Author Description

"Based on the diverse experiences of LGBTQ students and their allies, this essential volume brings together in one resource the major issues that schools must address to improve the educational outcomes for gender and sexual minority students, as well as all students. Many of these issues involve negative school-based experiences that teachers and administrators need to be aware of as they interact with students on a daily basis, including those that encourage dropping out, substance abuse, and disproportionate thoughts of suicide. This insightful work not only examines the challenges of discrimination, harassment, and alienation that LGBTQ youth face, but it also captures students' resilience and creativity in organizing against those challenges. The text includes teaching strategies, innovative projects, curricular revisions, and policy initiatives that have had positive effects on LGBTQ learning, aspirations, and school climate. This book: offers a nuanced portrait of students, showing how issues of race, gender, gender identity, and class shape and complicate their experience; examines the history and contemporary movements for LGBTQ rights; describes a variety of discipline-based approaches to teaching students to think about LGBTQ-related concerns; shows examples of youth organizing into extracurricular groups or creating school- and community-based interventions, and highlights the role of online communities and web-based resources."--Publisher's description.