In this video, Mohan talks about some of the challenges he experienced growing up in the East-end, mostly-white suburbs of Scarborough in the 1970s as the multi-racial child of immigrants in a multi-faith household (+ a school system that did not correspond to either of his parents’ religious backgrounds). When asked about his hopes for his young children as they move through the public school system today, Mohan explains:  
 
“…I don’t mind them being treated differently.
I don’t want them to be treated unkindly…”
​(benjamin lee hicks)

Today I want to feature a video clip from Nicole Tanguay and Mita Hans’ interview. In the clip, Nicole talks about an Indigenous dance her daughter’s class was doing at school.  The dance was supposed to be a circle dance or a round dance but “it was awful how it turned out because … [the kids] were being pretty, like, racist … doing the war dance thing [they’d seen on television].”  
 
In response to Nicole’s story, Mita Hans says, “And this is where you hope that the teacher would have stepped in and said, ‘Well, actually this is how people do what they do and it’s not appropriate for everybody to do what they do and sometimes it’s really inappropriate when somebody who’s not from that culture does that.’”   
 
Recently, I listened to an episode of a podcast called Code Switch which speaks to Mita’s expectations of the teacher who was responsible for bringing the round dance into the classroom. The episode was called “Ask Code Switch: School Daze”.  A white teacher asked Code Switch whether or not she should be teaching her black students a South African dance called the Gum Boot dance.  The answers to her question pick up on Mita’s concern about who should teach the round dance.  To listen to “School Daze” on Code Switch follow the link below. (Tara Goldstein)

This week I want to introduce you to Michael and Ernst. In this clip they talk about the conundrum that many LGBTQ families face which is Mother's Day and Father's Day at school.  I find this clip really interesting because it addresses the heteronormative assumptions that are often made about queer and trans families. In this case it is the assumption that the kids don't have mothers because families have two parents and in this case those two parents are Michael and Ernst. I am sharing it today because I want to continue to expand and reimagine the definition of family to include a multitude of relationships and identities. Advice to teachers would be: get to know the students in your class, ask them who they want to celebrate on these hallmark occasions, and try not to make assumptions.

One approach that I think really works is highlighted in a bonus clip of Jess and Evan below. Their school sent out a simple message to parents saying who identifies as a mother in your family? No assumptions made and not one student or family was singled out. Win Win.  :) (Pam Baer)

This clip of Victoria speaks to the importance of including LGBTQ topics in both the school setting and within the curriculum documents. Victoria talks about the consequences of not having holistic, accurate representations of queer and trans identities in the classroom and the damaging effects it has on students. Victoria’s clip shows how the absence of LGBTQ content in schools is a sign that our educational system needs more a rigorous curriculum that looks at LGBTQ issues as more than an add on or an afterthought. She urges educators to recognize that LGBTQ youth need a curriculum with “… a lot of laughter, and a lot of love.” ​ (Yasmin Owis)

​Two years ago, in 2016, we interviewed a mother named Dawn about her family’s  experiences of LGBTQ families in Ontario schools.  Dawn has two daughters. 
 
Her older daughter was 10 during our interview, and identifies as cisgender: a person whose gender identity and expression matches the social expectations for the physical/biological sex they were assigned at birth
 
Dawn’s younger daughter was 8, and identifies as a transgender girl: a person whose sense of their gender identity is different from the biological sex that they were assigned at birth. 
 
Dawn’s younger daughter’s transition at school was difficult.  Here’s what Dawn said when we asked her what teachers can do to help students transition at school (Tara Goldstein).

Since we began this study 4 years ago we have compiled a collection of over 300 videos! There are multiple ways to access all these great stories on our website. This year, to help you find some of the hidden gems, we are going to be featuring a new video each week. Today  Brenda & Nim share a story of joint activism. Nim engages a grassroots approach to safe washrooms in the school while Brenda simultaneously approaches the school board (Pam Baer).

A team of 8 artist researchers from the LGBTQ Families Speak Out project travelled to
The L Fest in Llandudno, Wales this past July to present Out at School to an international audience.  Our verbatim play based on interviews from the project was extremely well-received by an enthusiastic audience and the team was delighted to share our research and artistry with the folks attending the festival.