Supporting Our Youth Who Are LGBTQ+

Quick fact: Supporting our students who are LGBTQ+ is suicide prevention, plain and simple. If you care about the mental health of these students, you must support them. In fact, it’s our ethical responsibility as school counselors to do so – you cannot be a school counselor and choose to not support these students.

ASCA’s position statement on this is quite clear. It outlines our role, while also reminding us it’s not our role to attempt to change a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and that we understand such therapies are incredibly harmful to a student’s mental health. Things we should be doing include:

• advocating for equitable educational and extracurricular opportunities for LGBTQ+ students
• advocating for their access to building facilities (ensuring a safe environment for restroom use and changing) and gender presentation (wearing clothes that match their gender expression)
• promoting policies that effectively reduce the use of offensive language, harassment and bullying
• modeling language that is inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity
• encouraging staff training on inclusive practices and creating an affirming school environment

Why do we need to be doing these things? Because the data tells us that these students especially need our support. Here in Maine, according to the 2019 MIYHS:

• LGBT students experience more violence and discrimination at school, at home, and in the community (LGBT students are twice as likely to feel unsafe at school)
• LGBT students are less likely to have support from adults, and more likely to experience violence (LGBT students are significantly more likely to say that violence in their home or the threat of violence made them consider leaving home)
• LGBT students face many challenges and fewer supports - their mental health outcomes are significantly worse (LGBT students are nearly four times more likely to have seriously considered suicide in the past year)

Knowing that, what can we do?

1. Educate yourself. It’s your job as a school counselor to be knowledgeable about terms (transgender, gender expansive, pansexual, etc.), pronouns (they/them, etc.), the difference between sex and gender, etc. If you’re not sure where to start, I recommend GLSEN, Welcoming Schools, and locally, Out Maine. Also, don’t underestimate the power of YouTube videos – LGBTQ+ youth all around the world provide endless hours of free content for anyone interested. I once showed a video called “What Is Transgender?” in a staff training. Having a youth explaining it was powerful and easy to digest, because they live it.
2. Ask students what pronouns they use, then use them and make sure staff are using them.
3. Train your staff. GLSEN has a great (and newly updated!) Safe Space kit you can use.
4. Understand that this isn’t just “a big kid issue.” Data (and kids themselves) tell us that elementary school-aged children can know their gender identity and sexual orientation. When we don’t listen to these kids or we think they’re too young to know, we’re telling them we don’t believe them and we don’t validate them. Welcoming Schools is a fabulous place to start if you aren’t sure how to do this advocacy work in elementary schools.
5. Understand that the Maine Human Rights Act states we must support these students in school, even if their parent/guardian do not agree.
6. Advocate, advocate, advocate. This may be easy in your district or it may be a bit more difficult, but it’s something you need to do.

I know this work can be hard, especially if you don’t have any support in your district, so please reach out to me if you need any help creating inclusive policies to ensure support for these students across your district.

Contact Tara Kierstead at tkierstead@kidsrsu.org.