Keywords:
school transition, LGBTQ family, confidence, school climate, advocacy, close-mindedness
school transition, LGBTQ family, confidence, school climate, advocacy, close-mindedness
Transcript
Ruby: For high school I’m going to Northern next year, which is I think 1.8 thousand kids, which is a big difference from my school, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to go there. I want to go to a big school. So one of my options was to go to Ursula Franklin, which has 500 students. But I didn’t want to go from 70 to 500, and then into university, where there’s a stupidly large amount of people. Um, I didn’t think that would help, so I decided to go to a larger school. I don’t know, I think it also helps that I’m more confident now, because of how I’ve been raised, there was never a certain point where it had to be explained to me why my family was different, I just knew it and it was always, how I explain it is, your dad lives with your mom, and my mom lives with my mom and they’re the same. And there was never a point where I had to rethink it, and it’s just always been normal to me, and I’ve just always explained it to people like that, so I think I’m a lot more confident about that now, especially going into a big school. And I’m a very social person, and I make friends very easily, and I tend to have a lot of friends who are not just acquaintances. I have a lot of close friends, um, but going into a big school--and I know the school that I’m going into, Northern, has a GSA and they have, from the people I know who go to the school, they say it’s pretty open, and I have a lot of gay friends who go to the school--um, but I’m hoping that when I do go there I want to be involved in the student council and things like that, and I want to keep, kind of use my very confident outspoken voice to help the people who are not the same.
Tara: Wonderful. Was the fact that Northern had a GSA, was that an important, um, criteria for you in choosing it?
Ruby: It was definitely important that they had something. Because [unclear] GSA just a very open environment. I knew a lot of schools where it was very straight and very, kind of, single-minded, and I didn’t want to go to a school like that. So I definitely did look into that and I talked to a lot of kids, not just--because people always say, oh, our school is so open, and then you go and it’s really not. So I did spend a lot of time talking to other kids who actually attended the schools, saying, what do you think of this? Do you think it’s open? Do you think it’s accepting? So that’s was a big part for me. Um, yeah.
Ruby: For high school I’m going to Northern next year, which is I think 1.8 thousand kids, which is a big difference from my school, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to go there. I want to go to a big school. So one of my options was to go to Ursula Franklin, which has 500 students. But I didn’t want to go from 70 to 500, and then into university, where there’s a stupidly large amount of people. Um, I didn’t think that would help, so I decided to go to a larger school. I don’t know, I think it also helps that I’m more confident now, because of how I’ve been raised, there was never a certain point where it had to be explained to me why my family was different, I just knew it and it was always, how I explain it is, your dad lives with your mom, and my mom lives with my mom and they’re the same. And there was never a point where I had to rethink it, and it’s just always been normal to me, and I’ve just always explained it to people like that, so I think I’m a lot more confident about that now, especially going into a big school. And I’m a very social person, and I make friends very easily, and I tend to have a lot of friends who are not just acquaintances. I have a lot of close friends, um, but going into a big school--and I know the school that I’m going into, Northern, has a GSA and they have, from the people I know who go to the school, they say it’s pretty open, and I have a lot of gay friends who go to the school--um, but I’m hoping that when I do go there I want to be involved in the student council and things like that, and I want to keep, kind of use my very confident outspoken voice to help the people who are not the same.
Tara: Wonderful. Was the fact that Northern had a GSA, was that an important, um, criteria for you in choosing it?
Ruby: It was definitely important that they had something. Because [unclear] GSA just a very open environment. I knew a lot of schools where it was very straight and very, kind of, single-minded, and I didn’t want to go to a school like that. So I definitely did look into that and I talked to a lot of kids, not just--because people always say, oh, our school is so open, and then you go and it’s really not. So I did spend a lot of time talking to other kids who actually attended the schools, saying, what do you think of this? Do you think it’s open? Do you think it’s accepting? So that’s was a big part for me. Um, yeah.