Safe Spaces

I really enjoyed reading Safe Spaces.  I as a future teacher, I have always wondered how to handle conversations about LGBT.  I liked how this piece gave examples of how teachers today solve this problem of how to incorporate the topic of homosexuality and heterosexuality.  For this post I want to do an extended comment off of Caitlyn’s post.

First off I completely agree with Caitlyn’s standpoint about how middle school and high school are some of the hardest times of your life physically, emotionally, and mentally.  I can only imagine the extra stress that is put on students who are brave enough to come out as being LGBT. 

I thing I don’t agree with is that Caitlyn does not think that children who are in elementary schools should be taught these issues.  I personally think they should!  I like how Zeke Lerner includes a unit about families in his kindergarten classroom.  When Zeke teaches his students he uses two strategies; integration and interpretation.  Zeke picks three books to base his unit off of; The Family Book, Who’s in a Family, and Tango Makes Three. 

The first two books present a variety of family structures: Kevin and his brother live with their mother and grandmother; Laura and Kyle live with their two moms.  Tango is the true story of two male penguins in Central Park Zoo who hatched an abandoned egg.  They raised Tango, the baby chick, feeding her from their beaks and teaching her to swim.

Zeke used interpretation to talk about Laura and Kyle’s family.  He wanted his class to understand that this family is loving and caring and that the two moms take care of the kids just how his student’s parents would take care of them.  He wanted to show them as equal. 

            There is a child in the daycare that I work at that has a relationship with his father, his mother, and his mother’s girlfriend.  All I could think of while reading this was about him.  In the day care we have a wall in each classroom that has children’s picture with their family.  By having this we can show that no matter who we live with, or if we might have a mom and a dad, or dad and a dad, or a mom and a mom, it is a family.  I think that it would be good at a young age to teach children, this even though a child might not be a LGBT, there parents could and other children could bully them for that.  I think while they are young they should be taught that that is acceptable in todays times.

            I agree with Caitlyn also about the whole incident that happened with the Postcards from Buster episode.  I defiantly think they should of air it and it could have been up to the parents if they want their children to watch it or not.