LA elementary schools to celebrate National Coming Out Day with a week of LGBTQ+ lessons
Los Angeles elementary schools with students as young as five will participate in a weeklong celebration of "National Coming Out Day" starting Monday.
The "Week of Action Toolkit – Elementary," sent from the Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of Education, outlines suggested lesson plans for elementary students around LGBTQ+ topics. The document, which a teacher shared with City Journal, noted teachers can adapt the lesson plans to better suit the needs of their students.
The toolkit includes an "Identity Map activity" for students to complete at the start of the week, preparing "students to think critically about identity and intersectionality." Teachers are encouraged to have students create an image representing their identity that includes features like their race, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, sexuality and mental health.
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The toolkit suggests students "engage in a gallery walk of everyone's identity map" and respond to writing prompts like, "Who am I? What did I learn about my identity? What were some of your identities that were the same or different than your classmates?" Teachers are also told to share images of students’ maps with the district.
The toolkit’s lesson plan suggests highlighting biographies of major LGBTQ+ advocates each day of the school week. Among those listed include transgender reality star Jazz Jennings, transgender actor Elliot Page and Carl Nassib, the first openly gay NFL player.
The document also includes an allyship pledge for students to sign. It states that students will "use kind language when talking about all teachers, staff, classmates and their families even if they are different from themselves," "be an Upstander by sticking up for others, if safe to do so, otherwise they will ask a grown up for help," and "encourage and teach others to be allies."
The Los Angeles Unified School District declined to comment.