Sunday, October 23, 2016

Supporting LGBT2SQ+ students in my ESL classes

Last week, I had a wonderful opportunity to participate in a very enriching session about how to support people from the LGBT2SQ+ community in my ESL classes. As I did not know how to address this topic in my classes, I had never talked about it with my students.

I am glad I started learning about it in a great session and I would like to share some ideas with you.

I am going to:

- Put a rainbow sticker in my class door to show I support and welcome everybody.

- Start including gender neutral nouns and pronouns in my talks so everyone feels comfortable talking about themselves.

- Include the stories of the LGBT2SQ+ in my classes.

- Ask students what their preferred names and pronouns are and use them.

- Intervene immediately if I observe offensive comments or behaviours.

- Put these posters in my class.


I thank the Rainbow Resource Centre in Winnipeg, Canada for the materials and ideas! Visit them at http://www.rainbowresourcecentre.org/ 

Do you have any ideas how to support the LGBT2SQ+ students in your ESL/EFL classes?

See you!