What is an LGBT Safe Space?
An LGBT Safe Space is a building or room, especially in a school, where LGBT people can feel safe and free from harassment, bullying, discrimination, and outspoken judgement. Everyone can be free to express themselves without intolerance from teachers or fellow students.
Why are Safe Spaces important?
LGBT students often face constant bullying and harassment from fellow students. Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students have faced harassment. Safe spaces are places where all students can feel safe from bias and bullying, focus on their schoolwork and friends instead of the bully who keeps calling them names, and know that kind of behavior will not be tolerated.
All students should feel safe at school.
All students should feel safe at school.
Make your classroom an LGBT Safe Space
Learn how you can make your classroom and the rest of your school a safe space for everybody with the GLSEN Safe Space kit. It and the accompanying poster and stickers are available in both English and Spanish.
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LGBT-Inclusive Curriculum
Educator Guides
Get Engaged in GLSEN Programs! Planning for Back to School? Looking for ways to support Day of Silence? Interested in being more LGBT-inclusive during pride month? You’ve come to the right place! Check out the guides below for specific tools and tips related to GLSEN programs, days of action and more!
Get Engaged in GLSEN Programs! Planning for Back to School? Looking for ways to support Day of Silence? Interested in being more LGBT-inclusive during pride month? You’ve come to the right place! Check out the guides below for specific tools and tips related to GLSEN programs, days of action and more!
LGBT-Inclusive Curriculum
Incorporate LGBT history, themes and people into your curriculum!
Incorporate LGBT history, themes and people into your curriculum!
- Ensure that your LGBT students see themselves reflected in your lessons.
- Help educate students about civil rights history.
- Create opportunities for all of your students to gain a more complex and authentic understanding of the world around them.
- Encourage respectful behavior, critical thinking and social justice.
Lesson Plans on Bullying, Bias, and Diversity
Respect! Empathy! Action! Help your students develop the skills to interact in our diverse world.
Respect! Empathy! Action! Help your students develop the skills to interact in our diverse world.
Why is LGBT-Inclusive Curriculum Important?
Some states have laws that ban LGBT-inclusive curriculum. These laws are harmful for many reasons.
First, they stigmatize and discriminate against LGBT students by treating them differently than other students in the classroom. Heterosexual students are not taught, for instance, that they are not “acceptable to the general public” because of their sexual orientation. There are also no analogous laws barring the portrayal of heterosexual people in a “positive” light. Anti-LGBT curriculum laws perpetuate a stereotype of LGBT people as a dangerous, immoral class of people from whom other students must be shielded.
These laws create an official climate of discrimination, which can contribute to the bullying of LGBT students, who are at a heightened risk of suicide. LGBT students in states with these laws report hearing more homophobic remarks from school staff and are less likely to report incidents of harassment to school staff, according to GLSEN’s National School Climate Survey.
Second, these laws frustrate sexual health education, both by blocking accurate information and promoting inaccurate stereotypes, thus undermining student health.
Third, these laws have a chilling effect on LGBT-inclusive curriculum, programs, and policies, even where they would not actually be barred by these laws. In other words, even where these laws do not prohibit teaching about gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk in a history class or reading a Walt Whitman poem in an English class, schools and teachers may misinterpret them as doing so. That uniquely harms LGBT students, but it also deprives other students of the benefits of an accurate, inclusive education.
LGBT-inclusive curriculum is important to ensuring that a school fulfills its mission of educating and preparing students. If a school teaches sexual health education, it should speak to all students, not just some. Curriculum that ignores the existence of LGBT students, or worse, stigmatizes them, disregards the needs of those students.
Inclusive curriculum is also integral to teaching accurate information. For example, LGBT people have made important contributions in history, art, science, literature, and countless other areas. Schools should not be in the business of erasing those individuals or their contributions from curricula. Furthermore, all students will encounter LGBT people, whether in the classroom or otherwise, and it does them a disservice to ignore that reality or the ways in which LGBT issues are a part of the world around them.
Studies also show that an inclusive curriculum contributes to a safer school environment for LGBT students. Schools should be in the business of teaching students to respect one another and their differences, not teaching by example that discrimination is valid.
source: LambdaLegal.org
First, they stigmatize and discriminate against LGBT students by treating them differently than other students in the classroom. Heterosexual students are not taught, for instance, that they are not “acceptable to the general public” because of their sexual orientation. There are also no analogous laws barring the portrayal of heterosexual people in a “positive” light. Anti-LGBT curriculum laws perpetuate a stereotype of LGBT people as a dangerous, immoral class of people from whom other students must be shielded.
These laws create an official climate of discrimination, which can contribute to the bullying of LGBT students, who are at a heightened risk of suicide. LGBT students in states with these laws report hearing more homophobic remarks from school staff and are less likely to report incidents of harassment to school staff, according to GLSEN’s National School Climate Survey.
Second, these laws frustrate sexual health education, both by blocking accurate information and promoting inaccurate stereotypes, thus undermining student health.
Third, these laws have a chilling effect on LGBT-inclusive curriculum, programs, and policies, even where they would not actually be barred by these laws. In other words, even where these laws do not prohibit teaching about gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk in a history class or reading a Walt Whitman poem in an English class, schools and teachers may misinterpret them as doing so. That uniquely harms LGBT students, but it also deprives other students of the benefits of an accurate, inclusive education.
LGBT-inclusive curriculum is important to ensuring that a school fulfills its mission of educating and preparing students. If a school teaches sexual health education, it should speak to all students, not just some. Curriculum that ignores the existence of LGBT students, or worse, stigmatizes them, disregards the needs of those students.
Inclusive curriculum is also integral to teaching accurate information. For example, LGBT people have made important contributions in history, art, science, literature, and countless other areas. Schools should not be in the business of erasing those individuals or their contributions from curricula. Furthermore, all students will encounter LGBT people, whether in the classroom or otherwise, and it does them a disservice to ignore that reality or the ways in which LGBT issues are a part of the world around them.
Studies also show that an inclusive curriculum contributes to a safer school environment for LGBT students. Schools should be in the business of teaching students to respect one another and their differences, not teaching by example that discrimination is valid.
source: LambdaLegal.org
"By seeing the great accomplishments of past LGBT people, students are able to associate a positive image of the LGBT community and would become more aware of the homophobic slurs that are ingrained in their vocabulary. The LGBT community has been dehumanized for far too long, and this is the way to rehumanize them. Being gay or lesbian or trans wouldn’t be seen as something lesser, and bullying as a whole could be mollified. Schools would be safer for not just LGBT students, but for anyone who could be perceived as LGBT, and school would become a positive affirming environment that optimizes learning potential. ... In addition to stopping bullying, the inclusion of LGBT history and individuals who have contributed to society would better prepare all students for the diverse world beyond the walls of high school."
- Mark Pino, the Huffington Post
- Mark Pino, the Huffington Post
Tips for promoting LGBT inclusivity in the classroom
Day of Silence
On WHS's Day of Silence (DOS), please understand when students decline to speak. They're participating in the Day of Silence, when LGBT allies protest the silence on LGBT rights issues and bullying/harassment.
How you can help
Step 1:
On Day of Silence, which is on April 15th, bring to the attention of the class that the event is happening, explain the purpose of the event, and let them know that anyone who wants to can pledge.
Print and set out the pledge form so students can come up and pledge if they choose to participate.
On Day of Silence, which is on April 15th, bring to the attention of the class that the event is happening, explain the purpose of the event, and let them know that anyone who wants to can pledge.
Print and set out the pledge form so students can come up and pledge if they choose to participate.
Step 2:
If a student is participating in Day of Silence and declines to speak, please understand.
If a student is participating in Day of Silence and declines to speak, please understand.
Step 3:
Set out GLSEN's "speaking cards" for students to take if they want to participate in DOS. These are pieces of paper with the information about DOS, which students can carry with them in order to explain to their teachers why they aren't speaking without breaking the silence.
The cards are in both English and Spanish.
Set out GLSEN's "speaking cards" for students to take if they want to participate in DOS. These are pieces of paper with the information about DOS, which students can carry with them in order to explain to their teachers why they aren't speaking without breaking the silence.
The cards are in both English and Spanish.
Step 4:
If at any point you see or hear about any resistance to the Day of Silence at the school, report it to Lambda Legal, and they will try their best to solve the problem by contacting the school.
If at any point you see or hear about any resistance to the Day of Silence at the school, report it to Lambda Legal, and they will try their best to solve the problem by contacting the school.