“Had I just seen that flag, I think it would’ve felt different to me,” he said. When he saw LGBTQ+ flags displayed yesterday on his campus, Johnson said he thought of the loneliness he felt in high school, as one of the only out queer students. An LGBTQ+ flag in a teacher’s classroom is a sign that students can come to them for support - even if they never need it, they have the safety in knowing that it’s there, Johnson said. “If they’re up and they’re forced to take them down, the message is clear that there’s no welcome symbol in that space,” he said. Johnson said that it’s not just about a flag - it’s about the message sent once it’s taken down. “It’s not a flag that helps us get better, it’s having conversations,” he said. Teachers should be connecting with their students and showing them that they have “a trusted adult that they can go to” in other ways, he said. “A flag doesn’t make an environment safe,” Dresback said.
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TEACHER IN CALIFORNIA GAY FLAG FREE
He said that while students are free to wear or display Pride flags, district employees tasked with taking care of students have to be careful to follow school board rules. “Pride flags, Blue Line, Black Lives Matter, they’ve all tried to come into the district and we’re trying to keep the schools as safe as possible,” he said. In this most recent case, the school principal enforced that rule after seeking guidance from the district, he said. Johns County, said any local school barring Pride flags is following a county board rule that bans employee political activity. Kyle Dresback, the associate superintendent for student support services in St. Local parents criticized the removal in a private progressive Facebook group in screenshots that the teacher also shared with The 19th. The teacher shared photographs of the flags as they had hung in her classroom, as well as students’ homemade Pride drawings made in protest of the flags being taken down.
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Texas is pushing the most anti-trans bills in the country. Study: 42 percent of LGBTQ+ youth report suicidal thoughts during the pandemicĬould sex ed halt trans homicides? Some advocates say yes. School administrators did not respond to requests for comment, although the county superintendent’s office confirmed the incident. The teacher said she was told by the school to remove the students’ flags last week, since they’re considered a political statement. Nonbinary and LGBTQ+ Pride flags eventually followed.
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Another kid brought a pansexual flag into class to hang up. “As soon as that flag went up, obviously, there was conversation and other kids were like, ‘Oh, can I bring in my flag, too?’”Ī student’s lesbian pride flag, taken from her mom’s house, came next, followed by a student who brought their bisexual flag from home. The teacher, who asked to remain unidentified because she did not want to endanger her job, said she started to hang large Pride flags in her classroom at the start of the new school year, starting with a transgender pride flag that a student had asked to bring in from home. Johns County, who currently teaches 7th and 8th grade, told The 19th that she’s concerned about her own students being invalidated - especially those who aren’t out. “I would feel strongly about extending that to things like Pride flags,” Watson said, since the flags serve as another signal that a welcoming space is available.Ī Florida teacher in St. While research has not proved that Pride flags affect mental health, they both said that is a similar signal.
TEACHER IN CALIFORNIA GAY FLAG PLUS
Watson, and Austin Johnson, who teaches sociology at Kenyon College and studies LGBTQ+ health, said research has established that students with access to Gay-Straight Alliances experience decreases in depression, substance abuse and self harm, plus increases in self-esteem and overall health.