. She now runs House of GG's, a safe haven and retreat house for the transgender community in Arkansas. Learn more about Miss Major through her documentary here.

Pidgeon Pagonis is a non-binary intersex activist, educator, and filmmaker at the forefront of the intersex movement fight for bodily autonomy and justice. Their goal is to deconstruct the dangerous myths that lead to violations of intersex people's human rights, including common, irreversible medical procedures performed without consent to make bodies conform to binary sex stereotypes. Their writing has been featured in Everyday Feminism and scholarly journals such as Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics and the Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity. They were recognized as an Obama Champion of Change in 2015. They continue to raise intersex awareness in Buzzfeed, Teen Vogue, CNN, AP, NBC, Washington Post, AL Jazeera, and Huffpost. They are the co-creator of the Intersex Justice Project, an organization dedicated to fighting for intersex people, especially intersex people of color. Learn more about Pidgeon's work here.

James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a Black gay novelist, playwright, activist, and social critic of the mid-20th-century. His essays explored intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America. Baldwin is celebrated for breaking new literary ground with the exploration of racial and social issues in his many popular works. Though his work was extremely controversial at the time of publication, it also had deeply influential implications for the Civil Rights Movement, and he remains a beloved literary figure. Learn more about James Baldwin here.

Blair Imani is a Black, Queer, and Muslim author and activist. She is the author of Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History, and the founder and Executive Director of Equality for HER, a nonprofit educational platform for women and nonbinary people. She is also the official ambassador of Muslims for Progressive Values, an organization advocating for human rights, social justice, and inclusion in the United States and around the world. Her work centers around changing perceptions of critical issues globally through storytelling. Learn more about Blair Imani here.

Cecilia Chung is a Chinese trans woman, nationally recognized as an advocate for human rights, social justice, health equity, and LGBTQ equality. Cecilia has been working tirelessly on the local, national and international levels to improve access to treatment for transgender people and people living with HIV, and to erase stigma and discrimination through education, policy, advocacy, and visibility. She was one of the original founders of the Trans March as well as serving on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. She was also the founder of Positively Trans, which seeks to mobilize and promote resilience of trans people most impacted by or living with HIV/AIDS, particularly trans women of color, through research, policy advocacy, legal advocacy, and leadership strengthening. Learn more about Cecilia Chung here.

Chella Man is a queer, transgender, Deaf, Chinese, and Jewish artist based in New York City who works towards advocating for community and self-love. He has gained national attention and praise for his writing, activism, and modeling, growing into one of the most influential queer young adults on social media today. Most recently, he was cast in the Marvel television show Titans, and signed to a major modeling agency. Learn more about Chella Man here and follow his art and activism on Instagram.

Ty Defoe is a two-spirit Ojibwe and Oneida writer, interdisciplinary artist, educator, dancer, and shape-shifter. Ty is also a member of the Two-Spirit Society and Grammy award winner for Best Native American Music Album. In addition to writing book and lyrics on a series of musical theater productions, Defoe recently collaborated with Kate Bornstein on the Broadway show Straight White Men. Learn more about Ty Defoe here.

House of Xtravaganza is one of the most publicly recognized "houses" to emerge from the New York City underground ballroom scene from the 70's and 80's, and among the longest continually active. House of Xtravaganza was featured in the highly influential 1990 documentary, Paris is Burning, directed by Jennie Livingston. Their members continue to be recognized for their cultural influence in the areas of dance, music, visual arts, nightlife, fashion, and community activism in New York City and beyond. Learn more about House of Xtravaganza here.

Sally Ride (1951-2012) was a lesbian engineer, physicist, and astronaut. She completed a double major in Physics and English at Stanford University and then joined NASA in 1978. There, she became both the youngest American astronaut and first American woman to travel to space aboard the space shuttle Challenger. After leaving NASA, Ride became the Director of the California Space Institute at the University of California, San Diego, eventually starting her own company to create educational resources and programs known as Sally Ride Science for students, especially girls, to pursue careers in STEM. Learn more about Sally Ride here.

Caster Semenya is a Black queer South African middle-distance runner who is ranked among the fastest women in the world. She is a three-time 800m world champion and Olympic silver and gold medalist. She initially garnered attention at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin at eighteen years old, when the international community started challenging her success. Semenyahas been cast into the forefront of international debate around "sex testing" and intersex inclusion in athletics as someone whose body naturally produces higher than average levels of testosterone. Learn more about Caster Semenya here.

Chris Mosier is an American transgender advocate, triathlete, and speaker. In 2015, he earned a spot on the Team USA sprint duathlon men's team for the 2016 World Championship, making him the first known out trans athlete to join a U.S. national team in his affirmed gender category. He was also the first transgender athlete in the ESPN Body Issue, and first transgender athlete sponsored by Nike. He has mentored trans athletes around the globe, as well as creating gender-inclusive policies at all levels of sports. Learn more about Chris Mosier here.

Patricio "Pat" Manuel (also known as "Cacahuate") is a mixed-race Black transgender male professional boxer from Long Beach, CA who has shaped his masculine identity in boxing gyms since 2002. Before transitioning publicly, he was a five-time national amateur boxing champion and participated in the first-ever U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Women's Boxing in 2012. In 2015, he became the first visible transgender boxer and the most decorated amateur boxer to change gender divisions within USA Boxing. In 2016, he became the first transgender man to beat a cisgender man in the amateur male division. In September 2018, he made history again when he became the first transgender boxer to compete in a professional boxing match in the U.S. and win.

Kim Coco Iwamoto is a trans and Japanese activist, editorialist, policymaker, advocate, and philanthropist. She has served as the Commissioner of Hawai'i Civil Rights, was recognized as a Champion of Change by President Barack Obama, and announced she was running to become the first transgender Lieutenant Governor of Hawai'i in 2018. Her campaign is centered around improving access to education, protecting the environment, and housing the homeless. Learn more about Kim Coco and her campaign here.

Raffi Freedman-Gurspan is an Indigenous Honduran American, Latinx, Jewish transgender rights activist and was the first openly transgender White House staffer. She is celebrated as Director of External Relations at the National Center for Transgender Equality based in Washington, DC. She has also worked at the Massachusetts House of Representatives; LGBT Liaison for the City of Somerville, MA, and has worked with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. Sheis currently serving as a Deputy Campaign Director at All On The Line, a project to end gerrymandering and restore fairness in US elections and democracy. Learn more about Raffi Freedman-Gurspan here.

Abby Stein is a trans, Jewish educator, writer, speaker, and activist. She was born and raised in a Hasidic family of rabbinic descent and is the 10th generation of the Baal Shem Tov--founder of Hasidic Judaism. In that portion of her life, Abby attended Yeshiva, completing a rabbinical degree in 2011. In 2012, she left the Hasidic world to explore different views. In 2015 Abby came out as a woman of trans experience. Since then, she has been working to raise support and awareness for trans rights and those leaving Ultra-Orthodoxy. In 2016, she was named by The Jewish Week as one of "36 Under 36" young Jews affecting change. Learn more about Abby Stein through her blog here.

Matthew Vines is the founder and executive director of The Reformation Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to training LGBTQ+ Christians and allies to reform church teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Reformation Project has hosted conferences in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. TRP also runs a leadership development cohort for LGBTQ Christians and allies each spring, as well as an event series at non-affirming churches called "Elevating the Dialogue on LGBTQ Inclusion in the Church." He is also the author of the book, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. Learn more about Matthew Vines here.

Hayley Kiyoko is a singer, songwriter, actress, dancer and director. She identifies as a multiracial, white, and Japanese lesbian. Kiyoko knew she was attracted to girls since she was six years old, and came out to her parents in the sixth grade. She released the song "Girls like Girls" in 2015 as a way to share her truth with her fans. Since Kiyoko's release of Expectations, her debut studio album, Kiyoko has lovingly been referred to by her fans as "Lesbian Jesus." Kiyoko uses her musical career and professional platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ visibility to encourage her fans to be politically active and to normalize lesbian relationships in the music industry.

Compton's Cafeteria Riot - Compton's Cafeteria was a popular nighttime community-gathering place for low-income queer and transgender youth in the 1960s. Situated in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, CA--a low-income sex-work district known for high rates of drug-use and crime-a disproportionate amount of transgender women were barred from living in other parts of the city were forced to live on the streets. In 1966, a spontaneous riot erupted when police targeted queer and trans "street kids" during a raid of Compton's Cafeteria. This riot, in the late summer of '66, notably followed weeks of organized pickets and protests of discrimination at public venues such as Compton's, led by the earliest known LGBTQ+ youth-led organization, Vanguard. Founded by Adrian Ravarour in 1965, Vanguard described itself as "an organization of, by, and for the kids of the streets." As told by Susan Stryker in her book, Transgender History, their first major political action was to confront the Compton's Cafeteria management over the poor treatment of transgender women and street queens. The riot that ensued that summer night marked one of the first recorded collective resistances by LGBTQ+ people against police harassment in the United States, inspiring the infamous Stonewall Riots in New York City three years later. Lean more about the Compton's Cafeteria Riot here.

Stonewall Riots - The Stonewall Inn in Manhattan, New York was an LGBTQ+ nightclub and safer space for the community in the 1960s, and still is today. The Stonewall Riots occurred when members of the queer community came together to fight against ongoing police harassment and arrests, namely of customers who were breaking a criminal statute that allowed police to apprehend anyone wearing less than three "gender-appropriate" items of clothing. Thus, police officers would commonly arrest trans women, cross-dressers, and drag performers under the pretense of "female impersonation." On June 28, 1969, patrons, primarily trans women of color, fought back for their rights during a regular police raid, and there erupted the infamous Stonewall Riots. This activism inspired the beginning of what we now know as the LGBTQ+ movement, including the tradition of LGBTQ+ Pride marches. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and other known Black and Brown trans women are venerated as the godmothers and foundation of this act of protest and the following movement. Learn more about the Stonewall Riots here.

The Bisexual Resource Center - Founded as the East Coast Bisexual Network in 1985 and then renamed in 1993, the Bisexual Resource Center is the oldest nationally-focused bi+ organization in the country. Their mission is to create awareness around bisexuality and foster support for bi/pan/fluid people who are misunderstood, marginalized, and discriminated against across the globe. The Bisexual Resource Center creates resources, provides support, and helps to create a stronger sense of community for bi/pan/fluid people. The Bisexual Resource Center (BRC) published the Bisexual Resource Guide from 1990 through 2002, a comprehensive listing of inclusive resources and organizations around the globe. They support Bisexual Health Awareness Month every March to motivate the bisexual community to make changes to improve their health and also inspire friends of the bi+ community to play an active role in improving the health of their bisexual friends, family, and community members. Learn more about BRC here.

The Day of Silence is a student-led national event where LGBTQ+ youth and their allies take a vow of silence to highlight the erasure of LGBTQ+ topics in schools. Students at the University of Virginia organized the first Day of Silence in 1996 as a project on non-violent protests assigned by their professor, Dr. Julian Bond. The first Day of Silence had over 150 students choosing silence to call attention to the needs of LGBTQ+ students on campus. The next year, these organizers took their effort to the national level and nearly 100 colleges and universities across the U.S. participated. In 2001, the organizers asked GLSEN to become the national coordinator of the event and continue this annual silent protest by sharing free organizing resources to student organizers and their schools. Today, millions of students in all fifty states hear the message of Day of Silence each year. To find out more about Day of Silence, click here.

East High Gay Straight Alliance vs. Board of Education of Salt Lake City School District - In 1998, leaders at East High School in the Salt Lake City School District precluded a group of students from forming a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) by banning all non-curricular student groups. However, East High School still allowed groups such as Future Homemakers of America, highlighting the discriminatory nature of the policy. With the help of Lambda Legal, GSA student leaders were able to bring a case to district court. This was the first time the Equal Access Act, passed in 1984 to provide equal access to extracurricular student clubs, was used to advocate for the rights of LGBTQ+ students, setting legal precedent in support of student organizing. After nearly four years of controversy, East High School agreed to allow the GSA to meet, proving that the Equal Access Act and the First Amendment protect students' rights to express LGBTQ-positive opinions at school. Find out more information about this important court case here.

The UndocuQueer Movement is an informal yet powerful network of queer undocumented immigrant activists that sprouted from the national mobilization of undocumented young people coming out of the shadows and telling their stories. The undocumented-youth movement was characterized by high profile rallies and storytelling, the first of which was a "National Coming Out of the Shadows" rally in Chicago in 2009, which took inspiration from the 1970s gay liberation movement, led by LGBTQ+ undocumented leaders, and even quoted Harvey Milk. Key leaders in the movement include organizers Tania Unzueta and Prerna Lal, and artist Julio Salgado. Tania Unzueta was one of the founders of the first undocumented/unafraid protests in Chicago and co-founder of the Immigrant Youth Justice League. Today Tania works at Mijente, a national digital and grassroots hub for Latinx and Chicanx organizing. Prerna Lal is an Indo-Fijian American attorney who pioneered the use of social media as a way to stop deportations, including that of hundreds of undocumented youth. They were one of the co-founders of DreamActivist which mobilized thousands into action to bring the federal DREAM Act up for a vote twice. Julio Salgado produced the "I Exist" collection within the Dreamers Adrift media project in 2010 in support of the DREAM Act, which would have helped young people whose families had immigrated to the United States have residency in the U.S. As a group, undocuqueer activists play a critical role in the immigrant rights' movement by bringing visibility to the struggles of undocumented LGBTQ+ people and their families while fighting for change.

A lesbian and pioneering woman in the STEM field, Edie Windsor (1929-2017)is celebrated for challenging unequal marriage rights and winning the landmark 2013 case, United States v. Windsor. By challenging the constitutionality of the "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA), Edie paved the way for the 2015 Supreme Court decision that would recognize same-sex couples in all fifty states. She initially sued the United States for denying her the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses after her wife, Thea Spyer, passed away in 2009. The couple married in Canada in 2007 and moved to New York in 2008 where their marriage was formally recognized by the state. Even so, Windsor would have had to pay $363,053 in estate taxes because the definition of "surviving spouses" at the time did not apply to "same-sex spouses." Windsor sued the United States and, after a long fight, eventually won a victory for same-sex couples and the wider LGBTQ+ movement. Learn more this landmark case here.

Pulse Massacre - On June 12, 2016 fifty people lost their lives, and many more injured, from the anti-LGBTQ+, racist shooting on Latinx night at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL. As one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, the Pulse Massacre ignited action from LGBTQ+ people all over the world against gun violence and in solidarity with those affected. This tragedy is the biggest recorded hate crime directed toward LGBTQ+ Black and Brown folks in United States History. Barbara Poma originally opened Pulse nightclub in 2004 to honor her brother, John, a member of the LGBTQ+ community who passed away in 1991. Pulse was an important aspect of the local LGBTQ+ community, providing a loving and accepting space where people could be themselves. In response to this tragedy, LGBTQ+ people and allies responded with support, protests, and candlelit vigils, as well as the creation of #WeAreOrlando on social media.

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LGBTQ+ History Cards Extended Biographies

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You can quickly leave this website by pressing the Escape key three times, or tapping three times quickly on mobile. To browse this site safely, be sure to regularly clear your browser history. You can learn about these trailblazers and more with GLSEN's new LGBTQ History Cards.

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Understanding LGBTQ+ Identity: A Toolkit for Educators | PBS LearningMedia

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Understanding LGBTQ+ Identity: A Toolkit for Educators offers a series of digital media resources to help teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, and other educators understand and effectively address the complex and difficult issues faced by LGBTQ students.
The collection includes a growing…

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How to handle confrontational parents; a principal's reprimand; supporting LGBTQIA+-themed books; and more advice on challenges and censorship.

I'm a first-year librarian in a school serving grades 5-12. The entire library collection has been available to all students. When a parent complained that her fifth grader checked out a YA graphic novel, the elementary principal ordered me to restrict fifth and sixth graders from borrowing YA books. I sent the principal information on the Library Bill of Rights and explained my professional stance. He responded with a reprimand. What should I do?
You did the right thing. Also, post the Library Bill of Rights in the library, and review the document as part of library orientation next school year. In the meantime, if students ask why they can't borrow YA books, politely let them know that it wasn't your decision. I wonder what the principal would say to a parent who complains because their child needs a title from the restricted section? Which parent has the greater voice? Unfortunately, many school administrators don't listen to parents who are "for" something; they tend to bow to those who are "against."

Consider discussing the matter with the superintendent. Don't say negative things about the principal, but present the question: How do we meet the broad recreational and informational needs of students if we restrict certain materials? The superintendent may be surprised to learn that the principal issued this order.

That said, I would begin talking informally with open-minded parents about the dilemma and let them know that restricting students to certain library areas isn't in the best interest of their children's educational growth. This way, you build a coalition to support you and the practices you've put in place. It may not help this school year, but next year is a new beginning.

A parent came into my high school library and presented me with a list of books she wanted out of the library. She printed the list from the internet. I was so unnerved that I took the list and said I would look it over. Now I regret my response.
It's sometimes difficult to think clearly when an angry parent appears with such a request. In the future, respond that you are aware of this list of titles floating around the internet, but books aren't removed from the library without due process. Give the parent a copy of the school district materials reconsideration policy and tell them that they can file a formal challenge. Parents need to know that an individual challenge must be filed for each book they question.

Now may be a good time for your school district to perform an audit of your collection development and reconsideration policy. This should include expanding the statement about controversial materials, evaluating guidelines for submitting a challenge, tweaking the reconsideration form, and reviewing the makeup of the reconsideration committee.

My high school has a Gay/Straight Alliance. We recently met because the students want to donate 20 books with LGBTQIA+ themes to the library. I want to support them, but in the current political environment, I was afraid to commit to this list.
All libraries should have a gift policy. Thank the Gay/Straight Alliance for their support of the library, and let them know that you will access the titles using the selection criteria for purchasing materials. The library may already have some of the books. If so, determine whether multiple copies are needed. Tell the group about the Stonewall Book Awards and suggest holding a meeting to determine which titles are most needed. This assures the students that you support their mission and are eager to work with them.

How do I answer a student who returns a book and says his mother doesn't want him to read it, and that it shouldn't be in the library?
Simply say, "Thank you for returning the book. I understand if your mother doesn't want you to read the book, but parents of other students think it's OK for them to read it." That will likely end the conversation.
Pat Scales is the former chair of ALA's Intellectual Freedom Committee. Send questions to pscales@bellsouth.net.
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Facing Angry Parents? Keep Cool when Adults Demand Book Removal | Scales on Censorship

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How to handle confrontational parents; a principal's reprimand; supporting LGBTQIA+-themed books; and more advice on challenges and censorship. I'm a first-year librarian in a school serving grades 5-12. The entire library collection has been available to all students.

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In the first post of our Stenhouse Summer Series, fourth-grade teacher, Nathan Lyon, writes about how preparing to build classroom communities that are safe and affirming of LGBTQ+ students is critical work we must all engage in as we begin planning for the new school year.

All kids deserve to feel safe in their classrooms. That goes without saying. But all kids also deserve to feel affirmed and celebrated. They should all walk into our classrooms knowing explicitly that they belong there.

Unfortunately, classrooms haven't always been spaces where LGBTQ+ kids feel like they belong. And new laws being passed all over the United States are making it harder and harder for educators to create safe spaces for queer kids. In certain states, educators are told they can't even say the word gay at school. But what has me truly worried is the legislative attacks on transgender kids.

Now, more than ever, educators need to make clear and active steps to let LGBTQ+ kids of all ages know that who they are is important. They need to know that they belong in our classrooms and are celebrated in our classrooms.

As a classroom teacher who has been working to create inclusive spaces for years, I've learned that the first weeks of a school year are essential if we want kids to know all identities are welcomed and celebrated. I am going to suggest a two-pronged approach to creating spaces that affirm queer kids. As educators, we need to be both explicit and implicit about our support on the first day of school and every day after.

Be Explicit

Anyone who walks into our classrooms or observes us teaching a lesson should immediately know it's a safe space for LGBTQ+ kids. Our environment and instructional practices should intentionally support queer kids.

Show Your Pride

Before the first day of school arrives, add visuals to your classroom or learning space that show queer kids they belong.

Put up a Pride flag! Keep in mind that there are many identities that make up the LGBTQ+ community. I'd recommend the Progressive Pride flag created by non-binary artist Daniel Quasar. You might also keep in mind the identities of the students in your classroom. If you have a student who is non-binary, you might get their permission to display a non-binary flag.

GLSEN offers free downloads of their Safe Space poster and stickers. Print and display!

Seek out queer artists who create t-shirts, stickers, and more. One of my favorites is MegAmikoArt.

Go beyond the four walls of your classroom. Create a bulletin board in the hallways of your building to celebrate Pride Month in June or LGBTQ+ History Month in October.

Books, Books, Books

Books are such an important part of any educational space. The publishing industry has had a long history of prioritizing books that feature straight and cisgender characters and stories. Be intentional about filling your space with books that feature LGBTQ+ stories!

Check out this extensive list of gender-inclusive books from Gender Inclusive Classrooms.

Embed these books in your classroom or school library. They should be easily accessible to all students.

When reading aloud to your students, take time to highlight books that center queer people and stories. Tell your students why it's important to read LGBTQ+ books.

Teach a Lesson or Two (or More!)

Many teachers build time into their day to explicitly teach SEL lessons about a myriad of topics. Go out of your way to teach lessons that center on the LGBTQ+ community.

Teach about bias or stereotypes and focus on gender. Help students see beyond the gender binary and understand that any person of any gender can dress and behave in ways that make them feel like themselves. I use a lesson called "Seeing Our Own Bias" from Sara K. Ahmed's Being the Change to help students identify gender bias in print ads.

Pronouns come up in my fourth-grade classroom almost every year. For example, one year a class was trying to name our class pet rock (yes, a rock!) and couldn't agree on the gender and pronouns of the rock. When moments like that happen, I make sure to carve out time to have a discussion about gender and pronouns. Specifically, I make sure to spend time talking about gender identities and pronouns that exist outside of the male/female binary. Two of my favorite books about gender and pronouns are What Are Your Words? by Katherine Locke and It Feels Good to be Yourself by Theresa Thorn.

Teach kids about Pride month! Use books and videos to explicitly teach kids about LGBTQ+ history and the need to celebrate the queer community.

Be Implicit

Starting on the first day of school, it's also important to support LGBTQ+ kids in small, subtle ways. Support doesn't always have to be big and bold.

Watch Your Words

The language we use with students can either reinforce the gender binary or expand kids' thinking past just boys or girls.

When grouping students or lining up students, be careful to use language that includes all genders. Using language that only includes two genders doesn't leave space for students who may not fit into those categories. If I need to divide my class in half, I might use the alphabet or student numbers.

Also, use language that includes all types of families. Avoid saying things like "Have your mom or dad sign this permission slip," and use "parents or caregivers" instead.

Add Some Queerness to Your Curriculum

I am intentional about the texts and resources I use across all the curriculum I teach. I make sure that not only do my resources represent the LGBTQ+ community but also Black and brown, disabled, immigrant, and Muslim communities too. And that's just getting started!

Elementary teachers have a plethora of reading skills to teach. For some of those skills, choose texts that highlight queer people. For example, when teaching students to identify theme, I might use Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders. I love teaching kids how to read graphic novels, and my go-to book to use is The Cardboard Kingdom by Chad Sells, which tells the story of a neighborhood of kids who explore their identities using their imaginations and a whole lot of cardboard.

When writing math word problems include families with two moms or kids who use they/them pronouns.

This is clearly not an exhaustive list of ways to support LGBTQ+ kids, but I hope it's a solid start. Just remember, whether we know it or not, there are queer students in every school and in every classroom. We need to let them know they belong in our educational spaces. And we need to do that starting on the very first day of school.

About the Author

Nathan Lyon is a fourth-grade teacher outside of Chicago, Illinois. He is passionate about advocating for the queer community within our education system. When not teaching, he can be found biking in Chicago, writing children's books, and watching Real Housewives with his partner and cat. He can be found on Instagram at @mr_lyon_4th.

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Making Your Classroom Safe for LGBTQ+ Students on the First Day of School and Beyond

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In the first post of our Stenhouse Summer Series, fourth-grade teacher, Nathan Lyon, writes about how preparing to build classroom communities that are safe and affirming of LGBTQ+ students is critical work we must all engage in as we begin planning for the new school year.

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Expanding Intersectional Queer History in the Elementary Grades

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By Laura Shelton Illustrator: Ebin Lee My 5th- and 6th-grade students gathered as I drew a tree on chart paper. "This tree represents a person. The branches are all different parts of who this person is. We call these identities. Everyone has many identities that make up who they are."