- Narrator: Bullying is one of those things
that every teacher is seeking an answer for.
But the bullying of LGBTQ+ students
poses a unique problem
because it means addressing harrassment
to an entire marginalized group.
The harm in these cases
is not just between the bully and the one being bullied.
It's a whole societal system, one where heteronormativity,
the idea that heterosexuality is the normal
or preferred way to be, and cisnormativity,
the assumption that a person's gender expression
matches the gender they were assigned at birth,
sets the worldview.
Heteronormativity and cisnormativity
are both all about making assumptions about others,
and can both get in the way of an inclusive society.
[clicking]
- My name is Patty Zemke, and I am a sixth grade health teacher
at the middle schools for the Wausau school district.
- Patty has been doing LGBTQ+ advocacy
in the Wausau school district for ten years.
She says these days,
one of the reasons bullying is so difficult to stop
is because it's not always something
that happens in front of you.
- Most of the bullying that happens over the phone
or y'know, whatever social media,
and then the feelings come to school
and maybe things continue a little bit.
- But when you do see it,
it's something to address in that exact moment.
- Let's say a student were to yell out, "Oh, you're so gay!"
Or "That answer's so gay!"
How do you respond to that?
So we kinda sat all in a circle and talked about
why it wasn't appropriate,
and why they might be hurting someone else's feelings.
- If students come to school having already been bullied,
they're not coming to a neutral space.
They're coming to a space where they may not feel protected.
But this is exactly the environment
where a teacher can do small things
to support big, systemic change.
- So just using gender neutral language and posters y'know,
"Everyone is welcome here," or "You are safe here."
Things like that can help students feel
more welcomed in the classroom.
And when teachers have to split students up
for different groups,
how about if you have purple shoelaces,
you go y'know, right here,
and if you have white shoelaces, over here.
Just keeping the whole gender thing out of every topic
is welcoming.
- Dropping assumptions and removing gendered language
is one small way to have a big impact on school culture.
And if you're unsure on what language to use,
just ask your students.
- The students know more than we do.
The students, what I found,
are more okay with LGBTQ than the adults.
So ask the students, what do they prefer?
- After you've made global adjustments
like using gender neutral language,
you can always continue
to establish personal relationships,
because authentic connections undermine any assumptions
that come with heteronormativity and cisnormativity.
- Well, one thing that I like to do
is every student, I don't care how old they are,
loves a brown paper bag.
That's just in the front of the room.
And they can't see what's in the bag,
but they know it has to do something
with what they're gonna do that day.
And in my brown paper bag, I have a ton of weird objects,
like a card, a puzzle piece, a pair of glasses,
a volleyball knee pad.
So I have probably 35 different objects
in this brown paper bag,
and I literally throw them all around the room,
and tell the students that they need
to pick one of those objects to help explain who they are
or what they like or something like that.
So that very first day, just making a connection
and letting them tell everyone else what they are,
what they're about.
- Or you could do it by just spending time
checking in every day.
- I start every day with just talking to my students,
five to ten minutes.
And it may go longer.
If a student is having a problem or an issue,
then we might need to talk about it longer,
but talking to them through different scenarios
and teaching them empathy
is really, really, really important.
- Talking to your students about their lives
may give you insight into what's happening around them,
both positive and in the case of LGBTQ bullying, the negative.
- If I didn't take the five to ten minutes
to just talk with my class, let them arrive,
let my students arrive,
I would not know half the things that I do
that are going on in their lives.
And that's why it's so important to do that.
With the mental health,
the mental well-being of our students being at a crisis,
you don't have to get into the classroom
and start your bell work with math problems right away.
Can't you do something else?
Can't you connect the students to one another
in a different way?
- What are some things you could do
to creat a supportive environment
for your students?
[gentle music]