Action to Create More Affirming School Environments for LGBTQIA+ Students & Staff

• Work to ensure your district’s anti-discrimination clause includes sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression as protected classes. 
• Support the formation and sustainability of a GSA club (Gay-Straight Alliance/Gender and Sexuality Alliance) at your school.
• Use the pronouns and name a student has requested.   
• Include LGBTQIA+ themes across curricular domains.
• Advocate for LGBTQIA+ themed literature and printed materials to be available in the school library.

• Identify ways to intervene when verbal anti-LGBTQIA+ violence occurs and INTERVENE EVERY TIME.
• Celebrate and honor all forms of diversity, including LGBTQIA+ identities.
• Post affirming images, posters, and information about LGBTQIA+ people and history in classrooms, offices, and hallway.
• Confront stereotypes about gender and sexuality. For example when you hear students making generalized statements, ask them to expand on their thinking. You can use questions like, ‘is that always true?’ or ‘can you think of a counterexample?’
• Ensure that health curriculum provides information that encompasses all sexual orientations, gender identities, and definitions of family structures.
• Talk about LGBTQIA+ issues! Silence is not neutral! 

• Advocate for your district to take a proactive approach to supporting LGBTQIA+ students and staff by providing staff training on these issues.
• Provide information about LGBTQIA+ affirming resources in your community as well as trustworthy web-based information and LGBTQIA+ crisis hotlines for students.
• Urge Administrators to survey students and staff about school climate for LGBTQIA+ identified people.
• Educate the parent community about how the District supports and affirms LGBTQIA+ identified students and staff.  

Questions: 
AJ Jennings
Curriculum and Professional Development Director
Phone: 312-4362315
aj@illinoissafeschools.org