TEACHING ACCEPTANCE OF LGBT ADOLESCENTS
As teachers, we have a responsibility to create a safe learning enviroment for each of our students. We must ask ourselves how we can help LGBT students with our classroom, school and community. According to the 2007 National School Climate Survey (http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/2340.html):
- 86.2% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 44.1% reported being physically harassed and 22.1% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.
- 73.6% heard derogatory remarks such as “faggot” or “dyke” frequently or often at school.
- More than half (60.8%) of students reported that they felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation, and more than a third (38.4%) felt unsafe because of their gender expression.
- 31.7% of LGBT students missed a class and 32.7% missed a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe, compared to only 5.5% and 4.5%, respectively, of a national sample of secondary school students.
- The reported grade point average of students who were more frequently harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender expression was almost half a grade lower than for students who were less often harassed (2.8 versus 2.4).
I hope to offer teachers many different opportunites to help promote tolerence with the classroom, school and community.
