Recently me and a friend were talking about wishing or school had a GSA and after talking to one of our teachers we actually got permission (and some help) to set one up. It's something I'd been thinking about for months and I already had some ideas of what I thought we could do around school or in lessons (and our teacher approved all of them). However we will also be having weekly meetings. I did have some things that we could discuss (my main focus being on things like representations that aren't usually spoken about e.g. Asexuality, pansexuality) but I don't have that many. What do you guys think would make good topics to talk about? If your school has a GSA what kind of things do you usually discuss and if you're no longer in school what do you wish you could have spoken about when you were? I'm both curious to know and looking forward to some ideas to steal Thanks guys!
Our GSA has a talk box, where we all write down discussion ideas and questions, either open, or based around a very broad topic (i.e. gender identity, or stigma, or sexuality in america vs other countries, or identity and family, mental health, stuff like that) and we'll just draw an idea out, and have an open discussion until the conversation runs dry, and then draw a new one. It seems to have been doing fairly well so far!
I'm not sure if it would work in the UK, especially if you're talking about 'things that don't get talked about much'. Or at least it would be more a niche thing compared to in North America, which seems to be a lot bigger on its identity politics.
My GSA just recently did a Q&A panel. We showed a video, and then we opened it up for any questions that the other students might have about what it is like to be LGBT. We did four panels, by grade level, and overall it went really well. We got a lot of good feedback from both the students and the teachers.
My school's GSA just started, so I don't have much to offer. But we had a kickoff event where we put up posters around the school telling people to come for pizza and to make friends, without directly saying what the GSA was, cause we have a different acronym. We showed the movie G.B.F., since it's one of the few decent and school appropriate LGBT movies.
I think a great topic would be self love and how ro love yourself. Not talking about sexually loving yourself but how to build confidence or how to see yourself positively. A good chunk of students probably have extreme low self esteem especially lgbtq students. It's not a taboo topic but it's a powerful one. One that could help benefit students and even allies as well. Also I would love to have a session for allies and what they can do to help. I feel sometimes they want to but are a little nervous doing so because they don't fit into the lgbtq 'norm'. Odd concept I know but it really is good to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
