As we continue to celebrate Pride Month, we recognize that there are harmful anti-LGBTQ+ bills moving across the country. We must reaffirm our commitment to do what we can, where we can, to protect the LGBTQ+ young people in our lives, communities, and schools. We educators play a critical and urgent role in reducing that harm with a counteroffensive of fierce affirmation and love.
Celebrating Transgender Students in Our Classrooms and in Our Schools
By the editors of Rethinking Schools
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?
Transgender Justice in Schools: It’s a Life-or-Death Thing
By the editors of Rethinking Schools
While lawmakers attempt to delete queer people and people of color, their histories, and literature from the curriculum and libraries, deny them access to health care and bathrooms, we resist. We refuse to accept unjust laws.
Existing Outside of the Binary in the Classroom
By Julianna Iacovelli
A nonbinary educator reflects on the difficulty and the power of being out in school.
Nurturing a Rainbow of Resistance to Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws
By Linda Christensen
Christensen describes teaching high school students about new anti-LGBTQ+ laws – and the growing resistance to them.
On Behalf of Their Name: Using They/Them Pronouns Because They Need Us To
By Mykhiel Deych
The staff advisor for a high school’s Queer-Straight Alliance delves into the complexities of a student-led training for teachers on the importance of using students’ pronouns.
Queering Black History and Getting Free
By Dominique Hazzard
Queering Black history means canonizing Marsha P. Johnson as a matriarch of Black America. It means examining why it took 20 years for the NYPD to investigate Johnson’s death as a murder and having conversations about the role of the Black freedom movement in bringing about trans liberation today.
Big Reactions to Small Steps: One Teacher’s Story About Using Inclusive Children’s Literature
By Nettie Harrington Pangallo
Harrington Pangallo describes pushback for reading a book to answer a student question — “What does gay mean?” — and her response.
We asked transgender students what teachers have done and could do to support nonbinary students. Here’s how they responded.
