Bullying: Role of the Bystander

In my new role within my school district, I have spent a lot of time exploring bullying prevention resources in order to support school counselors with the development of programs for their specific school cultures.  One of the main things that I have been looking at is the role of the bystander.  It is not simply the bully and the target, but it is other students, teachers, parents, and school staff that are also involved by either witnessing or being aware of bullying taking place.  Bystanders can either take a passive role and ignore what is happening, or they can take a stand to support the target of the bullying and send a message that bullying behavior is not welcome in their school community.  Many of those who fall into this bystander role, though, are unsure of what to do in the moment.  In this video from Ireland, two boys are being harassed because of their sexual orientation.  However, what transpires shows that a simple gesture from a bystander can quickly turn the tables.

Safe at School: Feedback Needed

The American School Counselor Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the School Social Work Association of America are partnering with the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to gather important information about the climate of our schools and the preparation of school-based mental health and academic support personnel.  If you are not familiar with GLSEN, they are one of the leading organizations assisting schools in supporting the needs of sexual and gender minority youth.  Beyond this, they have a wealth of resources and curriculum to support educators and students in building safe and inclusive educational environments for all, and are strong advocates for creating bully-free schools.

Additionally, GLSEN does an amazing amount of research, examining everything from school climate as it relates to LGBT youth to the specific experiences of LGBT students of color.  One of their next projects is to examine the pre-professional and professional training of school counselors, school psychologists, and school social-workers with regards to creating safe and supportive environments for all students.  If you are a middle-school or high-school counselor, psychologist, or social-worker, please take 15 minutes and complete the survey at www.safeatschool.org.  The more school helping professionals that take this survey, the stronger the data will be and the better picture they will be able to paint of just where we stand in our profession with regards to this topic.

Please pass this survey on to the other mental health and academic support personnel in your building, and feel free to share this information through Facebook and Twitter.

Reflection: The Bully Effect

Last year I wrote a post about the movie Bully, a powerful documentary that followed the lives of several kids, families, schools, and communities who were effected by bullying and harassment.  A year later, you are left wondering how the people involved are doing and how their lives may have changed as a result of the movie.  Recently, a follow-up documentary called The Bully Effect, produced for Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN, has been airing (check local listings, On-Demand, and other television video services for viewing opportunities).  This piece follows up on most of the stories and people shown in the original documentary:

Overall, this new documentary conveys a message of hope for the kids and families in the original movie, and aims to show just how powerful an effect the film has had on kids, schools, and communities across the nation.  Alex, a child who was physically assaulted on a daily basis in his school and on the school bus, now has many friends and has turned into a powerful advocate and speaker against bullying across the country.  The father of Ty, a young man who committed suicide, has also turned into an anti-bullying speaker whose mission is to reach as many schools and kids as possible with his message.  Kelby, a young woman who was harassed and bullied because of her sexual orientation, has been in a relationship for three years and has the continued love and support of her family.

All is not right with the world, however.  I was most concerned with the fact that, although Alex is doing extremely well, his family had to move into another school district in order to insure the safety of their children after his sister was assaulted on the playground of the same middle-school that Alex had attended.  The administrator who the family had sought out for support but who had done little, at least as portrayed in the context of the original film, has not only remained in the school district but was promoted to being a principal of a local elementary school.  Kelby has the support of her girlfriend and her family, but eventually the decision was made for her to drop out of high-school and get her GED after she was allegedly run down by a car close to school grounds with the intention to injure her based on her sexual orientation.  This continues to demonstrate that anti-LGBT bullying and harassment not only impact students socially and emotionally, but also academically.

The message to me from this follow-up documentary: advocacy is still needed, and we still have work to do.  Even after the national spotlight had been shown on Alex and Kelby's schools, the bullying and harassment continued to the point that they both had to leave not only in order to thrive, but in order to be safe.  Further, while they are now in places where they can be begin to move ahead with their lives, I wonder about the many other kids who are still in those schools and communities--if nothing has changed within those school cultures with regards to bullying and harassment, are they doomed to encounter the same hostilities, the same assaults, the same threats as Alex and Kelby?  If kids do not have even the basic need of safety being met at their school, how can we expect them to learn?  How can we expect them to achieve?  How can we expect them to move into meaningful post-secondary programs?  Indeed, the "Bully" effect has been huge as the stories of the children and families portrayed have made their way into hearts and minds across the country.  However, what seems amiss is that it has not yet made its way into some of the schools of the very kids who continue to inspire anti-bullying policies and conversations to this day.

School Counselors: Advocacy needed, and we still have work to do.

The "Courage Gap"

Continuing with my love of all things public radio, I tuned in last week to one of my favorite programs, This American Life.  The episode was the first of two in which the TAL team visited Harper High School in Chicago, where last year 29 current and former students were involved in shootings.  29.  Very early on in the radio program, the host, Ira Glass, makes a profound statement.  Basically, he poses the question, if this had happened in a wealthier suburban school district and not in the South Side of Chicago, where Harper is located, would this not have received national media attention?  Would there not be an outcry of horror and calls for change?

This past week, here in the DC metro area, Prince George's County, Maryland, saw additional shootings of teenagers, bringing the total up to six killed in the last six months.  Six.  Now, we have had attention paid here and there have been responses and calls to action from amongst county leadership.  When asked about the shootings, the county public safety officer said, "The thing that keeps coming back is people just don't know how to deal with conflict." (source: www.washingtonpost.com)

College Board released their yearly report on Advanced Placement courses and test results.  While, overall, scores are up slightly, there are still large gaps by race and ethnicity.  Black and American-Indian students are still largely underrepresented amongst the whole population of students taking AP exams, and even more so amongst those students passing AP exams.

*****  

I recently attended a national conference for educators focused on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, and Allies (LGBTQIA) youth, put on by the Center for Excellence in School Counseling and Leadership (CESCaL).  The conference brought together educators and leaders from all around the country who shared best-practices for working with LGBTQIA young people in schools, to include program development, standards and policies, advocacy, and ethics.  Ever the planner and maximizer of my time (there may have been lists involved), I went to this conference with a very specific agenda--to gather information and see what others had down with regards to staff developments and policy for working with LGBTQIA students and families in schools.  I was a man on a mission.  In the first session I attended, put on by a speaker from Gender Spectrum,  as a group we were discussing situations that other participants were experiencing in their own schools.  One of the conference-goers brought forth a situation in which all of the best practices and policies were made known to school leadership, and they seemed to be sympathetic.  However, the school leadership was not choosing to act.  The presenter speculated that this might be because of several things, one of which was a "courage gap," meaning that there was a space between what the leadership knew and agreed was right to do and actually doing it, for fear of negative consequences and repercussions.  There was that one last leap that they simply could not take.

What is the role of courage in school counseling leadership?  In the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) Model, 3rd edition, Dr. Anita Young writes:

"Once thought to be the job or administrators, advancing academic achievement, reducing barriers to learning and creating equitable learning environments are central priorities for school counselors...While there are many leadership characteristics and practices, utilizing effective school counselor leadership requires visionary thinking, challenging inequities, shared decision making, collaborative processing, modeling excellence, and a courageous stance." (American School Counselor Association, 2012, pg. 11)

Leadership is one of the prongs of the ASCA National Model, and thus of our profession.  As we develop comprehensive data-drive programs and become embedded within our school cultures, we have a real opportunity to help guide our schools to be more equitable for all students as well as create welcoming and inviting environments for everyone who walks through our doors.  Yet, I often feel that this point of the model is often the most difficult and challenging for school counselors.  We are a humble people, we school counselors.  Inherent within most of us is a desire to keep the peace, to broker compromise, and to keep the seas smooth versus making waves.  Our strong relationship-building skills allow us to do things like mediate between students, students and teachers, and help build consensus at committee meetings involving our school leadership.  Many of us do not like to stand up in the crowd and go against the grain.  However, part of our mission is to examine our schools and school systems as a whole, identify achievement gaps and areas of need, and then work to address these systemic issues.  Sometimes, in order to do this, we must be willing to speak out and advocate on behalf of what is best for students and to leverage our reputations and relationships to bring about policies and practices that either level the playing field or create safe spaces.

While I am no expert on leadership, I have learned through the years that we often mistake "managers" for "leaders."  What is the difference?  I believe it is this one piece, this final tip on the iceberg--courage.  Many school counselors have a vision, espouse a long-term strategy, hold to a set of core-beliefs, and possess strong skills with regards to their practice.  Additionally, they provide resources and even professional development to help bring others along and get everyone on the same page.  However, this is only the beginning.  You have a choice to make at this point--either you maintain the status-quo and "manage" what you already have in place day-to-day, year-to-year, or you begin to advocate for what your professional practice and data tell you is best for kids.  Courage and fear are yin-and-yang to each other--we cannot have one without the other.  To lead others through change is not for the faint of heart--it can have moments of great challenge, and can even involve risk to our professional and personal relationships, as well as our positions.  Yet, unless we are willing to truly serve as "leaders" versus "managers," we cannot ever really be the agents of change and advocates that our students and families need us to be.  This is no more real than in the school district of Anoka-Hennapin, which has received a great deal of attention in recent years do to a number of suicides of students who were bullied for their real or perceived LGBT orientation.  One of the middle school theater teachers, Jefferson Fietek, put his own job on the line in order speak up for policy change with regards to supporting LGBT students in the school district.  As I went from session to session at the CESCaL conference, I heard stories of other teachers, administrators, and school counselors who were putting themselves and their jobs in jeopardy every day by advocating for Gay-Straight Alliances within their schools or for policy changes that would make their buildings safer and more inclusive for LGBT students.  They possessed skills, the knowledge, and the resources to lead, but they also demonstrated their courage.

We can apply this to multiple situations in different schools around the country.  For example, because we have the pulse of the school, and because we are the connection between so many different stakeholders, as school counselors, we know first-hand what is happening in schools like Harper or in Prince George's County, MD.  We have opportunities to shine lights on what is happening with regards to young people dying in violent ways in order to garner support at higher levels to address this epidemic, to speak out until someone listens.   Additionally, we are trained in how to address conflict resolution, and can work with students, starting in the elementary schools, on building positive coping skills.  We can advocate for more resources with regards to social/emotional and grief supports.  We can help to build community between students, parents, neighbors, and law enforcement to try to develop webs of support both within and outside of the schools.  A colleague of mine on Twitter was asking what we could do about the inequalities that still exist in the Advanced Placement program around the country.  My answer: School Counselors.  Why?  Because we are positioned to lead.  We are the ones who academically advise our students, who help them map out the courses that they need to reach their post-secondary goals, and who encourage them and support them when they are taking rigorous and challenging courses.  We are the ones who can put our hands on course data, grades, and test scores, and identify areas of need and then advocate for support programs or changes in enrollment policies with teachers and administration to help encourage more minority students to take AP courses.  It is not enough for us to simply recognize these achievement gaps, we must also act to address them.  I am in no way implying we do all of these things alone--systemic change does not occur in a vacuum.  However, it may often be up to us to both determine where inequalities exist and then, using our relationship-building skills, lead others in addressing them.

Last year, I wrote about our responsibility as advocates and posed the question, "Who do you advocate for?"  This year, as I was working with a group of counseling interns last week on preparing for their upcoming interviews with school districts and schools, I said to them, "School counseling is not a career for everyone. It takes a special kind of person to do so much of the work that we do everyday."  And so, I ask you, do you possess the courage to lead?

The following work was cited as part of this piece:
American School Counselor Association (2012).  The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs, Third Edition.  Alexandria, VA: Author  

Day of Silence: April 19, 2013

Many schools participate in the annual Day of Silence.  If you're unfamiliar with exactly what it is:

"The Day of Silence is a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Students from middle school to college take a vow of silence in an effort to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior by illustrating the silencing effect of bullying and harassment on LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT." (source: www.dayofsilence.org) 

As a school counselor, you may be approached by students who would like to participate and need help navigating your particular school culture to determine how best to go about organizing.  You may be able to help support your school's Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) as they prepare for the the event.  Most importantly, you can show support to all of the students in your school as they take a day to reflect upon how members of the LGBT community often feel as if they have no voice due to anti-LGBT bullying and harassment.  You can do this by:

• Advocating for all students to be able to participate within your school
• Assisting student leaders with your school's approval process for creating an event during the school day
• Helping school administration and student leaders work together to determine how the event will work best in your school community
• Serving as a sounding board and support for students and staff as they prepare for, participate in, and reflect upon the event and its meaning
• Guiding school personnel and student leaders to resources and tools for the event

For more information and resources, check out the Day of Silence website, as well as the short videos below:

Resource: Small Town & Rural LGBT Students

The Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), recently released a report that looked at the experiences of LGBT students in small town or rural schools.  In their 2011 School Climate Survey, GLSEN found that for LGBT students across the country, overall levels of harassment are beginning to decline, while support and resources in schools for these students is on the increase (source: www.glsen.org).  However, as you read these reports every two years, you wonder how the experiences for students differ based on geographical location or locale.  Their latest report, Strengths and Silences, gives us this snapshot, with a focus on those students who live in smaller, more isolated communities.  Some key findings:

• 87% of rural LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 45% reported being physically harassed and 22% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.  
• 68% of rural LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 31% reported being physically harassed and 16% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression.  
• Rural LGBT students who experienced higher levels of victimization were less likely to plan to attend college than students who experienced lower levels of victimization (85% vs 93%).  
• 27% of rural students reported having a GSA at school, compared to 55% of suburban students and 53% of urban students. But when there was a GSA at school, rural students were more likely to attend than urban and suburban students.  
• Rural LGBT students reported feeling less safe than students in suburban and urban areas and rural students living in the South and Midwest were more likely to feel unsafe based on sexual orientation than were students in rural areas of the Northeast or West.  
• Rural LGBT students were more likely to feel unsafe at school due to their sexual orientation (71% vs. 62% of suburban and 58% of urban school students) and gender expression (49% of rural students vs. 42% of suburban and 42% of urban students).  
• 36% of rural LGBT students had missed class and/or a day of school in the past month due to feeling unsafe, compared to 30% of suburban LGBT students and 30% of urban LGBT students. (source: www.glsen.org)

Overall, our LGBT students in rural and small communities need additional supports and resources.  One of the more interesting findings of this report, however, is with regards to school counselors.  52% of rural students felt that they would be comfortable talking to a school counselor about LGBT issues, higher than any other school personnel, including teachers, administrators, and other support staff.  In fact, even in suburban and urban districts, students felt that school counselors were the go-to people with regards to conversations about LGBT issues.  However, as the report discusses, students in reality are bringing up LGBT topics most with teachers, not with counselors (source: www.glsen.org).  

This information, I believe, tells us two things.  First, that we as school counselors need to be trained in working with LGBT students and families:  What Is Your LGBT IQ?  LGBT students across the board feel that we are the people they are most able to seek out to talk about these issues.  If you are a counselor at a small or rural school, seek out trainings at local, state, or national conventions.  Many school counseling conferences now feature sessions on working with LGBT students and families.  You can also look at webinars on LGBT topics sponsored both by ASCA as well as GLSEN.  Secondly, we need to consider ways to let students know that we are a safe-space for them to have these conversations.  This can be done by sponsoring or making a visit to your school's Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) or by posting a Safe-Space sticker somewhere in your office.  As the data in this report tells us, this is an issue of academic performance, post-secondary outcomes, school safety, and attendance.  By addressing this issue, you are helping to remove barriers to academic success for all students.

Read the full report here or view the webinar.

Transgender Kids: Inspiration and Advocacy

I am a little obsessed with NPR.  I listen to it in the car on the way to work, on the way home from work, and subscribe to multiple podcasts.  It is my secret dream to someday do something worthy of being interviewed on Fresh Air by Terry Gross.  However, my favorite hour of radio is Tell Me More, a program that seeks to explore modern life, issues, and news from a multi-cultural perspective, and multi-cultural from the broadest possible lens.  Not coincidentally, it is also my secret dream to do something worthy of being interviewed by Michel Martin, the host.  So many secret dreams, so little time.

I was driving to a meeting on Monday at just the time that Michel Martin was doing an interview that pulled me in from the moment it started.  Andy Marra is a transgender woman who was adopted by an American family from South Korea.  She recently wrote a blog entry at the Huffington Post about her experience of finding and coming out to her birth mother in Korea.  As she was going through the coming out process, she chose to delay her full transition (hormones, surgery) until she found her birth mother:

"I could never find the will to move forward with my transition -- taking hormones or surgery -- despite the opportunity to do so. And my hesitation was largely due to my unknown family living far away in Korea.  Like me, more than 200,000 Korean babies and children have been sent overseas. But less than 3 percent of us are able to find our families. The odds were clearly not in my favor. But what if I did find my family after all these years? And how would they handle meeting a young woman instead of a baby boy who should have grown into manhood? I was left with few ideas to reconcile my concerns." (source: www.huffingtonpost.com)

As she continues with her story, she finds her mother literally in the span of a few hours, and the two are reunited.  Like so many kids who are contemplating the coming-out process, she is nervous to share her gender-identity with her birth mother, a woman she has just met.  However, the turn in this story is that it is her birth mother who first broaches the subject.  She instinctually knows that there is something weighing Andy down, and after some questioning, Andy tells her that she is a transgender woman.  Her birth mother responds:

"'Mommy knew,' she said calmly through my friend, who looked just as dumbfounded as I was by her response. 'I was waiting for you to tell me'...'Hyun-gi," she said, stroking my head. 'You are beautiful and precious. I thought I gave birth to a son, but it is OK. I have a daughter instead.'" (source: www.huffingtonpost.com)

It is this moment, in this highly-charged situation of a reunited birth mother and daughter, that Andy begins to find her own self-acceptance and an ability to move forward in her own life.  You can listen to the full audio interview here.

As I've written about before, finding acceptance and support is key to the well-being of our transgender students, and, right now, the deck is stacked against them:

• More than half of all transgender students have been physically harassed (pushed or shoved) because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
• More than a quarter of all transgender students have been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Almost half of transgender students report missing at least one class in the last month and one full day of school in the last month because of concerns for their safety.
• Transgender students who experience high-levels of harassment have an average GPA that is .5 lower than that of transgender students who experience low-levels of harassment. (source: www.glsen.org)

These students are at a higher-risk of truancy, bullying and harassment, assault, and poor academic performance.  Additionally, parent reactions to LGBT students makes a huge difference.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those students who experienced high-levels of parental rejection were:

• Nearly six times as likely to have high-levels of depression
• More than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide
• More than three times as likely to have used illegal drugs
• More than three times as likely to engage in unsafe sexual behaviors that put them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases (source: www.cdc.gov)

For students who experience more acceptance from family, such as Andy, they have a support system in place regardless of their school environment.  However, for those students who are experiencing high-levels of rejection at home and are thus at higher-risk for depression, suicide, and substance use, the school environment can be make-or-break for that child.  Transgender kids in schools can be a highly emotional issue, as currently being played out in the East Aurora School District, but the data shows that this is an issue of school safety, student achievement, mental health, and even life and death.  We, as school counselors, are charged with advocating for all students, with a focus on creating an equitable and safe environment so that every child can learn.   Our transgender students fall into this category.

For resources, I would recommend taking a look at the previously mentioned CDC website, which has tips for making schools safe places for all LGBT students.  Additionally, the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight, Education Network (GLSEN) has a sample transgender policy that can serve as a conversation starter amongst your stakeholders and give you ideas about what issues need to be addressed, from bullying/harassment policy to bathrooms and locker rooms.  All of our students should have the opportunity to do well in school and have access to supports that allow them to figure out their identity for themselves, just like Andy.

Ally Week

The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) sponsors a week each year for allies of LGBT students to stand up and pledge to refrain from using demeaning anti-LGBT language, intervene in situations where students are being bullied or harassed based on real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, and engage in activities that attempt to raise awareness and end bullying and harassment of all students.  (source: www.glsen.org)  This year the week will take place from October 15-19, and schools from around the country will participate in many ways.  The main website for Ally Week has information, name tag templates, and pledge cards that groups can print out as a way for students to show their commitment to creating positive school communities where all students are free from bullying and harassment.  Take a look at the video below for more information:



If you have students that are interested in participating in Ally Week, note that October is National Bullying Prevention Month and that perhaps Ally Week could be incorporated in some way into programming that may already be in place.  It does not necessarily have to be that you use cards and badges, but it is important to acknowledge that anti-LGBT slurs and bullying will be taken as seriously as all other disparaging language and actions.  As I've discussed before, programs such as Ally Week can be important to the academic success of LGBT students.  As the latest data from the 2011 School Climate Survey shares, LGBT students who have schools with supportive adults in the building have higher GPA's, are more likely to pursue higher-education after graduation, are more likely to attend school, and are more likely to feel safe when in their school building. (source: www.glsen.org).  Thus, interventions within the school that are supportive of all students' rights to be in a safe and supportive environment, including LGBT students, can have long reaching effects into your school's outcome data in addition to the health and well-being of your students.

The "Middle" Child

Believe it or not, fellow counseling geeks, this is not going to be a post relating to Adlerian counseling theory and birth order.  Rather, today's topic is gender.

A few months ago I wrote about transgender children in schools.  We have seen a lot of representations of the struggles of transgender adults through the mass media over the years, but now we are also seeing how children who have been identified as transgender grow-up within their schools, their families, and their communities.  They face difficult decisions about hormones, dress, religion, surgeries, socialization, and family relationships.  We, as school counselors, will often be looked to within our buildings and school districts to help pave the way for these students, coordinating with teachers, parents, and administration in order to develop environments that are supportive and conducive to learning.  This is important because, as I have written about in the past, there is significant bullying in elementary schools that extends to all children who act outside of what are seen as "traditional" gender norms, regardless of whether or not they currently or in the future will identify as gay or straight, male or female.

Sexual orientation is a construct that tends to become more fully-focused around puberty, although many gay and lesbian adolescents and adults will, upon reflection, realize they have always known, or have at least understood from an early age that there was something different about them.  Gender, however, is something that tends to be solidified at a much earlier age--or is it?  Fading are the days where we thought of gender as black and white--male or female.  Rather, gender, like sexual orientation, is now being viewed more as also being along a continuum, with people feeling male and/or female to varying degrees.

This is being reflected in our elementary schools.  Last weekend an article ran in the New York Times entitled What's So Bad About A Boy Who Wants To Wear A Dress?  The article discusses the changing tide of allowing kids to express their gender preferences more openly in their lives, such as boys who wear dresses to school.  The children discussed in this article, though, are reflective of children in the "middle" of gender--they identify as boys, as males, but yet like to wear dresses and pink sparkles.  They fit neither into the "traditional" male camp, but nor are they "transgender":

"Many parents and clinicians now reject corrective therapy, making this the first generation to allow boys to openly play and dress (to varying degrees) in ways previously restricted to girls—to exist in what one psychologist called 'that middle space' between traditional boyhood and traditional girlhood. These parents have drawn courage from a burgeoning Internet community of like-minded folk whose sons identify as boys but wear tiaras and tote unicorn backpacks. Even transgender people preserve the traditional binary gender division: born in one and belonging in the other. But the parents of boys in that middle space argue that gender is a spectrum rather than two opposing categories, neither of which any real man or woman precisely fits." (source: www.nytimes.com)

In the past, as the article states, it was often recommended that the parents of children who exhibited characteristics outside of their traditional gender remove all non-traditional gender materials (clothes, toys, even friends) from their child's life, thus "encouraging" them to conform to the traditional gender model.  However, as we are now seeing, families are finding that trying to push their children into a gender box is not for them, and they are working with other parents and with schools and communities to create safe and supportive spaces for their children to express themselves and their many facets of gender.  In general, we like to be able to "label" people, to categorize them.  Oftentimes people want to know if children who do not fit into a specific mold with regards to gender are gay?  Transgender?  Does he want to be a girl?  While studies and statistics are limited, it appears at this time that some of these "middle" children will eventually identify as gay, a few as transgender, and many will eventually consider themselves heterosexual males. (source: www.nytimes.com) We have to become more at ease living within the gray areas and allowing kids to explore and express the many complex facets of themselves--this includes gender.

About a year-and-a-half ago I heard an interview with the mother of a son who enjoys wearing pink, dresses, and sparkles.  She speaks very candidly about her journey through this process as a mother, and in fact has written a children's picture book entitled My Princess Boy which discusses acceptance of a 4-year old boy who just happens to enjoy dressing up in traditionally girls' clothing and playing "princess."  Her son fits into this "middle" category in that he very clearly states that he is a boy, but he simply enjoys and is passionate about the color pink, tutus, and dresses.  Both her website and her Facebook page  detail the journey that the whole family has taken with her son.  As she often shares, it is often her "princess boy" who teaches them about tolerance and acceptance.  His entire family--his mother, his father, and his older brother--support him.  This was a Facebook status a few months ago:

"My Princess Boy's brother is a true champion. At soccer practice, a couple of players were pointing and laughing at my princess boy because he was in a tutu. My older son (the champion) said, 'its not cool to laugh at my brother.' One kid replied, 'but he's in a dress dude'. Dkobe said, 'So what. If you ever saw him pick out a dress or a pink top, you would see how happy it makes him'. On the way home, my Princess Boy thanked his champion and said, 'I'm giving you a secret  key to the fun world. It's full of pink and purple butterflies.'" (source: www.facebook.com/MyPrincessBoy)

It is not all roses and flowers for these middle children, however.  There can often be struggles with peers and even adults. As the New York Times article discusses, one boy lost his friend when the other boy came over for a play date and saw there were dolls all over the floor.  This boy has not had a play date since. (source: www.nytimes.com)  The boy from My Princess Boy faces comments like the one quoted above, but also from the general public, such as the time he wanted to buy a toy that one might identify as traditionally a "girl's" but was told by another child that he couldn't buy it as he was a boy.  It should be noted his brother stepped in here, as well. (source: www.facebook.com/MyPrincessBoy)

As school counselors, we will deal directly with these situations when they come into the classroom.  Teachers, students, and parents will look to us for guidance and reassurance.  For instance, at the blog He Sparkles, a mother is struggling with her son starting traditional school on a full-time basis next year (he was previously split between home school and traditional school).  He prefers wearing pink and sparkles, and was able to do this with khaki pants on the two days each week he attended a traditional school last year.  Next year, he is attending a school full-time with a uniform policy that says he was to wear a blue or white polo shirt--no pink.  This rule is consistent for both boys and girls.  However, he has chosen a khaki romper with a skirt to wear on the bottom versus the khaki pants listed under the "boys" choices for the school uniform.  His mother is optimistic about how the school will react, but is also trying to anticipate what will happen if there are problems. (source: hesparkles.wordpress.com)

Something similar happened with one of the children discussed in the New York Times article.  One of the boys, "Alex," enjoyed wearing dresses, but as he began kindergarten he wore pants and shirts, as his parents were concerned about bullying from other children with regards to the dresses.  Colors, sparkles, jewelry, etc., they left up to him as a way to express himself.  He wore hot-pink socks to school one day and was teased by one of the other students.  His teacher chose to respond in this way:

"During circle time, she mentioned male friends who wore nail polish and earrings. Mrs. C. told them that when she was younger, she liked wearing boys’ sneakers. Did that make her a boy? Did the children think she shouldn’t have been allowed to wear them? Did they think it would have been O.K. to laugh at her? They shook their heads no. Then she told them that long ago, girls weren’t allowed to wear pants, and a couple of the children went wide-eyed. “I said: ‘Can you imagine not being able to wear pants when you wanted to? If you really wanted to wear them and someone told you that you couldn’t do that just because you were a girl? That would be awful!’ ” After that, the comments in the classroom about Alex’s appearance pretty much stopped." (source: www.nytimes.com)

How would you react to these situations if this was your school?  What could you do to help lay a smooth transition for these students, their teachers, administration, and classmates?  

• I would highly recommend looking at the Ready, Set, Respect! curriculum over at GLSEN, as well as the Welcoming Schools curriculum from the Human Rights Campaign for guidance lessons on tolerance and acceptance for elementary school students.  
• Additionally, the book, My Princess Boy, could be a great biblio-lesson for young students about accepting all students who may exhibit non-traditional gender characteristics, both male and female.  
• Further, always go back to your best practices of developing relationships with families and teachers so that you can better help to facilitate understanding when the need arises.  

Our mission is to remove barriers to academic success--by helping your school community develop tolerance and acceptance, you are enabling young children to focus on what's most important--their learning.

Postcards from ASCA 2012: It Gets Better

Whoever booked Dan Savage for the 2012 American School Counselor Association Conference, "Be Brilliant," should, in my opinion, get an extra day off.  Or perhaps a raise.  Or, at the very least, an ice-cream cone.  With extra sprinkles.

I have somehow ended up in a life where I listen to a lot of speeches.  As a child, my father was heavily involved in local and national politics.  Before I was 16, I had been to more pancake breakfasts, summer cookouts, and fundraisers that involved some semblance of oratory than most people will attend in their entire lifetimes.  Moving into adulthood, the context of the speeches may have changed, but the constancy of having them in my life remains the same.  Some are good--I learn new things, perhaps even feel inspired to try something differently and step out of my comfort zone.  Some lead me to say to myself, "Self, somewhere your life has gone off course.  I'm not sure when and I'm not sure where, but it has landed you here, in this room, listening to yet another speech."  Perhaps it is just one of the realities of being in a profession where you attend graduations, professional developments, and conferences on a regular basis.

All this being said, it takes the intersection of the subject of the speech, the power of the speaker, and my emotional attachment to the topic to produce a strong reaction.  All of these things came together in the keynote address this past Saturday evening.

Dan Savage has been a public figure for quite a while--he writes an adult-themed relationship column called Savage Love, and has also written numerous books such as The Kid, which shares how he and his husband, Terry, adopted their son through open adoption.  He, like all of us, has born witness to the deluge of media reports about LGBT youth, bullying, and suicide in the last several years.  A comment from a reader sparked an idea, and with the support of his husband, they shot the very first It Gets Better video.  The purpose behind the video was to give LGBT kids a link to their possible future selves, to give them hope that even if middle school and high school were difficult, there could be happiness and fulfillment in their adult lives:

Since this original video went live, thousands upon thousands of videos have been posted to the site representing the widely diverse LGBT community, all with the hope of inspiring LGBT youth to stay with us to see adult hood and find happiness and even joy.

Dan Savage also spoke to the fact that many students are bullied for a variety of reasons in schools.  However, many students who are bullied can go home to supportive families.  In the case of LGBT kids, they may go from a hostile environment in schools to a hostile environment at home, as families can often struggle with accepting their LGBT son or daughter, especially if this goes against deeply held personal beliefs.  Thus, these students are the most high-risk of all, because there is no safe space for them in their lives--neither school nor home.  This is where we, as school counselors, can play a crucial part in advocating for these students and letting them know that there is at least one adult in their lives who will support them as they work through the issues at school and the possible issues at home.

He went on to say that there are some things that school counselors can do to help make "life better" for LGBT students right now, in the moment, so that they do not necessarily have to wait until they grow up to feel safe and supported:

• Acknowledge the existence of LGBT students.  LGBT kids are in our schools.  They're in our classrooms, they are in our communities.  And they need support.
• Sponsor or support a Gay-Straight Alliance in your school.  Dan Savage said that even if a student never attends a meeting, the mere knowledge of the fact that there is a GSA that meets regularly in the school can give them hope.
• Make it known that there are Safe Spaces in your school.  One of the most visible ways to do this is to place a Safe Space sticker or poster in your office.  As another counselor pointed out to me, the sticker is only a start--you must then follow through with unconditional positive regard (hello, Carl Rogers) and empathy for it to truly mean something.
• Anti-gay bullying makes the whole school unsafe.  All bullying must be confronted.  Think about this--what message is being sent if some bullying is allowed?  It gives tacit permission that all bullying is okay.  Anti-gay bullying can happen to students who do not identify as LGBT--they may simply be perceived, for a variety of reasons, as LGBT, yet suffer the same consequences.  Work with your school administration and district to develop policies and procedures that make all bullying and harassment unacceptable.
• Don't forget the parents.  The coming-out process is difficult both for the student but also on the entire family.  Parents need our support, understanding, and resources as they work through this process with their children.  A great outside organization to point them towards is PFLAG.  You can find a local chapter through their website.

As school counselors, we can be leaders within our schools--we can help to educate our school personnel, we can advocate for policy and procedural change, and we can be visible support to our LGBT students.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if there wasn't a need for It Gets Better because things were great now?

For additional resources, check out Dan Savage's book, It Gets Better:

Also, I have written multiple blog posts about LGBT issues in school counseling and you can check out the resources under my Links and Books tab.

What Can You Do To Help My Transgender Child?

You are an elementary school counselor.  Towards the end of the school year, the parents of a 2nd grade student named Trevor ask to meet with you.  When you are in the cafeteria during some of the lunch periods, you have noticed that Trevor is always sitting amongst girls, never amongst the boys.  While you see him come to school wearing typical male attire (t-shirts, jeans), you often see him in the halls with barrettes or pink ribbons in his hair--his female friends give them to him during the school day to wear.  His teacher has remarked that Trevor often refers to himself as a "she." As you sit down with Trevor's parents, they tell you that at home, Trevor has been dressing as a girl for the last year-and-a-half.  They have been working with a child psychologist for several years who has diagnosed Trevor with Gender Identity Disorder.  As a team, Trevor, his parents, and the psychologist have decided that starting with the next school year, Trevor will be known as "Tammy," and that he will be attending school as a girl.  They want to know how you and the school can support Tammy and their family in this transition and help to insure that Tammy will be safe.  What is your response?

You are a high-school counselor.  One of your female students, Mirabela, has been out as gay since she was 14 years-old (she is now 16), and while it was a struggle at first, her family has come to accept her.  Mirabela has always dressed in traditional "male" clothing--concert t-shirts, baggy jeans, and steel-toed boots.  She has always had short, cropped hair and speaks with a low voice.  During one of your discussions with her, she states that she feels that she may not be gay so much as that she is really a boy, and wants to know what you would think about her changing her name to "Max" and having her teachers and the school community refer to her by that name.  She also wants to know what other things the school has in place to assist transgender students.  She has not yet discussed this with her parents.  What might be some ways that you would respond?

My guess is that these were probably not scenarios you had to answer on any of your exams as you were preparing to be a school counselor in your graduate programs, nor were these likely interview questions as you were searching for a job.  Yet, these could very well be situations that suddenly appear at your door.  The more time you spend learning about and considering the issue, as well as consulting with other personnel in your building and district, the better you will be able to step into action when the time comes.

The cover story on this Sunday's Washington Post was about a transgender child and the struggles that both he (the gender the child and family have chosen) and his family have gone through as he has journeyed from being a girl to a boy.  'Tyler' expressed early on that something had gone wrong in his mother's belly.  He told his parents that he was born a girl, but was meant to be a boy:


This is one of many stories that are springing up in families and schools around the country.  A few weeks ago, one of our are high-schools featured a transgender female student in their school newspaper, where she openly discussed the challenges of going to school as the opposite gender she was born into, and about some of the harassment she faced as a result.  It should be noted that as you go through this post, I will typically refer to the "gender a child was born into" when talking about the gender that matches the sex organs a child was born with.  I have done this in an attempt to simplify things.  There are some who might dispute this terminology stating that gender should only refer to the construct a child prefers and that "sex" should refer to the gender that matches the sex organs.  In doing this, I hope to have cleared versus muddied the waters.  Time will tell.

So, what is Gender Identity Disorder?  According to the DSM-IV-TR, the criteria for Gender Identity Disorder are:

• Strong and persistent cross-gender identification.  In children, this shows up as a repeated desire to be or a strong insistence that they are the opposite sex, strong preferences for dressing as the opposite gender, strong preferences for opposite gender roles in play, strong preferences for stereotypical games of the opposite gender, and a strong preference for playmates of the other sex. 
• Persistent discomfort with gender and strong belief that their gender is wrong, often with a focus on what is wrong with their bodies in the assigned gender.  
• It is not concurrent with a physical intersex condition.
• The issue causes significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of the person's life. (APA, 2007)

This diagnosis is not without controversy.  As the Post article points out, there are those who feel that "disorder" should be replaced with "incongruence" due to the harsh connotation of the former.  (source: www.washingtonpost.com)  Some feel strongly that to pathologize gender identity is wrong when one is born with it.  There is also concern about over-using the diagnosis of GID for any child who shows gender-variant behaviors in order to justify the use of therapies that attempt to "repair" these behaviors.  However, as noted in the same article, without a diagnosis oftentimes they cannot receive treatments later in life, such as sexual reassignment surgeries.

As counselors, we know that identity and gender association and behaviors are ever evolving and changing things, both for children and adolescents but even with adults.  It is very normal for kids to experiment and try on different roles and activities.  Boys will play with dolls.  Girls will play with trucks.  There are those boys who feel more comfortable in the company of girls, and vice-versa.  I am not referring to those children.  What tends to separate normal experimentation and gender variance from transgender children is the pervasive belief and insistence that they were born "wrong" and that they want to be or are the opposite gender, to the point that it becomes extremely disruptive in the child's life and the life of the family.  Thus, this is a male child who doesn't just prefer to play with girls, they believe with every fiber of their being they are a girl and that somehow their body is wrong.  This is a female child who not only wants to ride motorbikes and play baseball with the neighborhood boys, they believe they are a boy and exhibit a great deal of anxiety and worry about what will happen when puberty begins.  This disruption tends to go on over a lengthy period of time, and there are usually many steps involved before a family decides to move forward with a diagnosis and a possible transition into the preferred gender of the child or adolescent.

But doesn't this just mean they are gay?  This is a pretty common question amongst adults.  There is a difference, though, between sexual orientation and gender identity.  Sexual orientation refers to sexual attraction, and while lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning children often have a feeling that there is something "different" about them their whole lives, it is not typically an identity that will manifest itself until adolescence--late elementary or middle school at the earliest.  Gender identity has nothing to do with sexual attraction.  Rather, it is about one's perception about their own gender--male or female, or anything in between along the continuum.  Further, the concept of gender manifests itself in children much earlier, oftentimes between the ages of 3 and 6 (source: www.washingtonpost.com).  It is important that we, as school counselors, know the differences between the two concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity.  A student who is transgender is not automatically "gay," and a student who is "gay" is not automatically "transgender."  A gay boy does not necessarily want to be a girl.  A biological female who identifies as a male is not necessarily homosexual.  Sexual orientation and gender identity are two different constructs.  In this video excerpt, you meet Hailey, a child identified as a transgender female:



So how does one treat gender identity disorder in children and adolescents?  You may be aware from the multitudes of television specials, news reports, and talk shows about adults who are often treated with transitions into the opposite gender and oftentimes sexual reassignment surgery.  However, the treatment of children is very different.  NPR did a 2-part story a few years ago that looked at the two major schools of thought with regards to treating transgender children.  In this first installment, we meet two families.  Bradley only wanted to play with girls, with girls' toys, and adored the color pink.  An altercation between Bradley and some of the boys in the school-yard took his parents to see a psychologist in Toronto.  Treatment for Bradley involved forbidding him to play with girls, with girls' toys, or to have anything with "feminine" colors such as pink.  All this in an effort to get him to conform to the gender that he was born with.  At the end of this section of the story, his mother voices some concerns that Bradley is living two lives--his true life where he plays with girls at school, and the life he has at home where he tells his family what he believes they want to hear from him.  The second part of the story follows Jona, originally born Jonah.  Her mother tells the story of how Jonah begged her to let him buy dresses when she was a toddler, and when she finally gave in, how much joy she had.  She never took them off.  Her parents took her to a therapist in California who encouraged them to let Jona be whatever gender she wanted to be at that time.  As the story goes on to tell, while the therapist did not often suggest to parents that children transition into their preferred gender, she did recommend it for Jona.  Jona began kindergarten as a girl and has flourished.  These stories illustrate the two main schools of thought amongst clinicians--either try to make the children conform to the gender they were born into, or allow them to explore their gender identity freely, with a small percentage of those children actually transition, either for a time or permanently, into the opposite gender.

As children get older, there are other modes of treatment.  As the Post article discusses, there are hormone blockers that can delay the onset of puberty.  This is further discussed in the second part of the NPR series.  Here we meet 'Violet,' a transgender female who is about to begin the hormone blockers, allowing her to avoid, at least for a time, the development of male characteristics such as a "larger hands and feet, a pronounced brow, and facial and body hair that will need to be removed." (source: www.npr.org).  This can allow children and families more time to determine if this will ultimately be a permanent choice for the child.  As the child matures, a decision does have to be made as to whether to suspend the hormone blockers and either develop into an adult as the gender they were born into, or whether to begin hormone treatments for the opposite gender.  As the NPR story listed above and this story discuss, if a child begins taking hormones of the opposite gender at the beginning of puberty, they can then more accurately develop into the opposite gender, and limit the amount and cost of surgeries in the future.  However, this will be irreversible, and will render the child sterile for life.  Thus, it is a huge step and a large decision for children and their families to make.  Yet, according to the doctor interviewed in the last story, it can offer children who are truly transgender quite a bit of peace of mind.

I offer all of this information not as an endorsement of one treatment over another.  All of the treatments mentioned above, from therapies that attempt to make the child comfortable with the gender they were born into to the hormones and hormone blockers can be controversial.  These are all decisions that the children, adolescents, and their respective families will be making, and every family, child, and situation is different. Yet, as school counselors, it is important to be aware of what all is out there, as you may be able to help connect the families and their various plans to the school staff.  You may have children who ultimately go the route of the various hormones and hormone blockers, but you are just as likely to have teenagers who are just beginning to grapple with their gender identity and who desire to be called a different name by their teachers and other staff.  Wherever that student is with their gender identity, according to this report from the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN):

• Nearly 1/2 of transgender students regularly skips school because of concern for their safety
• Nearly 15% of transgender students face harassment that is so severe that it forces them to leave school entirely
• Transgender students who face harassment have lower grade point averages than other students and are less likely to go to college
• Ultimately, transgendered adults who were harassed in school are at a higher risk for depression, suicide ideation, and STDs/HIV. (source: www.glsen.org)

Thus, if students are missing school and not performing as well as their peers, it becomes an academic concern, not just a personal/social issue.  As I discussed in another recent blog post, LGBT issues are not typically a part of training for school counselors.  Yet, as I also discussed in that blog post, it is an ethical mandate from the American School Counselor Association that school counselors have training and an understanding of the issues facing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students so that we can remove the barriers to their academic success.  So, where do you go from here?

• Do some soul searching.  How do you feel about transgender people and children?  One of the things that good school counseling graduate programs do is help you to confront your own personal biases and norms to determine if and how they may effect your work with students and clients.  Might your personal beliefs and values prevent you from fully assisting transgender students and their families, wherever they might be on the journey?  As counselors, we are tasked with helping others make decisions that are right for them, not necessarily to make the decisions that would be right for us.  Further, our professional mission is to remove any barriers to academic success to students--if making a transgender transition smoother and more nurturing allows that child to continue to do well academically, then, in my mind, we are fulfilling that mission.
• Take the temperature in your school and educate as needed--yourself included.  Unfortunately, even if we, as school counselors, are the most loving and supportive people in the world, children cannot stay with us all day long.  It is important to feel out how much support there would be in your building and in your district for a transgender student, and then to educate others and have conversations as you go along.  I like to think that for most people in education, there is a desire for children to do well and be successful, and that on this topic there is simply a lack of exposure and understanding.  If this is the case, then conversations and the sharing of facts with other school personnel will go a long way.  If, however, there are other school and district personnel who are resistant to even broaching this topic, it might be time to seek out some allies to do some professional development.  It is important for everyone to note that there could be legal ramifications for schools that do not support transgender students.  If school personnel condone and even engage in harassment, that could be an issue.  If schools enforce a different set of rules for transgender students than other students, that could be an issue.  Here in the DC metro area there has been a recent story of a Maryland teenager who identifies as a bisexual male and who was suspended for wearing a skirt to school.  The family asserts that his skirt was no less a dress code violation than the skirts of other girls.  The school states that it was too short. In a 2000 court case, Doe v Yunits, a middle school student won a case against a Massachusetts school district where she had been suspended repeatedly for wearing women's clothing because she was born a male but identified as female.
• Remain open to every individual situation.  Gender identity, like sexual orientation, moves along a continuum, and you can expect that one transgender student situation will not be like the next.  One student and family may be ready to transition into the opposite gender yesterday, while another may only be wanting a change of nickname in the classroom.  It is important to do a lot of listening to determine what a student and their family is looking for from you and from the school.  It may simply be that they want to know there is a resource in the school where they can go if they have further questions or feel they need to make an additional transition in the future.  It is important to let students know they have options, but to allow them to make the choice that is best for them.
• Know what you can do, and what you can't.  Official school records that include birth name and gender are more than likely out of your purview, as well as that of the school.  However, as the GLSEN Model Policy on Transgender and Gender-Non-Conforming Students discusses, students are typically allowed to go by whatever nickname they prefer.  You can ask teachers to label students with their preferred gender and use the preferred pronouns.  Students can be allowed to use designated faculty or clinic bathrooms.  Students can be given a neutral space to change for physical education classes.  Students can be allowed to wear clothing in their preferred gender, as long as it conforms to the dress-code policy for the entire student body and is enforced as such.  Some things may be more difficult--field trips that involve hotel stays, or athletic participation.  Always check into local and state policies and governing bodies for answers to more complex questions.  Chances are high that at this point, you will not be the first person to have asked.  It may be that you can work with your school and district on developing a set of policies with regards to transgender children, using the GLSEN policy above as a template.  Regardless, though, of whether it is in an official policy or not, as a counselor you want to develop a set of "best practices" that include many of the items that I just discussed (name, pronouns, bathrooms, changing facilities, etc.).
• Be honest with students and families.  If a family wants to begin a transition, it is going to be difficult in school, especially the older the child is.  We and the community can do a lot to support the child and family, but there will likely be some rocky moments with peers and situations as everyone becomes used to the new identity.  As with students who are contemplating sharing the fact that they are gay or lesbian, it is important to discuss both the possible positive and negative consequences to any plan.  Ultimately the decision is up to the child and their family, but it is best if everyone has gone through all the anticipated outcomes so that it can be an informed choice.  It is important for you to ask questions when you are unsure--what would the student like you to call them?  What pronoun would they prefer?  It is okay to admit you are not familiar with a specific situation or circumstance and ask them for more information.  Timing is also a consideration.  If you have a senior in high-school who is talking about transitioning two months before the end of school, it might be worth having a discussion about whether it might make more sense to wait until starting college. 
• Nothing should ever be done in a vacuum.  Always seek out support, whether from other school counselors, school personnel, online networks (like Twitter at #scchat), groups such as GLSEN, the National Center for Transgender Equality, Gender Spectrum, or other experts and clinicians in your area.  If the family has been working with someone, ask if you can have a release to speak to them to gather more information not only to help their child, but to further your education.  Check out any presentations or conference sessions on transgender children or transgender policy in schools.  There is a book that is recommended in the Washington Post article, The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals that could also give you some guidance. 

This is a complex and foreign topic for many, I understand.  However, it seems to be coming to the front more and more based on anecdotal experiences here in my area as well as in the national media.  Hopefully, through this post and the information contained within, you will be able to go back to the beginning, read the two scenarios, and have some ideas of how you might approach them should they ever happen to walk into your office someday.

The following work was cited within this post:
American Psychiatric Association.  (2007).  Diagnostic and Statistics Manual, 4th edition,Text Revision.  American Psychiatric Association: Washington, DC.

What's Your LGBT IQ?

A very interesting article appeared in the April 2012 Journal of Counseling & Development entitled, "Examining School Counseling Students' Multicultural and Sexual Orientation Competencies Through a Cross-Specialization Comparison."  (Biddell, 2012) That's a very long and wordy title, but basically the author studied the differences between community counselors and school counselors with regards to their knowledge on issues surrounding sexual orientation as well as the skills they have developed to support those who may identify as gay or lesbian.

The results were, at least in my mind, not surprising.  School counselors reported significantly lower  levels of multicultural and sexual orientation competencies as compared to those in community settings.  The author does point out some possible flaws in the study--small sample, not random, does not cover gender-identity, and the data is based on self-reporting. (Biddell, 2012)  However, as there have been very few studies on the topic of school counselor training and competence with regards to LGBT issues, it is certainly a starting-off point.  The author discusses some of the factors that he believes contribute to this lack of skill.  Schools are, generally, more conservative and under more public scrutiny than community counseling settings.  As such, teachers, counselors, and school staff can be made to fear for their jobs if they attempt to advocate for gay and lesbian students by such activities as sponsoring a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA).  Further, while there is an expectation that counselor-education programs' multicultural courses cover sexual orientation, according to the author many programs and courses do not adequately prepare future school counselors to work with this subgroup.  For those programs that do devote trainings and classes to LGBT topics and skills, they tend to score higher on self-reported assessments of counselor competencies. (Biddell, 2012).

This certainly supports my own experiences in the field.  Northern Virginia is home to several strong, CACREP graduate programs in school counseling.  Yet, what I have heard from many colleagues is that this topic was left out or barely-covered in their programs.  Oftentimes there is simply only so much time in multicultural counseling courses and skills seminars, and coordinators and professors have to pick and choose what specific subgroups they may plan to cover.  I was at a conference this past year and attended a session about some of the latest research in counseling LGBT clients.  Afterwards, a director of a university counseling program began a discussion with the presenter about bringing them in, either in person or via webinar to do a similar presentation for the program's graduate students, as they currently did not have anything in the curriculum to cover that topic.  Thus, public schools are staffed with new school counselors who may have very little exposure and knowledge about working with LGBT students and families, or they have seasoned school counselors who have also never had training on this particular topic.  Why does this all matter?

There are several reasons why this knowledge gap needs to be filled in.  First, as I've written about here, and here, and here, students who either identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) or who are perceived as LGBT or gender-non-conforming are at a higher risk for being bullied, harassed, assaulted, for avoiding school, for lower-grades, and for dropping out (source: www.glsen.org).  If you have seen this video made by students in Illinois or watched as Kelby struggled with her Oklahoma school in the movie, Bully, you have some idea of what LGBT students face on a daily basis.  As school counselors, one of our primary missions, according to our national organization, the American School Counselor Association, is to remove barriers for students to academic success.  It is thus one of our missions to make sure that all of our students, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, are able to feel safe in school so that instead of avoiding classes, students, and teachers who may harass and bully them, they are instead in classes with supportive adults and peers, focusing only on the academic material at hand.  Secondly, it is an ethical mandate of the American School Counselor Association.

From the preamble of the ethical code (addition of boldface is mine):

"Each person has the right to be respected, be treated with dignity and have access to a comprehensive school counseling program that advocates for and affirms all students from diverse populations including: ethnic/racial identity, age, economic status, abilities/ disabilities, language, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/expression, family type, religious/spiritual identity and appearance." (source: www.schoolcounselor.org)

E.2.b:

"Develop competencies in how prejudice, power and various forms of oppression, such as ableism, ageism, classism, familyism, genderism, heterosexism, immigrationism, linguicism, racism, religionism, and sexism, affect self, students and all stakeholders." (source: www.schoolcounselor.org)

E.2.c:

"Acquire educational, consultation and training experiences to improve awareness, knowledge, skills and effectiveness in working with diverse populations: ethnic/racial status, age, economic status, special needs, ESL or ELL, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/expression, family type, religious/spiritual identity and appearance." (source: www.schoolcounselor.org)

Thus, it is our professional responsibility as school counselors to serve and respect LGBT students, regardless of our own personal feelings and views on the topic of homosexuality and gender identity, and also to seek out professional development opportunities and education if we do not feel we possess the knowledge and skills necessary to adequately work with those students.  If you did not receive it in your graduate program, whether it was last year or 20 years ago, you should seek out opportunities to further your education on this topic.  Third, there are now legal implications for schools and school systems who are found to be unsupportive of LGBT students.  The Anoka-Hennapin school district in Minnesota recently settled a lawsuit concerning bullying and harassment of LGBT students.  This week the Hanover school district in Pennsylvania is in the spotlight because of alleged harassment of a gay student by a teacher.  The student's mother has not yet retained legal counsel, but she has enlisted the help of a local LGBT affirming group to support both her and her son through the situation.  Lastly, if you are in elementary school or middle school, you may be thinking to yourself that this is really only an issue for high-school counselors and their students.  Think again.  A recent study by GLSEN discusses the prevalence of bullying gender-non-conforming children in elementary schools as well as the sometimes unwelcoming environment same-sex parents find when they go into their child's school.  Further, various reports over the last couple of years state that more and more middle-school students are coming-out of the closet as gay or lesbian at earlier ages.  This is an topic that effects all school counselors at all stages of child development.

So, how do you begin to acquire this knowledge?:

• Read articles in professional publications.  ASCA won an award for their School Counselor magazine that focused on LGBT issues in schools.  ASCA also does the magazine, published three times a year, for many states.  The Spring edition was about bullying, and featured an article by yours truly on how homophobic language hurts all students--check out page 18 in the Kansas edition.   Counseling Today, the monthly magazine put out by the American Counseling Association, regularly features articles on LGBT issues in counseling.  You can also find articles about the topic on the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GSLEN) website.
• Attend conferences.  The national American School Counselor Association conference is coming up in June, and there are at least three LGBT specific sessions to be found.  Further, if you belong to your state school-counselor association, or any other local counseling chapters, there are bound to be conferences and professional developments about this topic.  If you are unable to find something on LGBT issues in schools, look for topics such as LGBT issues and children or adolescents, LGBT families, bullying and harassment, etc.  Any workshop that adds to your knowledge base of LGBT issues, in general, is only going to help your work with your students and families.
• Explore online options.  ASCA is doing a series of webinars.  One of them in February explored supporting LGBTQ youth, and one coming up in October will look specifically at creating a safe-and-supportive environment for all elementary school students, including those who are gender-non-conforming.  GLSEN also sponsors webinars on LGBT topics in schools and with youth.  I would also recommend taking a look at a class through Rutgers on LGBTQ topics in schools--it covers the basics and gets you thinking about how you would deal with certain situations in your own school and district.
• Ask for professional development in your school and/or district.  This may be something you have to feel out a bit, but if there are enough counselors in your school or district who feel this is a need, maybe it is time to have a discussion with your central office about getting a workshop.  Maybe you or someone else in your district has enough knowledge that you/they could present?  If not, you can look to GLSEN or Rutgers for some additional support in either having a training or having someone help you to develop your own training for your school. 

Anytime you can share an article with other professionals in your building--teachers, administrators--the more you also be educating your whole building on the issues pertaining to LGBT students and families.  If you do decide to do an online training or attend a conference session, see if you can get another counselor or principal in your building to attend with you.  Is it possible to get a whole-school training on the topic?  Given the prevalence of LGBT bullying and harassment in schools that is currently being portrayed in the media, now may be the time that you can get community buy-in to have some professional development on this topic.  Regardless, whether it is your whole school, a small group, or just you as an individual, it is important that all school counselors become familiar with the risk-factors present for LGBT students as well as best-practices for how to assist them.  If you have not yet dealt with this issue in your job, I can almost promise you that you will at some point.  When that time comes, it will benefit both you and the student/family if you have already gained knowledge, familiarity, and a certain level of comfort with this topic versus flying blind.  Further, by getting this information, you will be best able to lead your whole school community in ethically and properly supporting a middle school student who comes out of the closet, an elementary school student who was born a male but who identifies as female, or a gay high-school student who has special considerations when applying to colleges.  Thus, in the future, there is hope that studies will no longer show that school counselors lack competency to support these students as they move towards academic success.

The following article was sited within this blog post:
Bidell, M. (2012).  Examining school counseling students' multicultural and sexual orientation competencies through a cross-specialization comparison.  Journal of Counseling and Development 90, 200-207.