Middle-School GSA Finds Its Way

Gender-neutral bathrooms. Thoughtful and caring educators. A Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) for middle schoolers. And a school mission statement that loudly and proudly supports LGBTQ students.

Those were just a handful of ideas that came to mind for the members of Elm City Montessori’s GSA when asked to dream up their ideal school.

Those 4th-to-8th grade students put words to those dreams during a half-hour GSA meeting held last Friday at the Blake Street charter school on the west side of town.

The roughly 20 students present for the meetup typically get together every two weeks during the school day. 

Their latest meeting focused on hopes for school improvements relating to supporting students’ sexual orientation and gender identities. 

The students also responded to a few questions from the district’s 2021 – 2022 Climate Survey. The New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district administers that survery every year to collect feedback from students, staff, and families about each school’s successes, needs, and areas of growth in regards to wellbeing and connectedness. NHPS School Climate & Title IX Coordinator Michelle Kelly-Baker presented the latest survey data to the Board of Education at its Dec. 12 meeting. (Click here to view the presentation.)

The Friday GSA meetup at Elm City Montessori offered participating students an opportunity to talk through their own identities, reflect on how supported they feel inside and outside of their classrooms, and dream big about what would make for an even more understanding school environment.

“I feel like this a safe place for everybody and all ages. Even the teachers,” a sixth-grader named Alison said about Elm City Montessori.

Another student shared that they don’t always see the support directly. 

“How can we work to fix that?” asked Elm City Montessori Magnet Resource Teacher Dave Weinreb, who facilitates the school’s GSA along with Director of Anti-Bias & Anti-Racism Sade Jean-Jacques.

Students suggested solutions like having classroom discussion circles about GSA, setting classroom rules and commitments to respect everyone, and to have a question circle in class for students to ask what they’re wondering and may not understand about GSA.

In response to a request for comment for this story about what the district is doing to support GSAs, NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent by email, ​“We have rolled out training for administrators, as well as a guidance document addressing areas of concern to the LGBTQ+ community. We are gathering the GSAs with the intention of helping to connect them to each other. We plan to organize focus groups with parents and students in order to learn whether and how our new policy is affecting the environment in the schools.”

Helping Students "Express Their Feelings"

At the start of Friday’s meeting, Weinreb informed the students that their GSA is one of only two such groups in middle schools across the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district. 

“Should we have GSAs in no schools, middle schools or high schools, or never?” Weinreb asked. 

GSAs should be in ​“all” schools, several students responded simultaneously.

Fifth grader Pearl said all middle schools should have GSAs because ​“it’s better to learn while you’re young and growing up.” 

“When do people start figuring out their gender identity?” Weinreb asked. 

“I think mostly you figure out your sexuality when you’re in elementary school or middle schools,” replied one student. 

When asked to describe a safe and affirming school, the middle schoolers also called for a place that is disability-friendly, has no dress code, has in-classroom bathrooms, and has physical education (PE) classes that don’t have girl- or boy-dictated physical assessments.

The students spent the remainder of the meeting revisiting last year’s climate survey questions, which NHPS posed to 6th-through-12th graders. 

One question: ​“Does your school have a GSA and how does it help?” 

GSAs help students ​“express their feelings,” piped up one of the Elm City Montessori GSA attendees.

Another question: ​“How many books or resources does your school have that contain LGBTQ people, history, or events?” 

One student recalled reading Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag and described it as ​“really good.” 

A fourth-grader named Otto said their class does not have enough LGBTQ books. ​“I think we should get some people to persuade them to respect people for who they are,” they said. ​“Because in my class I feel like there’s a lot of disrespect and not enough respect to a bunch of people.“

Seventh-grader Sammy added that she ​“doesn’t think there will ever be enough.” 

A third question: ​“How many school staff are supportive of LGBTQ people?” 

Some students called out that all of the school staff they know are supportive. Others replied that most are. 

Fourth-grader Julieta pointed out that educators like Weinreb and Jean-Jacques show they are supportive by facilitating their club. 

Pearl added: ​“I bet that a lot of teachers support it, but a lot of them don’t really say that they do or come to GSA.”

Still another survey question: ​“How accepting do you think students at your school are of LGBTQ people?” 

“There are some students who use the word ​‘gay’ as an insult,” said a student named Estela, ​“which is just plain rude.” 

Students added that they hope to work with the school’s primary students and their families to educate them about being accepting and welcoming of LGBTQ people. 

“I think it would be good because when they get older they will have something stuck in their mind that LGBTQ people aren’t bad, they’re just people, just like you,” Otto said.

Sixth-grader Angaliez added that they should have conversations with parents about letting their students express themselves through clothing while young. ​“Instead of just saying you have to wear a dress because you’re a girl,” she said. 

Julieta proposed that there be more classroom conversations about the importance of accepting LGBTQ people. ​“Outside of GSA, yeah, we read books about it, but we never have a class about it. I think we should talk more about GSA and LGBTQ stuff.”

Several students agreed that they would want to have GSA gathering weekly rather than every two weeks. 

Another survey question: ​“How supportive are Elm City Montessori families of LGBTQ students and staff?”

Most students shared about their experiences with their own families. Several shared about having LGBTQ family members and parents.

Fifth-grader Aiyana said, ​“My parents grew up to not support it, but they do support it anyways.”

At the conclusion of Friday’s meeting, the GSA made a quick visit to the school’s primary hallway to see local muralist Kwadwo Adae in action as they saw work from last year come to life. 

The middle school group led the effort in securing a grant-funded art work of a rainbow chameleon in their hallway. Over the next few days, the students would join Adae in finishing the artwork. 

GSA Educators: "Look At These Brave Kids"

In a follow up group interview for this article, the Independent spoke via Zoom with four NHPS educators who help lead their middle and high schools’ GSAs and who are members of the city school district’s LGBTQ Youth Task Force. The group included Weinreb from Elm City Montessori, Fana Hickinson from New Haven Academy, Peter Solomon from Sound School, and Erin Michaud from Beecher School. 

Solomon, who leads Sound School’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance (SAGA) said the student-led group has filled an important gap at the school. It has connected LGBTQ students with a trusted adult and role model. 

Students learn that ​“you’re part of that larger community” and develop leadership and advocacy skills, Solomon said. One recent accomplishment spearheaded by the SAGA students was introducing gender-neural bathrooms in all of the City Point school campus’s buildings. 

“Over the past 10 years or so that I’ve been doing this, this has helped shift our climate,” he added. 

“GSAs must exist for children before ninth grade,” Weinreb said. ​“It is asinine, bonkers and bananas given what we understand about children’s identity that we would wait until they’re 14 to provide them with a safe space when we know that discrimination, bullying, and mental health challenges show up for people in this world way earlier.”

Michaud added that GSAs are necessary because ​“there are students who do not have safe spaces at home” and offer them staff and peers that they can confide in. 

According to the NHPS website the 2021 – 2022 School Climate Survey results showed that ​“for the first time, less than half of students (43%) responded favorably when asked how much respect other students in their school show them, a decrease of 15 percentage points from last year.”

The report also said that 48 percent of students ​“responded favorably when asked how much they feel like they belong at their schools, a decrease of 12 percentage points from 2021.”

The survey summary continues by stating that students who identify as nonbinary and/or LGBTQ responded ​“less favorably on the majority of school climate topics, especially around School Safety (at least 11 percentage points lower than the districtwide average) and Sense of Belonging (at least 4 percentage points lower than the districtwide average).”

“Though the questions that have been asked about safety and belonging did not exist in previous surveys I would expect that they would have consistently been worse for LGBTQ students in years past,” Weinreb said. ​“What is powerful now is that there is local data that aligns with what we know nationally and anecdotally so that the district is in a really powerful place to be able to do lots of things to make sure that children feel more safe and connected to their schools.” 

“Now we have the data,” Michaud added. ​“So, what are we going to do with it?”

Solomon expressed his hope that NHPS will introduce plans supported by the data — all without contributing to what he described as ​“initiative fatigue.”

Michaud recalled her own experience coming out in her early 20s. They said they wished they were instilled with the confidence, support, and knowledge their current students have while still in middle school. ​“Thirty years ago for me was not this way,” they added.

Solomon agreed, sharing that he came out in his late 20s and even then it was his students who supported him to ​“be more visible.” 

“Look at these brave kids and look at me trying to fly under the radar,” he recalled. 

Michaud emphasized that when students are given a safe space to discover and express themselves, the less they’ll figuratively be wearing a mask and bearing a ​“heavy weight.” 

“The older you are when that mask comes off, the more you didn’t understand about yourself, the more you were trying to force your circle into the square peg box,” Solomon said. 

The group agreed that as educators a huge part of their job is to aid students in their journey towards better knowing themselves and discovering their interests and eventually finding their place in a community and in society as a whole.

GSAs allow students to bring their full selves to school, Weinreb added. 

“It’s time to act,” Solomon said. 

“We can’t get lost chasing data,” Weinreb said.

When asked what specific improvements they hope will come from the survey data, the four educators interviewed by the Independent called for a new physical education (PE) curriculum that is gender and sexuality inclusive, the creation of GSAs at all middle and high schools, and faculty trainings to help to empower educators to act in solidarity with LGBTQ students.

Weinreb added that he hopes for this year’s climate survey, which is expected to cost the district $80,000, to take less than six months to be presented on. That way the school community can begin next school year with current lessons about the most recent data. 

When asked if the educators have seen a difference in their schools since the Board of Education’s passage of a policy supporting transgender and gender non-conforming youth, Solomon and Michaud said they have. 

The LGBTQ policy was passed in November 2021. It primarily focused on requiring the use of students’ preferred pronouns by educators and allowing the modifications in school systems of students’ preferred names without a need for legal name change records. 

Michaud said Beecher has taken the policy seriously in the name of student safety and has had its staff meet with the district’s Title IX coordinator to explain and act on the policy with any staff who may have refused. 

Solomon added that while Sound has had a long-established culture of LGBTQ inclusivity, the policy bolstered student confidence and safety. It explains to teachers ​“why” it is important to respect LGBTQ students’ needs, he said. 

He added that all educators should realize ​“how much it hurts a kid who is deadnamed or mis-pronouned. And how much it damages your relationship with them as their teacher; your ability to educate and reach that child if you refuse to use their pronouns, you’ve lost them.” 

In another follow-up email exchange with the Independent, Weinreb provided several more updates about what these schools’ GSAs and others across the city are up to. To quote directly from Weinreb’s email, some of those updates include

• Sound School: Over the past year we were lucky enough to have a virtual workshop with Tony Ferraiolo.

• High School in the Community: working with building leadership around protocols for our gender neutral bathroom and advising us around plans to upgrade our current bathrooms.

• New Haven Academy: We are reading ​“Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me” (shout out to Possible Futures) together. Each student received a copy. We’re collaborating with the Outdoors Club and Arts & Crafts club to paint rainbows on planting pots for the annual plant sale fundraiser. We want to restart the tradition of Day of Silence/Breaking the Silence.

• Elm City Montessori School: Members helped to author a grant last year from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation to organize workshops for PreK families as well as paint LGBTQ-affirming murals on our walls — former True Colors Executive Director Robin McHaelen will be leading trainings, and local artist Kwadwo Adae began painting student-inspired murals in January!

• L. W. Beecher Museum Magnet School of Arts and Sciences: The biggest thing that our GSA students enjoy about meeting is just being with others in a safe space. We have also talked about safe spaces within our school, identifying staff members they can trust and go to with any issues or concerns. All students deserve to feel peace, safety and love in their lives.

See below for other recent Independent articles about teaching, reading, and working inside New Haven Public Schools classrooms.

• Student Council Gets Down To Governing
• In Class, High-Schoolers Learn To Lead
• High-Schoolers Get Tips From Future Selves
• TAG Turns Into ​“Wellness Wednesday”
• Volcano Pose Helps Students Erupt, Cool Off
• Gateway Chief Uncovers Student Superpowers
• New Tutoring Site Focuses On Phonics
• Race Finds A Place In The Classroom
• ​“Little Engineers” Build Boats For Pirate Pete
• Seeking Stability, Cross Principal Hits The Halls
• Hispanic Heritage Takes Center Stage At Career High Fest
• Teacher Tim Takes To TikTok
• Amid Shortage, Teachers Cite Disrespect