Safe Spaces

Safe Spaces

Making Schools and Communities 

Welcoming to the LGBT Youth

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In the book Safe Spaces Making Schools and Communities Welcoming to the LGBT Youth the authors talk about how LGBT are a big issue in our schools and schools should be more accepting and advocate more for LGBT students. 

I found this related article from the Huffington Post on a recent study they did in schools to find out when students were being bullied or excluded from other classmates based on their sexual Identity and sexual orientation. They found Students as early as the 5th grade begin to get bullied and excluded based on their sexual identity or orientation. In Safe Spaces that teachers should be accepting and not discriminate towards LGBT individuals as well as add LGBT history to the curriculum to get students more familiar with the issues at a younger age. As we saw from the stories told in Safe Spaces bullying and social exclusion can lead to to horrible problems for LGBT individuals. 

In the Huffington Post article 91% of the students who were in the LGBT community reported being bullied or socially excluded the percent was higher if you were a minority. Both these passages were trying to focus on a similar concept that no matter what your sexual orientation is you should be able to feel safe in school and be able to focus on learning. But that is not the case for many schools. There are many stories of unfair treatment and bulling of LGBT all across America in schools like this one story from 2012. The school system and the teachers didn't seem to care and thought the solution was to send the kid home so they didn't have a problem anymore. If this keeps happening to the LGBT community, students will continue to not want to come to school due to physical or emotional duress they are receiving at school.

This issue is very similar to the other issues we have talked about in class one of the culture of powers is straightness and we can see how it is effecting the LGBT communities in our school system.