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Supporting Queer Students in Schools

Sarah Geist

Michigan State University

TE 823: Learning Communities and Equity

May 1, 2023
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Supporting Queer Students in Schools

For many LGBTQ+ children, school is not a safe place. Students experience

microaggressions, a lack of inclusion, silencing, and emotional and physical violence from both

their classmates and teachers. An increase in anti-trans and anti-queer legislation around the

country has emboldened those who would harass LGBTQ+ students while simultaneously

contributing to a culture of fear and unwelcoming for any student who defies gender and/or

sexuality norms. This lack of safety for queer students is deleterious to their mental and

academic health. According to the Trevor Project (2022), “45% of LGBTQ youth seriously

considered attempting suicide in the past year” (p. 4), while the Gay, Lesbian and Straight

Education Network (2022) found that “Nearly one-third (32.2%) of LGBTQ+ students missed at

least one day of school in the last month due to feeling unsafe.” Bullying and other forms of

discrimination at school cause students to feel unwelcome and unwanted at school, which not

only negatively impacts their learning, but also harms their sense of personhood.

But while school can be a source of torment to many queer students, it can also be a place

of hope. The Trevor Project (2022) reported that although only 37% of LGBTQ youth considered

home to be an identity-affirming space, 55% consider school to be one (p. 20). This shows that

schools have the potential to provide love and support for queer students who may not

experience needed care at home. Making schools a welcoming space for LGBTQ+ students is

essential to providing them an equitable education and may even save students’ lives. “LGTBQ

youth who found their school to be LGBTQ-affirming reported lower rates of attempting

suicide” than youth who found their school to be non-affirming (The Trevor Project, 2022, p. 4).

It is crucial that teachers and other school staff be prepared to effectively and unconditionally
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support their queer students. But how exactly should teachers support and advance equity in

schools for LGBTQ+ students?

Supporting equity for queer students in schools requires both a clear plan for preventing

and intervening in anti-LGBTQ+ harassment and explicit action by staff to affirm student

identities. It is not enough to merely ensure a non-homophobic and transphobic school culture.

Teachers must actively work to support student identity formation and to critically educate all

students about gender identity and sexuality. A proactive approach is required in order to ensure

that LGBTQ+ students can feel safe in schools and access an equitable education.

The most common and least controversial method schools use to support equity for their

queer students is responding to bullying and harassment. Teachers and schools have a moral and

legal responsibility to work to reduce and eliminate bullying in classrooms and other learning

spaces. Reducing harassment of LGBTQ+ students makes school a safer place for them to learn

and grow, which in turn allows them to focus more on their learning and increases academic

achievement.

There are many different strategies schools can use to reduce bullying and harassment,

ranging from very effective to actively harmful. One such method teachers can use is acting as

positive role models for students. According to Wernick et. al, (2021), witnessing teachers

intervening in incidents of harassment against LGBTQ+ students increased students’ likelihood

of interrupting bullying themselves (p. 6). Students consciously and subconsciously learn their

beliefs and behavior by watching the adults around them. When teachers they admire ignore and

allow homophobia and transphobia, students will accept that apathy as a desired trait. Failing to

intervene on behalf of queer students sends the message that LGBTQ+ students do not deserve to

be protected from and may even deserve poor treatment. Even if a student knows that anti-
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LGBTQ+ harassment is wrong, they may be reluctant to speak up if teachers do not model how

to do so effectively. These would-be allies may be afraid of getting in trouble or of going against

the accepted school norms. On the other hand, when teachers do intervene in homophobic and/or

transphobic bullying, they set an expectation for respecting and protecting queer students. They

not only teach the perpetrator that hatred and harassment are unacceptable, but also teach

bystanders and the victims that LGBTQ+ students are worthy of safety and acceptance. It is

especially important for teachers to be seen doing this anti-bullying work because it models how

to speak out against hatred respectfully and effectively. Many students, especially those who

come from homes that espouse anti-LGBTQ+ views, may not yet have the knowledge or

language to speak about gender identity and sexuality. They may be concerned about potentially

offending someone or making the situation worse if they choose to speak out. Teachers can

demonstrate language and strategies for intervention by interrupting bullying and harassment

incidents immediately and publicly. This will increase the confidence of other students to fight

against homophobia and transphobia themselves, creating a safer, more accepting environment in

which queer students can learn.

Another strategy schools use to reduce anti-LGBTQ+ bullying and harassment is by

implementing a restorative justice model of discipline. Restorative justice is based on the idea

that “crime harms individual relationships and communities” and seeks to give offending

students the “opportunity to repair that harm” (Lustick, 2016, p. 149). In schools that practice

restorative justice, students who misbehave are not necessarily punished, but are instead asked to

participate in mediation and reflect on how their behavior was harmful and what they can do to

make it right. This is potentially helpful in supporting LGBTQ+ students for a variety of reasons.

First, it can reduce the harmful impact of zero tolerance exclusion policies that are often
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unequally applied to queer students. According to Lustick (2016), “Students who identify as

LGBTQ are also more likely to be suspended than their peers” (p. 147). Restorative justice

reduces suspension and expulsion rates and works to include students in the school community.

This not only increases the time spent learning by queer students, but also implies that those

students are a part of the class community and deserve to be present for all class activities. In

addition to being a more equitable discipline policy, restorative justice also has the potential to

create a more accepting school culture and reduce overall incidents of bullying and harassment.

Supporters of restorative justice argue, “If students are accountable to each other, the logic goes,

they will be less likely to engage in harmful activities such as bullying and harassment” (Lustick,

2016, p. 150). Essentially, students learn more from reflecting on their behavior and the harm

they have done than by sitting alone in a detention room. Teacher-led mediation and reflection

may help students understand the damage their homophobic and/or transphobic words and

actions can have and teach them acceptance and respect for differences.

In theory, restorative justice is an excellent alternative to zero tolerance policies that

increases equity for LGBTQ+ students and educates students about the harms of bullying. In

practice, however, restorative justice can replicate many of the harms of other discipline and anti-

bullying policies. The dominant beliefs of the community in which the school operates may

prevent reflection and mediation from improving tolerance in students. Because “transphobia is

socially sanctioned, culturally supported, and reinforced by the dominant culture,” restorative

justice and “accountability to one’s peers and teachers may not necessarily convince the

offending student to cease their behavior” (Lustick, 2016, p. 150). In order to restorative justice

to work well, perpetrators of anti-LGBTQ+ bullying must recognize their queer classmates as

human and deserving of respect. If the school culture or wider community does not support the
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humanity and dignity of queer students, then there is no reason for an offending student to care

about restoring their relationship with an LGBTQ+ victim. Additionally, a restorative justice

model without properly trained teachers can result in placing the burden of educating students

about gender and sexuality solely on nonconforming students. In a case study of a black trans

girl’s coming out experience, Lustick (2016) found that Ava, the queer student in question, was

frequently expected to teach her teachers and classmates how she should be treated, while her

cisgender and heterosexual peers were allowed to misgender her or make harmful comments

under the guise of lack of knowledge. Whenever a conflict occurred between Ava and another

student or teacher, the school was quick to question the appropriateness of each of Ava’s

decisions while simultaneously allowing the other person to opt out of accountability. According

to Lustick (2016), this treatment of Ava “seemed to represent and reinforce the belief that the

school’s transition process is ultimately Ava’s responsibility” (p. 157). This is not only

problematic because it prioritized discomfort and transphobia over Ava’s humanity, but it also

caused Ava to spend much of her time in mediation conferences rather than in class. Instead of

learning, Ava and other LGBTQ+ students are forced to spend the school day justifying their

existence to their teachers and classmates.

The limitations of anti-bullying practices such as modeling positive intervention and

restorative justice lead to the conclusion that more is needed to support equity and love for queer

students. In order for anti-harassment efforts to be effective, schools must engage students and

teachers in critical learning about gender and sexuality. Lustick (2016) explains that the burden

of teaching about queer issues “must be on the administration to provide and reinforce an

inclusive school environment where the confrontation of transphobia and homophobia is

normalized” (p. 163). Schools must be willing to fight biased societal norms in order to do what

is right for students.

A strong first step toward creating a culture of acceptance is including LGBTQ+ content

in the mainstream curriculum. This not only educates cisgender and heterosexual students about

the diversity, history, and experiences of the queer community, but it also allows LGBTQ+

students to be represented and engaged by their schoolwork. Vetter (2010) conducted a case

study with a black lesbian student who participated in an open-ended research project about the

history of LGBTQ issues. The focus student, June, had spent much of the year checked out of her

English class, often turning in incomplete work and not participating in class discussions. When

given the opportunity to explore her identity, however, June was much more excited and engaged

in her work, practicing strong reading and writing strategies such as making connections between

texts and pushing back against ideas she disagreed with (Vetter, 2010). Additionally, June

became more confident in her identity as a lesbian throughout the project, shifting from

hesitancy in associating herself with the people she was learning about to including her own

experiences in her understanding of the queer community. Through this assignment, “June was

able to explore and acknowledge how her sexuality was part and parcel of her literacy practices”

(Vetter, 2010, p. 105). Allowing June to explore and affirm her identity in school not only helped

her learn to be a more confident reader and writer, but also supported her in exploring her

identity expression. This type of discovery work is especially important for LGBTQ+ students

because their identities, unlike many other types of social identity, can change throughout their

schooling and lives. Part of growing up is experimenting and discovering who one is, and

students may leave the classroom with very different understandings of their gender and

sexuality than what they entered with. Curriculum that allows for and encourage identity
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exploration can support LGBTQ+ students in learning about themselves both as thinkers and as

people.

In order for queer representation in curriculum to be effective against bullying, however,

it must go beyond allowing students to explore their own identities. Schools should engage

students in critical examinations of the ways that gender and sexuality relate to power and

inequity in society. When investigating the causes of increased intervention in anti-LGBTQ+

bullying, Wernick et. al. (2021) found that “schools having race-related curriculum significantly

predicted intervention behaviors around gender and sexuality and that LGBTQ-related curricula

did not predict such actions” (p. 1). Wernick et. al. posit that the reason behind this relationship is

that most antiracism curriculums focus explicitly on power and civic action, whereas most queer

curriculum focuses on health and identity. Lessons about race and racism more frequently take a

social justice lens that focuses on problems in society and what students can do to create

meaningful change. This perspective gives students the skills and authority to challenge other

types of discrimination and inequality, including bias against LGBTQ+ students. In order to

increase the impact of queer-inclusive curriculum on school culture, Wernick et. al. (2021)

recommends that “LGBTQ content should go beyond the personal to the systemic; multicultural

content should be taught with explicit attention to social action; and multicultural content should

be taught with an intersectional lens” (p. 7). Adopting a critical, social justice-oriented approach

to inclusive curriculum helps all students recognize problems in society and teaches them the

skills necessary to intervene and make both the school and the world a better, more equitable

place for queer students.

Taking an intersectional lens in LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum also allows students to

examine and learn about many different kinds of identities, which creates a more welcoming,
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accepting environment for all students. For example, queer students are often thought of as

desiring urban life, of graduating high and moving to a bigger, more liberal city for college or

work. While this may be true for some, “many queer students value and identify with rural areas

and experience acceptance and inclusion in these areas” (Sorgen & Rogers, 2020, p. 79). It

important for teachers and schools to recognize that LGBTQ+ students are incredibly diverse and

have a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences, and desires that also need cultivation. Queer

students may face a unique set of challenges when it comes to feeling safe and welcome in

schools, but they also have many other intersecting identities that should be nurtured and loved.

Supporting equity for LBGTQ+ students means supporting the entire student and requires an

active, critical lens that promotes diversity and prevents prejudice.

Creating an equitable and safe environment for queer students is a complex task that

requires teachers and schools to take a stand against hatred. Adults must go beyond simply

addressing bullying. They must incorporate LGBTQ+ and social justice topics into curriculums

in order to explicitly address the homophobia and transphobia that makes school a difficult place

for queer students to exist and learn. Equity is not merely ensuring that each student has what

they need in order to learn. Equity requires teaching all students the critical skills they need to

stop hatred in its tracks and to work to create a more just world. Equity requires teachers to

interrogate their own biases and to take the initiative to learn more about their students’

identities. Most importantly, equity is not something that can be generalized or passive. Equity

for LGBTQ+ students requires teachers to take an active role in supporting diversity in gender

and sexuality and to always fight to make school and the world a better place for our students.

Queer youth are facing a mental health crisis in both their homes and schools. Their teachers owe

it to them to work tirelessly to transform school from a place of danger to a place of love.
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References

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. (2022, October 18). New Report: LGBTQ+

Students Experience Hostile School Climates as School Support Declines.

https://www.glsen.org/news/new-report-lgbtq-students-experience-hostile-school-

climates-school-support-declines

Lustick, Hilary. (2016). “Accountability” or Hyper-Surveillance?: Possibilities and Limitations

of a Restorative School Discipline Model to Address Anti-LGBTQ Bullying.

Sociological

Studies of Children and Youth, 20(1), 145-165.

Sorgen, C. H., & Rogers, B. A. (2020). Recognizing and supporting queer students from rural

areas. New Directions for Student Services, 77-83.

The Trevor Project. (2022). 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health.

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/

Vetter, A. M. (2010). “Cause I’m a G”: Identity Work of a Lesbian Teen in Language Arts.

Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54(2), 98-108.

Wernick, L. J., Espinoza-Kulick, A., Inglehart, M., Bolgatz, J., & Dessel, A. B. (2021). Influence

of multicultural curriculum and role models on high school students’ willingness to

intervene in anti-LGBTQ harassment. Children and Youth Services Review, 129(1), 1-9.