Creating Gender Inclusive Schools

What is it like to train an entire public elementary school about gender?
by
Year Released
2016
Film Length(s)
21 mins
Closed captioning available
Remote video URL

Introduction

What happens when you bring gender training to a public elementary school? In Creating Gender Inclusive Schools the Peralta Elementary School in Oakland CA demonstrates the power of an open and honest conversation about gender.

Featured review

Creating Gender Inclusive Schools was the perfect introduction to our faculty and staff. The teachers in the film express themselves with great sincerity and the students are remarkably articulate. We found the film to be so well produced that we have ordered several copies to add to our lending library for our families.
Joanne Robbins
Ph.D., Principal and Associate Director, Morningside Academy, Seattle, WA

Synopsis

The school brought in the staff of Gender Spectrum to provide training for teachers and administrators as well as an age-appropriate curriculum for students. During this step, everyone involved was empowered to look at their own personal confusion, bias and feelings around gender.

Parents are brought into the mix next, and add to the spirited discussion about creating a safe place for all of our children to be themselves. A week of classroom activities helps the students learn about gender, stereotyping, and bullying. Their insightful and intuitive discussions will open your eyes to how comfortable young people can be when given the opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings about gender.

Creating Gender Inclusive Schools demonstrates that it’s not only possible, but that it’s downright fun, to train an entire public elementary school community to be inclusive of transgender and gender expansive youth.

Creating Gender Inclusive Schools is one of four films in the Youth & Gender Media Project, which together demonstrate how to reach every member of a school community—students, teachers, parents and administrators—to help them create educational settings that welcome all young people, regardless of the where they fall on the spectrum of gender identity and expression.

Purchase all four films for the price of three at: https://www.newday.com/film/youth-and-gender-media-project.

Reviews

As a LGBTQ advocate and educator, the film is a great tool and resource. We love the perspectives that the film provides and the connection to LGBTQ inclusion work. I am so grateful that a film like this even exists and is available to us.
Ami Davis
Manager of Youth Wellness and Policy, REACH OUT
We screened Creating Gender Inclusive Schools for a professional development session at each of our schools to teachers, assistants and support staff. This impactful film highlights how easily we can make a difference if we intentionally plan to address gender identity in our schools. Our teams were truly inspired by what is possible and the film moved each school to consider immediate steps to support a more inclusive environment.
Catherine Wang
Glencoe School District Superintendent
Creating Gender Inclusive Schools is a concise and complete overview of how teachers can implement gender-inclusive health and wellness curriculum in our earliest grades. This video is an invaluable resource!
JJ Kahle
Office of Equity and Community Engagement, The Blake School, Minneapolis, MN
I watched the video Creating Gender Inclusive Schools and then read through the resources that came with the DVD. I was so impressed and moved by the video and really appreciated the well thought out surveys and lessons that accompanied were included with this resource. I used these materials to plan for a faculty meeting where my goal was to open the dialogue about how to create safe schools for our students. I handed out the My Personal Gender Journey questionnaire a few days before the meeting and asked teachers to complete it. (I told them we would not share our responses, but this survey should help to activate our own thinking). I showed the video at the faculty meeting and could literally see how moved the entire staff was! We then used some of the questions from the workbook as conversation starters at table groups and teachers became very engaged in discussing this topic. Based on this meeting, I have seen a shift in some practices already and most are very open to thinking about ways to make students feel more safe and welcome. I would highly recommend this video to any school administrator as a way to begin the discussion around gender inclusiveness in their schools. It is a great resource!
Jennifer Roberts
Ed.D., Principal, Essex Elementary School, Essex, MA

Director Commentary

I was a gender nonconforming child who loved to play with both dollhouses and Hot Wheels, wear pants and dresses. Like any child, I wanted it all! Around second grade, I started to get teased and bullied for my “sissy” ways and decided to give up “girly” things in order to evade the harassment that I intuitively knew would only get worse as I grew older. But this also meant that I abandoned an important part of myself.

In the early 2000s I began to read about children who were gender creative and transgender and were living in communities that supported them. These children and their families were doing what my community hadn’t been able to do when I was a child. As a social change filmmaker, I wanted to document and help grow the movement that embraces rather than suppresses children with gender expansive identities.

In 2007, I began work on a film that eventually turned into the Youth and Gender Media Project, a series of short films about gender expansive young people and their families and communities. I’m happy to say that the films have screened in festivals around the world and are being used in hundreds of middle schools, high schools and colleges throughout North America to help make the world safe for youth of any and all manifestations of gender identity and expression.

Joel Baum at Gender Spectrum and I first talked about documenting a school inclusivity training several years ago, but it took more than two years for us to find a school community that would be willing to let us come in with cameras to document the process. It was worth the wait. We are grateful to Peralta principal Rosette Costello, who understood not only the value of inclusion, but also the importance of demonstrating that value to other school administrators and educators in the form of a film.

Features and Languages

Film Features

  • Closed Captioning
  • DVD Extras
  • Transcript
  • Resources for Educators

Subtitle/Caption Languages

  • Spanish

Promotional Material

Promotional Stills

Resources for Educators

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