Day 17

I helped my brother for a second day at the fixer upper. My mom and I pulled nails and took off hinges and knobs. It was fantasctic to get myself away from the computer. Took a break. Stop complaining about him. Stop feeling like there's so much to do, too many things that can possibly be done because there are so many things going wrong. I will be ok. I still need to contact 18 more people. I will be needing more things to do at my actual job.

Day 19

Had the best Gay Straight Alliance club day in a long while. I asked for volunteers for my session for the teacher's conference for Understanding LGBTQ+ kids. A good handful volunteered. They also started talking. About things that they wanted to do. It was a really good showing for attendance. I'm going to be great. This is the first time I'm giving a session to co-workers. I already have one of them full. The second already has 13 attendees out of 20 and it's in a week. Love this.

When I signed up to do these sessions I walked into my principal's office to let him know about it. To warn him. To ask directly if there would be an approval process. He just looked at me and said thank you for doing the session. I used to need approval for rainbow symbols. It's such a relief to get this kind of support. To only worry about buying cookies.

Day 20

I had the school principal and the department chair in my classroom about the future of the debate team and the health of the head coach. I had an idea yesterday. Starting my own business tutoring English remotely. The idea of not having to deal with these problems. The problem like the young man who was crying in my classroom this afternoon because his friend played an embarrassing video.

Today Donald Trump made comments condemning the store Nordstrom for dropping his daughter's clothing line. He has such thin skin. Why isn't he learning what isn't working? If he would just stop tweeting, reacting defensively about everything, and stop going after judges and media personnel.

The republicans silenced Elizabeth Warren last night with a rarely used rule about making a fellow senator look bad. She was reading the words of Corretta Scott King about Sessions and the speaker warned her and then invoked the rule barring her from speaking for the rest of the hearing. The new repeated quote is Nevertheless, she persisted.

I am persisting. 

A Dream

I kind of dream about the day that the club wouldn't really need to exist. Even thought it's one best times in my teaching schedules.The main reason why the club has the momentum that it has right now is because of all of the politics behind it this decade.

What it this club going to be like when Texas adds gay marriage into legal status or LGTBQ into their Equal Employment Statements? Will that be in my lifetime? Texas still has it in our Constitution that teaching that homosexual sex is not allowed to be taught in Health classes in a positive light. It had to be Supreme Court Ruling to overthrow it's laws against interracial marriage. Same thing happened with anal sex. Nope, not legal in Texas until about 20 years ago because of a Supreme Court Ruling.

Racial, Sexist, Homophobic Slurs

I have a sprinkle of African American students, a large group of Hispanic students and our school has few Muslim and Jewish students. They've all heard racial slurs from assholes in the hallway who they don't know. Not often on an everyday basis, but even one time will scar a kid.

Spread the Word to End the Word. The "R" word (retarded) had a huge wave last year with a campaign that the students made against using it in their daily language. They did a banner with students signing it in a pledge not to say the R word. During the campaign all I had heard from the kids was apathy however that's just what kids do instead of giving a compliment for positive efforts. Since that campaign I had seen a clear decrease in the amount of the usage of "retarded" in my classroom. I understand that this data doesn't mean that they aren't using it, however they became more aware of who they could possibly offend.

This is very similar to the situation that the kids hear all of the time where kids make fun of each other as friends say "gay" or "fag" especially if they hear their parents use those words. Try a discussion with the kids in the next GSA meeting about what words offend them with examples. Let them talk to each other without butting in but try to mediate if it gets too heated. You will be surprised at what you might hear. I was. I was surprised to hear that kids within the GSA use typically derogatory words with their own friends. Like how the word queer has been "taken back" by the LGBT youth. Now you see instead of Gay-Straight Alliances you see Queer-Straight Alliances. 

Opening the discussion of these words and how the kids feel about them is the first step in understanding if there are any serious issues to address at the school. For example, if there happens to be a particular teacher who uses insensitive language in the their classroom without thinking if they're offending someone. 

Fundraising

I am a teacher. I am not a salesman. I can tackle a GSA in a conservative region but the idea of raising money scares the bejesus out of me. It makes me want to vomit.

Again my advice is to be as open with your admin as possible. Money is easy drama. 

There are few starter things your need to work out. You need to check with your Finance Director in order to officially set up an account for your GSA. Don't just start accepting money and spending it on your own. It's so important to follow procedures in order to be able to do big things. Not cookies for every meeting things, but perhaps big things like a field trip or a guest speaker.

I recommend emailing a request to them for an account. This process would be easier if you had either a parent or a community process already showing support because then you can add to the request that interested parties are ready to start fundraising or donating but you want to make certain that you go through the proper channels. You want to make yourself the good guy as much as you can. 

When I tried to do this myself, I emailed twice simply asking for an account with no response and gave up for about a year. I didn't push the issue or bring it up with anyone else. I figured that since it was a just a social club then there wasn't a need to fundraise. But then a supportive parent encouraged me to try again. It made me sit down and think about the weekly cost of cookies and juice and the times that the kids ask about things that all of the other organizations have like t-shirts or a Homecoming float.

I tried it again with the advice I mentioned above and it worked. I was given a response within the day saying that it had been created. Of course my first attempts could have been lost in the internet maze and never read or the director could have been too busy to respond but it really seemed like trying again with some backup really helped.

Some good research I found to put in our website. Now having 2011 sources, these are kind of old so I'm going to look for new ones.


Non-heterosexual youth were at an increased risk for suicide, being four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. Suicide attempts by non-heterosexual youth are six times more likely to result in injury, poisoning, or overdose that requires medical treatment (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011).

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2011). Sexual identity, sex of sexual contacts, and
health-risk behaviors among students in grades 9–12: youth risk behavior surveillance,
selected sites, United States, 2001–2009. Surveillance Summaries, 60, 1-133.

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k78405&pageid=icb.page414495
LGBTQ Policy Journal at the Harvard Kennedy School: 2011 Edition
Shutting LGBT Students Out: How Current Anti-Bullying Policies Fail America’s Youth
by Daryl Hannah


Prevalence statistics on anti-gay bully-ing depict a hostile school environment for youth who identify, or are perceived as, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ) their sexual orientation.
Mellin, E.  &  Hinojosa T. March 2011 Anti-Gay Bullying and Suicide: Implications and Resources for  Counselors The Counselor Education Newsletter 5 (26)  pg 1-3