Helping teachers help students
In an effort to assure that gay, lesbian and bisexual youth feel safe at school, Santa Barbara high schools are providing teachers with diversity training.

By Rhonda Parks, News-Press Staff Writer, rparks@newspress.com

One of Jessica Doerzapf's most memorable brushes with discrimination occurred when she was 13 and living in Florida. A teacher at her school told her she was going to hell for being gay.

When Jessica, now 17, moved to Santa Barbara last year, she found a more tolerant community. Even so, she has been called names by fellow students at San Marcos High School and gets teased for looking like a boy.

"I know a lot of people are afraid to come out because of stuff like that," she said. "They're afraid they'll be treated differently by teachers and their peers, and that's screwed up."

Schools are under increasing pressure to assure that gay, lesbian and bisexual youth feel safe in public schools. Last year, an amendment to the state's Student Safety and Violence Protection Act added lesbian and gay youth to the list of students who must be protected from discrimination and hate crimes in schools. But school districts around the state have been slow to provide the training teachers need to identify and deal with bias regarding sexual orientation.

The Santa Barbara High School District is striving to move ahead of the pack.

During the last week of August, all teachers in Santa Barbara secondary schools will receive diversity training by the Anti-Defamation League, which will include a component on gay, lesbian and bisexual students and students living with gay parents.

In addition, all secondary-school counselors will receive a more in-depth training on gay issues from the staff at the Pacific Pride Foundation, a gay advocacy group in Santa Barbara that has been pushing for training in the schools.

The training of staff is critical, said Mike Couch, assistant superintendent for the Santa Barbara High School District.

"First we need to create better awareness among adults, and then we have to have a culture where the kids feel safe and will seek help," said Mr. Couch. "Part of the issue is that students are fearful and afraid of expressing what's happened to them. Things are happening and we're not aware of it. Students who are being harassed or intimidated have to feel safe to come to a teacher or an administrator."

According to several national studies published this year, gay teen-agers in the United States endure so much harassment in public schools that they do not receive an adequate education.

The training, mandated under Assembly Bill 535, is intended to help stem that problem, said Mr. Couch and others.

"The state legislature has toughened the law so that it is an expellable offense to harass a student, and that must be dealt with very directly now," he said.

In addition, the training notes that any incidence of harassment should be brought to the principal immediately.

"Taunting and name-calling of gay and lesbian students is really the final frontier in addressing diversity in the schools," said Julie Flapan of the Anti-Defamation League's diversity education arm in Los Angeles, which is providing the district's diversity training to teachers Aug. 28-29.

"It used to be that people used the 'N' word, but now it is never used because we know it's not appropriate. And yet we still use the word 'fag' and the harm is just as great, because it is used to make people feel marginalized," Ms. Flapan said.

It's not that uncommon for coaches, for example, to admonish their players by calling them sissies, said Janet Stanley, executive director of the Pacific Pride Foundation. Those words can encourage taunting of gay students by their peers and even escalate into violence, she said.

"Many students go into survival mode daily, taking different routes to and from school, isolating themselves to reduce the chances of becoming a target, cutting gym class to escape being beaten up and at its worst, we see many of our (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students dropping out of school," she said.

Lesbian and gay students often experience rejection by their families as well, Ms. Stanley said, and they learn that they will be protected only by denying who they are, which leads to higher-than-average suicide rates and a disproportionate level of drug and alcohol abuse.

Two recent studies confirm Ms. Stanley's observations. Both the American Journal for Public Health and the group Human Rights Watch have documented that lesbian and gay youth are subject to higher rates of harassment and violence. The public health study showed that gay students were at the highest risk of violence in schools where there was minimal or low levels of sexual-orientation training among teachers and other school personnel.

At the ADL training, teachers will engage in role-playing scenarios so they know how to respond to slurs and other derogatory comments that students might find hurtful, whether it relates to sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious belief or a person's size or appearance, Ms. Flapan said.

"The actions teachers take or don't take can greatly influence whether students feel safe and whether they can be successful," she said.

The worst possible response is to do nothing, but that is often how discrimination against gay and lesbian students is handled, either because of a teacher's personal bias or because it's an uncomfortable topic, several sources said.

Ms. Stanley, who lobbied school officials for the training over a period of 18 months, said she is pleased that the district is willing to be on the cutting edge of implementing the gay and lesbian component of the anti-discrimination law.

"The bottom line is that public education is just what is says -- public," said Ms. Stanley. "That means that whether you agree or disagree, whether you like a student or not, there is a duty to be sure that school is a safe environment for all students and the district is responsible for implementing that.

"I think that some of the problems in the schools come not from malicious intent on the part of teachers, but from a lack of education and training," she added. "We can't ask teachers to step forward on this if they don't have adequate support."

Adele Rosen of the district's Beyond Tolerance project said addressing discrimination of gay and lesbian youth has been a long time coming.

"I think a lot of schools across the country have dropped the ball on this. They are afraid to bring up the subject because of objections based on religion," said Ms. Rosen. "It's one of the last issues of discrimination to be addressed and it must be addressed. This is an important step in the right direction."

Return to P.E.R.S.O.N. Project Home Page