IN the NEWS

Newsletters
Spring 2012
more

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April is
Gay Pride Month
View activities you can implement in your school at Take Action.
View Annual SFUSD Gay Pride Celebration WAD (with attachments).

Student Safety Data
Learn about health and safety risks associated with LGBTQ youth.

Team LGBTQ makes presentation at national event in Miami Read how our staff is trying to keep kids safe in school.

Visit Take Action to view activities that will help our students stay safe in school and other ways to get involved.

Quote - “I don’t like labels. I’m a human being.” - 7th grader, Hoover Middle School

Important Message

A Personal
Message From
President Obama
to LGBT Youth

Please watch the White House Video featuring President Obama offering words of encouragement to young people who are bullied, whether for perceived or actual sexual orientation, or for any reason.

View video at whitehouse.gov

Contact Information

Support Services for LGBTQ Youth

Student, Family & Community Support Department
1515 Quintara
San Francisco, CA
PH: (415) 242-2615
FAX: (415) 242-2618

Email:
info@healthiersf.org

San Francisco
Unified School District

OUT IN OUR SCHOOLS

Social worker Meghan Graber films students in Everett Middle School's Gay Straight Alliance for a video. Lacy Atkins / The Chronicle

Gay Straight Alliance Takes Hold in
Earlier Grades

It took just a single word for Marcel Brown to make up his mind to join his school's Gay Straight Alliance.

"I was walking down the hallway with my little brother, and he was messing around with his friends and they called him a 'faggot,' " said Marcel, an eighth-grader at San Francisco's Everett Middle School. "And I thought, 'That's messed up.' My older brother is gay."

Read this story from the San Francisco Chronicle at SF Gate

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Youth Videos Feature Freedom
From Tobacco

Watch these two videos and learn ways students who belong to Gay Straight Alliances are promoting a tobacco-free environment:

We Are Tobacco Free: SF Community 8-K

Don’t Be A Butt: MLK Middle School

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In the Pink

In the Pink Lincoln High School kicked off an early Gay Pride Event with their annual Pink Tsunami In February. After one week of events building up to the day, students decorated classrooms and hallways "pink pink pink" and donned as much pink as possible.

Pink Tsunami focuses on creating safe schools and is based on an event started in Canada by young people when a student was bullied for wearing pink to school.

Pictured above are Wellness Coordinator Jen Kenny-Baum, and Community Health Outreach Worker,
Ian Enriquez.

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VOICES from our SCHOOLS

Untitled Document

Ling

Site Coordinator & Lead Teacher
Marina Middle School

Q: In your role as the site coordinator/lead teacher, what have you done to create a safer climate for the LGBTQ youth and their families?

In response to the derogatory comments that students were making, our after school leadership team decided to draw up a Respectful Language Policy to combat slurs such as “that’s gay”, and “faggot”. We worked with our LSP who presented to students in our after school program. In addition, we brought in an organization called ‘Access’ which facilitated a workshop around “isms” to our youth. Access helped our students explore their own biases in the form of games and discussion....

Gay Straight Alliance Takes Hold in Earlier Grades

Gay Straight Alliance Takes Hold in
Earlier Grades