My experiences with people
throughout school were not the best. Many people say “I wish I was back in high
school” and my response “I hated high school”. In school I was always picked on
because I was the gay kid. I do not have the deepest speaking voice, I do not
listen to rap all day every day, and I do not sag in my jeans. My senior year
in high school I was threatened and cyber bullied. I had to delete my Facebook
account for a few months until we graduated and moved on. I also went to high
school with a student who was transgender who was beat up and tormented every
day. He goes by the name “Sammy”; Sammy and I spoke quite often about life and
he told me he wasn’t able to express his self at home and school was his get
away from his parents who were not accepting of their child. We both found out
the hard way that there was no standard protocol for school staff to handle the
situations at hand and my experiences has led me to do a proposal on LGBT
Bullying in schools.
The
goals of my solution to LGBT bullying are to make schools a safer environment
and in the future to help decrease the rising numbers of LGBT suicide.
According to the Gay Lesbian Straight Educator Network, it has been studied and
reported that students hear anti-gay slurs more than twenty-five times a day
and teachers fail to respond to these comments 97% of the time. The steps
needed are to propose the idea to many organizations to gain support on my
proposal, recruit volunteers who are down for the cause, organize ways to get
our voices heard, and the last step is to take the proposal to the unified
school district. These are effective ways to put a proposal in motion because
pitching an Idea will possibly inspire other organizations to either join or
create a proposal similar.
If
my proposal is actually considered there will be no excuse for school staff and
officials to not handle LGBT bullying because it would be in writing and the
proposal will possibly decrease LGBT suicide rates and it will make schools a
lot safer. According to the secretary’s task force on youth suicide, Gay and
Lesbian youth are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than other
youths and thirty percent of youth suicides are related to the issue of sexual
identity. Students who describe themselves as LGBT are five times more likely
to miss school because of feeling unsafe and twenty eight percent of LGBT
student drop out of school (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force 1984). More
than sixty four of LGBT students say they feel unsafe at school because of
their sexual orientation (Glsen 2003 National School Climate survey). Compared
to others my proposal should be put into practice because from experience I
know what it is like to be alone and not have anyone in your corner and with a
written protocol to protect you against school bullying you should feel
somewhat safer in schools.
In
conclusion, my proposal will possibly decrease LGBT suicide rates and make
going to school a lot safer and an enjoyable experience for everyone. The LGBT
bullying problem will not be solved completely but it can be steps taken to
make school a better place. Teaching equality is a great start but when a
person grows up and spends less time at home they become accustomed to their
environment outside of the home. In today’s world, it is more acceptable to be
Gay and in our media there are more positive roles for gay men and women. There
is no such thing as gay agenda being presented and I'm not trying to recruit
anyone. I'm just trying to make school safer for everyone.
Comments
Post a Comment