Five Easy Ways to Support LGBTQ Students

You are a teacher and you have A LOT on your plate. Not only are you responsible for the safety and education of the young people in your classroom, there is always more. Tests to administer, a near constant stream of new laws being passed, and oh yeah we are also in a pandemic! Keeping on top of everything is a near impossible task. I know, I have been there.

Teaching these days can be both confusing and overwhelming! You want to support LGBTQ students, but not know where to start. This blog post, my friend, is for you. I am going to tell you how to begin the process of showing maximum support for your LGBTQ students in minimal time. 

Easy Ways to Support LGBTQ Students: Check Your Visuals

One of the easiest ways to support your LGBTQ students is to make sure that they are reflected in the look of your classroom. If you have posters on the wall or show any images in presentations, the people in those images should reflect your students including your LGBTQ+ students. 

Do an image inventory. Look at the visuals you present in your classroom for one day. What gender presentations and family structures do those images show? If the answer is everyone appears to be a cisgender person in a heterosexual, two parent family, then you have some work to do. 

Additionally,  make sure that your visuals show a variety of races, family structures, clothing choices, and assistive devices. Make sure that the diversity of your classroom is at least matched in the diversity of your visuals. Ideally, your classroom visuals should reflect the wide diversity of the world in which we live. 

Have a Clearly Stated Anti-Bullying Policy

You should have a clearly stated anti-bullying policy. This policy must state that gender and real or perceived sexual orientation based bullying is not permitted. If you have a campus or district wide anti-bullying policy that includes gender and sexual orientation, that is great. 

If you don’t, write one for your classroom. Post this policy in a noticeable place and make sure that everyone knows where it is. In addition to posting it in your classroom, also have the students and their adults sign off that they have read, understood, and agree to follow the policy. 

Here is an example to get you started: “In this classroom, we will work everyday to create a safe and supportive learning environment. With this in mind, no bullying of any kind will be tolerated. Everyone’s identities will be supported and celebrated in this class. This includes, but is not limited to: race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, size, family structure, religion, ethnicity, country of origin, citizenship status, and age.”

Swiftly and Uniformly Apply Consequences

Both students and parents need to know the consequences of bullying in your classroom. An anti-bullying policy with no implementation or consequences will not be followed. You must have a no tolerance policy and there can be no cutting people slack. If you witness bullying occurring, immediately stop it and implement a consequence. 

How might this work? Personally, when I was in the classroom, I did everything I could to never send students to the office. My personal opinion is that getting the office involved rarely does any long term good. Consequences in my classroom rarely involved those outside it. My general plan was as follows. Separate the students and have a conversation with the person showing bullying behavior. Impress upon the student that they were causing harm to everyone in class with their actions and that they must to stop. Do not allow them to continue harming everyone. Let the student know that you want them in class, but this behavior can not continue.

If the behavior continues, their adults are called and the student would not be allowed in my classroom until we all had a plan for this situation to stop happening. I taught high school. Your process might be different than this. It is important that you have a process, everyone knows what it is, and that it is applied uniformly to all students.

Easy Ways to Support LGBTQ Students: Make Sure You Know Student’s Correct Names

It can be difficult to know which students go by the name on your roll sheet and which don’t. Because of this, do not call roll on the first day with a new class. Have the students fill out a form that tells you what name they would like to be called along with their last name. You can also request other information that you need to know (I will touch on this later). Gather these cards then use them to call roll and take attendance. 

Alternatively, your first class activity can be everyone introducing themself and teaching the class how to say their name. This not only limits accidental misnaming of students, it will also help students whose names get mispronounced. With this activity you must make sure that students understand that misnaming or mispronouncing someone’s name is not acceptable. 

Requesting other information: only request information that you will use. Many times “standard forms” will have spaces for sex or gender (which are sometimes used interchangeably even though they are different things). I cannot think of a reason that you would need this information in class. If you would like to know what pronoun to use for students, please ask that on the form. If you request pronouns, you will also need to ask where and with whom it is ok to use those pronouns.

Use the “Name and You” Rule

In class discussions, have students refer to each other by either using people’s names or saying “you”. For example, “Sara, you said that the main character in this book is Bob. I think the main character is Jill. Why do you think it is Bob?”

This encourages students to have discussions with each other and eliminates using pronouns in class discussions. It is entirely possible to not know students’ pronouns AND not misgender them. It will take some practice and it may sound a little clunky at first. 

Personally, I believe that they/them pronouns do say something about someone’s gender. I reject the idea that we should be using they/them pronouns for specific people whose pronouns we don’t know. If Sean uses she/her pronouns and I use they/them pronouns for Sean because I do not know the correct pronouns yet, I have still used the wrong pronouns for her. I think it is more respectful to avoid pronouns for someone whose pronouns you do not know.  

In Conclusion

There are many ways to help support and affirm your LGBTQ+ students. This list is not exhaustive and if you teach younger grades some of these particular tips might not work for you. The biggest take away from this post is that your LGBTQ+ students will know that you support them if you tell them with your words, classroom visuals, and actions.

For more information and tips on how to support LGBTQ+ students in your classroom make sure and subscribe to my once a month newsletter below. My newsletter contains tips and resources applicable for pre-K through grade 12 and beyond!