Six ways to a more safe & inclusive school

For schools, teachers, administrators, and policy makers who have a strong desire and interest in creating safe and inclusive school spaces, Dr. Tanya Surette, PhD, shares insights from her doctoral research, and offers these recommendations:

1. Check your own assumptions, biases, and beliefs about gender and sexuality and encourage your school staff to do the same. Education starts from within and it’s necessary we understand our own socialization around gender and sexuality and how it shapes how we interact with or address the topic. We must first raise awareness within ourselves before we can hope to change or raise the awareness in others.
2. Educate staff about gender and sexual diversity and the rights and needs of LGBTQ+ students. Provide training to teachers and school staff around creating classroom and school spaces that are not just respectful but affirming for diverse students and promote understanding and appreciation for diversity.
3. Talk about it with students – the simplest and most repeated advice given to Surette by student participants in her research. Ensure teachers are educated and provided with access to relevant resources, literature and lesson plans to help develop classroom lessons that address this topic across the life span. To truly interrupt the systemic oppression of heteronormativity, or the privileging of heterosexual identities, and to normalize diverse gender identities and sexualities, these conversations need to begin in early elementary in a developmentally appropriate way and built upon throughout school years. Also, in her research, the students articulated the importance of not just talking about it in sex-ed or health class, but across the curriculum, highlighting diverse gender expressions and sexual orientations through literature, classroom discussions, social justice and human rights units. It’s important to underscore the normative nature of these identities and the important contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals across history.
4. Ensure gender diverse students are respected and protected at school. This includes creating school spaces that allow for a safe social transition for transgender students and supports their rights to have their chosen names and pronouns respected, use of the washroom of their identified gender or a gender-neutral washroom, and watching gender segregation of activities. Ensure self-determination is always at the forefront of any transition and allow students who are transitioning to inform their school what specific supports they need to feel safe and supported in their transition.
5. Address the language. All of the student participants discussed a desensitization to homophobic and transphobic language at school, amongst staff and students alike. They mentioned the powerful message it would send if teachers paid more attention to this language and addressed it. They talked about the importance of teachers to not only call students out for using these derogatory terms but also highlight the oppression contained in these slurs that continues to place LGBTQ+ students in a marginalized and stigmatized position.
6. Protect students’ right to freedom from religion at school. While religious involvement is an important source of safety and support for many, when gender and sexual diversity is factored into a non-affirming religious speech, the messages around heteronormativity are harmful. Students attending secular public high schools have a right to be protected from the harmful messages contained in non-affirming religious speech. No student participants in Surette’s research had encountered an affirming lesson at school about gender and sexual diversity. For schools who want to create a safe and inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ students, intentionality needs to be practiced towards promoting the inclusion of affirming messages at school and protecting against messages that are overly heteronormative, homophobia, and transphobic.