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Increasingly the children of LGBTQ families are attending our public schools and transgender children are transitioning in the elementary years, yet there are few representations of non-heteronormative families or of gender difference available in classrooms and school libraries. The Story Time project brings a Syracuse University student into schools to read age-appropriate, LGBT representative literature in elementary school classrooms. Teachers and administrators are given the opportunity to review and select possible texts, and the Story Time facilitator collaborates with educators to design activities around the chosen text. This program has provided an opportunity for undergraduate pre-service teachers and students in the LGBT Studies Minor to volunteer with QuERI.
Graffiti is a primary way to mark what and who is devalued in a school. Anti-LGBT language and words that police the parameters of gender are often scrawled across bathrooms, etched in lockers, and spray painted on school walls. We frequently ask students to share the negative words they see and hear in their schools and then to think about positive ways to respond to that graffiti. For several years, we have been collecting students’ positive responses back to the graffiti they see. Students write their responses on large plexiglass wall panels. These art panels tour area schools with suggestions for using them to generate classroom discussion.
We have been actively involved with the New York State Dignity for All Students Act since 2006, first through supporting the bill by speaking with legislators, presenting student stories of harassment we collected from throughout upstate NY, and with research. Once the bill was passed, we became involved in the implementation process but we still wanted student voice to be present in our efforts in Albany. Stories of Hope for DASA was a project where students shared what they wanted to see change in their schools as a result of the new law. Stories, rap lyrics, poems and lists were created by students to express their hopes for change. We shared these with the committees working on DASA implantation.