Counselors in a safe school and community
- Post it on your door, on a bulletin board outside or inside your office, on a whiteboard or blackboard, on the wall, or any other place that might be appropriate outside your office.
- If you have a page on the school's website, put this information there, too.
- Please include some or all of these critical crisis resources.
That's it. I don't have anything else i can add to this one.
- Do you know the differences between the alphabet soup of queer and trans identities? If not, this part of the adult resources section is a great place to start.
- Are you completely comfortable with folx who have more "out there," in-your-face sexual and gender presentations? It's critical to remember that queer and trans tweens and teens deserve respect and love not in spite of their queerness and transness but because of it.
- If a student comes out to you as queer and non-binary, can you treat them with the same level of care, encouragement, and knowledge as a student who is a cisgender gay boy or lesbian girl?
- If not, do your own internal work first before proceeding with anything else listed here.
...if your school requires you to out students to their parents:
- Post prominently that these are the rules you're forced to live by. You want queer and trans young people to know upfront before they come out to you.
- Come up with a code so that you and your student can have a conversation without overtly talking about queer or trans identities. Perhaps you need to have conversations with a student about butterflies or relationships between parents and children in ancient Mesopotamia….
Counselors in a hostile school or community
Everything below should be read as being preceded by "If you can do so without getting fired or disciplined…"
In addition to what's on the rest of this page, see these position statements of the American School Counselor Association:
- If a student comes out to you as queer and non-binary, can you treat them with the same level of care, encouragement, and knowledge as a student who is a cisgender gay boy or lesbian girl? If not, do your own internal work first before proceeding with anything else listed here.
- Do you know the differences between the alphabet soup of queer and trans identities? If not, this part of the adult resources section is a great place to start.
- Are you completely comfortable with folx who have more "out there," in-your-face sexual and gender presentations? It's critical to remember that queer and trans tweens and teens deserve respect and love not in spite of their queerness and transness but because of it.
