In our last blog, we featured Yasmin Owis' research study on LGBTQ+ issues in sex education and how educators can strive to make a more inclusive sex education. 

To continue the conversation, I wanted to highlight a resource for educators called "Queering Sex Ed (QSE)". QSE is a new project at Planned Parenthood Toronto that aims to develop a sex ed resource with and for LGBTQ youth. This resource provides educators and youth with information on language and definitions, identities, body positivity, consent, and more! 

For more information, check out the link below:
http://teenhealthsource.com/blog/queering-sexual-education/

This month, the LGBTQ Families Speak Out team is featuring videos and research from our interview study on LGBTQ+ curriculum and pedagogy. 

LGBTQ+ students need a learning environment where their unique experiences are reflected and where they can receive proper education to keep them safe and healthy. The erasure of the community is most clear in our sex education curriculum. Despite queer and trans people being re-included in the Health curriculum in Ontario, there is a lot more that our curriculum needs to strive for. 

Discussions of LGBTQ+ issues in sex education is the focus of Yasmin Owis’ most recent research paper, "Educate, Not Titillate". Yasmin is a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) and a member of our LGBTQ Families Speak Out Project. In their research paper, Yasmin speaks to the importance of queering sex education by including discussions of intersectionality within the LGBTQ+ communities as well as opportunities for youth to co-create their learning experience in sex education. 

Yasmin is featured in our Gender. Sexuality. School podcast, where she talks about her research on ways to queer sex education to represent the lives of LGBTQ+ students. To learn more about queering sex education, refer to the following links:
Podcast: http://www.lgbtqfamiliesspeakout.ca/podcast.html
Research paper: https://mtrj.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/mtrj/article/view/32374/25762

Stay tuned for our next blog where we will be featuring resources for educators to queer their sex education programming!

As educators, it is important to consider the extent to which LGBTQ-related content is present in their curriculum and the spaces to which they can be inserted. It is known that implementing LGBTQ content leads to improved academic success for LGBTQ students and provides an overall better learning environment for all students. 

However, in efforts of inclusion, educators should be wary that is does not become fragmented or isolating. This occurs when LGBT topics are solely introduced during LGBTQ History Month or Pride Month, with little to no context provided to the students or when representations of the community are being presented in a negative way. 

Further fragmentation can occur when only certain representations such as gays and lesbians are being presented when discussing the LGBTQ community. Such homogenization of the community is particularly damaging for people in the community who have been and continue to be marginalized within the LGBTQ community, including people of colour, transgender people, intersexed people, and people with disabilities.  

When engaging LGBTQ-related content, educators should ask themselves the following:

1. How inclusive is my current curriculum of LGBTQ people and their lived experiences?
2. How am I presenting this content to my class? 
3. What representations of the community am I presenting to my class?
4. What sort of biases and experiences am I bringing to this content and how can I control these?

In this video, Victoria provides further advice for educators as they engage with LGBTQ curriculum. Victoria asks educators to not only reflect on how they will include LGBTQ people in their curriculum but how they will honour them.

now & them is making its debut at the Assembly Theatre this weekend! Directed by our fellow cast member from Out at School Max Fearon, now & them is a play that features queer relationships in an era of climate apocalypse. For more information on the show and how to get your tickets, please refer to the following link:
https://www.facebook.com/events/2455007011436676/

Today we remember and honour our trans family. We remember the violence and systemic oppression that impacts trans communities, especially communities of colour and Indigenous communities. We remember how harmful schooling and education can be for trans youth and we reflect on our own practice as educators. We honour them by reading their names and attending vigils and speaking back towards bigotry and ignorance. We honour them by educating others and continuing to educate ourselves. And we honour them by taking action. Today we mourn and remember and tomorrow the advocacy, allyship and action continues.  

Our work on the LGBTQ Families Speak Out project, has documented the violence and trauma trans youth and families face in schools. It's also documented the resilience and resistance trans families and youth enact every day by showing up, learning and demanding space in spaces that do not expect them. We honour these acts of resilience and resistance and encourage you to learn more about them here. 

The LGBTQ Families Speak Out Research Team celebrates Trans Parents Day! This day celebrates the life, love and diversity that exists between transgender parents and their children and transgender children and their parents. This week, we feature the story of Syn Scully, a trans male navigating the educational system. For more videos related to trans parents, please check out the link below:
​http://www.lgbtqfamiliesspeakout.ca/videos/category/transgender