Action4Canada - January 15, 2022


SOGI 1 2 3 - Learning Module - Curriculum Resources

Topics
curriculum SOGI integration lessons family diversity gender identity and inclusivity in education
Hosted by
Tanya Gaw
Mentioned
Bailey Miriam Webster Adrienne Rich Michael Hill Clifford Barbie Gender Robin Henry
A4C Orientation Jan-12-2022 Empowering Businesses to Stay Open Pursuant to Charter Rights and Freedoms

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

160.45

Word count

1,697

Sentence count

105

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (SOGI) issues need to be talked about in schools, especially in primary, primary and secondary schools. In this episode, we talk about how to talk about SOGI issues in schools and how to integrate them into the curriculum.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.240 One thing that really surprised me was our Scholastic Book Fair this year actually had a table for diversity.
00:00:06.880 And I was able to purchase some books on new immigrants, refugees, as well as the book Red, which is one of my favorite books, Michael Hall.
00:00:14.880 It's written a kid's picture book about a crayon who comes dressed in a label, which is red, but he's really blue.
00:00:20.740 When I read it to a group of grade two threes, one of the kids at the end put up his hand and said,
00:00:26.000 I think this book is about transgender. I think that crayon's a transgender character. 0.65
00:00:31.400 And then another kid says, maybe the author's transgender. I'm like, maybe.
00:00:35.600 Like, it was just a neat conversation that I wouldn't have had five years ago.
00:00:41.600 The revised BC curriculum has left a lot of scope for teachers to really personalize for their students
00:00:49.200 and personalize for themselves what it is they're going to teach.
00:00:52.740 There's scope for embracing diversity. There's certainly scope for creating safer classrooms.
00:00:59.060 All of that can be found in the curriculum.
00:01:01.620 So it's really important that more and more examples are introduced in various curriculum areas at age-appropriate levels.
00:01:09.660 And so that that becomes normalized in the everyday stories that are told in classrooms, both by teachers and by children,
00:01:15.680 and that this just becomes the norm.
00:01:18.060 People say that the curriculum is what we teach, but it's also what we leave out.
00:01:22.940 And it sends a message to students when certain things are left out.
00:01:34.960 It's appropriate at all grade levels to talk about both sexual orientation and gender identity,
00:01:41.580 but just in different ways.
00:01:43.500 I think administrators and teachers in schools can best support students around SOGI issues
00:01:49.940 if they just make it public that they're supportive.
00:01:53.280 And it's really simple.
00:01:54.700 Whether or not that's taking a moment to talk about the history of it,
00:01:58.380 because we know pink shirt is rooted in a case where there was a gay student who was bullied
00:02:03.540 because he simply wore a pink shirt.
00:02:05.800 Those things need to be talked about in conjunction with SOGI policies.
00:02:11.140 And talking about things like pronouns, saying, you know, these are the pronouns I use.
00:02:16.580 This is why we're going to talk about pronouns.
00:02:18.800 Figuring out those clever ways to integrate those things into their lessons.
00:02:21.900 Are you talking about pronouns in your English grammar lesson?
00:02:25.500 Here's a great time to talk about the they pronoun and how it was Miriam Webster's word of the year in 2016 or 15.
00:02:32.800 And this is how language has changed and evolved and why that's important, right?
00:02:38.540 So just finding those ways to talk about gender when it comes up and to really be leaders for their young people.
00:02:47.440 Well, I think a lot of students are interested in talking about homophobia or transphobia or LGBTQ2 plus politics,
00:02:55.560 because I think in general, a lot of students dislike current events.
00:02:58.440 I mean, there's a lot of current events around bathroom rights, around other countries in the world
00:03:03.540 where people are being executed or tortured for being queer.
00:03:08.360 Textbooks written a while ago that are used in classes might not be up to date that discuss SOGI-related issues.
00:03:15.780 And I think this is the opportunity that teachers and administrators have,
00:03:19.400 is to bring in current events that are affecting students who might be trans or queer.
00:03:24.540 I think when we're talking about sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms and in schools,
00:03:30.280 it's more of how do we treat the subject with as much dignity and respect as we do any other kind of relationship.
00:03:38.000 When we talk about, you know, whether it be kindergarten to grade 7,
00:03:42.420 talking about home life and relationships between, you know, your mom and your dad.
00:03:48.140 Maybe this child has two moms and maybe this child has two dads.
00:03:51.000 It's the same thing. We're talking about relationships.
00:03:53.260 The way I approach these topics with early primary students often begins with a book.
00:03:59.760 It starts with a story, for sure.
00:04:01.580 It is in the curriculum for us to talk about family and family diversity,
00:04:05.340 and that's a really natural way to talk about it.
00:04:07.960 And at their age, 6 and 7, they're remarkably open and accepting if that's the tone that is set.
00:04:14.720 So it's actually not as difficult as it seems, I don't think.
00:04:17.640 Don't be afraid to start with the younger grades.
00:04:20.300 They are definitely ready to learn about.
00:04:22.900 There aren't just two boxes, boy and girl.
00:04:25.360 There's everything in between, and there are different types of families.
00:04:28.800 And the kids are old enough to learn about that and to be accepting of each other's differences.
00:04:34.660 Who's in your family?
00:04:35.940 My dog, Barbie.
00:04:37.360 My dog. Oh, so cute.
00:04:39.040 A family can be made up in many different ways.
00:04:43.820 Robin's family is made up of her dad, Clifford, and his partner, Henry.
00:04:51.860 Everybody loves to dress up in different ways.
00:04:55.140 And usually in kindergarten, like right off the bat, the house centre and the dress-ups are very popular.
00:05:01.100 And many, many times I've had children who go and choose dress-ups that aren't stereotypical.
00:05:06.980 And immediately I'm intervening and educating to help everybody be respectful
00:05:12.800 and allow people to choose how they want to dress up and how they want to use their imaginations
00:05:16.600 and how they want to express themselves.
00:05:18.600 There's people that are boys.
00:05:20.020 There's people that are girls. 1.00
00:05:21.500 There are people whose gender might be a little bit of both or might even be neither.
00:05:26.880 All girls like playing with dolls. Is that a stereotype? 1.00
00:05:30.520 Yes.
00:05:31.080 Is it true?
00:05:31.960 No.
00:05:32.600 No?
00:05:33.480 Boys don't cry.
00:05:35.160 What?
00:05:36.660 Girls don't play sports. 1.00
00:05:38.460 What? 0.99
00:05:40.920 That's ridiculous. 0.99
00:05:42.740 Of course they do. 0.96
00:05:44.540 Being an ally means that you know
00:05:47.680 It takes many colors to make a rainbow
00:05:51.660 Gender won't decide the choices we make 1.00
00:05:55.540 Some boys like dressing up
00:05:57.580 Some girls like catching snakes 1.00
00:05:59.820 Students feel sometimes a little nervous
00:06:02.840 because this is quite a new topic.
00:06:05.040 You know, in my class they're 12 and 13 years old
00:06:07.660 and they really haven't had this form of education in gender identity.
00:06:13.320 This morning we have a brand new book in our library called 10,000 Dresses
00:06:18.240 and we're going to be showing it to you on the screen up there
00:06:23.360 and my first question is
00:06:26.040 what do you think the story is about?
00:06:28.680 Does that kind of look like a dude in a dress?
00:06:31.860 It is.
00:06:32.960 That could be a woman. 1.00
00:06:35.520 You never know.
00:06:36.440 I think it's about a guy who wants to wear a dress
00:06:39.580 but maybe he's not allowed in his school
00:06:41.860 and all he wants to do is wear a dress.
00:06:43.720 And I was wondering if you would buy me a dress just like that.
00:06:48.240 Bailey, what are you talking about?
00:06:50.060 You're a boy.
00:06:51.540 Boys don't wear dresses. 0.99
00:06:52.960 Okay, so we're going to pause for the middle part
00:06:54.800 and you can write down some thoughts
00:06:56.780 about how you think the character is feeling.
00:06:59.180 She's not like Bailey said.
00:07:01.500 Yeah, I said Bailey's not feeling sad
00:07:03.440 because no one is listening to her
00:07:04.980 and accepting what she wants to do.
00:07:06.860 What would you say to Bailey
00:07:08.260 if they wanted to wear a dress to school
00:07:11.160 or they came to school in a dress?
00:07:12.760 I'll tell her that she's not alone
00:07:14.780 and there's probably other people in the school
00:07:16.620 that are transgender or queer
00:07:19.100 and then I'll tell her that there'll be a GSA club
00:07:22.120 so she can be herself there if she wants to come there.
00:07:25.820 Going into my practicum,
00:07:27.880 I was quite nervous about how I was going
00:07:30.880 to implement SOGI practices and concepts.
00:07:34.760 So with the grade 11s, we did a slam poetry unit
00:07:37.780 and I think poetry naturally lends itself
00:07:40.360 to this idea of exploring identity, being vulnerable
00:07:44.320 and so I had a prompt for students
00:07:48.280 that said something along the lines of
00:07:50.620 if only he knew that
00:07:52.660 and I ended up having one of my students
00:07:55.840 who identifies as male
00:07:58.820 write a poem from the perspective
00:08:01.700 of a male in love with another male student.
00:08:08.020 One big thing that I've tried to take on this year
00:08:09.900 is to teach a queer novel to my grade 9 class
00:08:14.260 and to not preface it as such.
00:08:18.020 If you've read the book,
00:08:19.100 it takes two-thirds of the book
00:08:20.880 before you finally figure out 0.73
00:08:22.300 that one of the characters is gay
00:08:23.840 and you don't find out until the very end 0.51
00:08:25.380 that the other one is.
00:08:26.300 And when I was doing it with my students this year,
00:08:27.860 it was, I was just so surprised
00:08:30.020 to see how unfazed they were by it,
00:08:31.740 how this was just, to them, something normal,
00:08:34.600 something that was part of their life
00:08:36.100 quite naturally.
00:08:37.980 I think another big success is within PE.
00:08:41.080 So in looking at the new curriculum,
00:08:43.180 there's explicit language in there,
00:08:45.640 not only for teaching about sex ed and sexual health,
00:08:49.220 but specifically about identity and gender.
00:08:51.940 I've had the pleasure of working
00:08:52.880 with a number of different high schools
00:08:54.340 around the district
00:08:54.960 and their PE departments
00:08:56.700 wanting to learn about what can they do,
00:08:58.900 who can they bring in,
00:09:00.220 how can I support them.
00:09:02.900 So for a sexual health workshop
00:09:04.540 to be accessible and inclusive,
00:09:06.240 my goal is that everyone listening
00:09:08.580 to the sound of my voice
00:09:09.880 will hear their experience
00:09:12.080 and their identity
00:09:13.460 reflected in the words that I choose,
00:09:16.400 in the examples that I use.
00:09:18.480 They will hear that they are known,
00:09:21.800 that they're seen,
00:09:23.200 that they're important.
00:09:24.960 It's about finding creative ways
00:09:26.820 because really queer, 0.62
00:09:28.220 trans, two-spirit representation
00:09:29.360 can come up in almost any course
00:09:31.120 as long as you just make a decision to do it
00:09:33.720 and do that inclusive work.
00:09:35.420 So this is a quote by Adrienne Rich,
00:09:37.320 who is an American poet.
00:09:38.420 When someone with the authority of a teacher
00:09:39.980 describes the world
00:09:41.000 and you are not in it,
00:09:42.380 there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium
00:09:45.000 as if you looked into a mirror
00:09:46.600 and saw nothing.
00:09:47.500 Thank you.
00:10:01.400 So with the passion foriting today,
00:10:03.400 that's the university
00:10:03.660 and that they are most common
00:10:04.360 of life sometimes.
00:10:04.600 Thank you.