Stonewall's Education Champions Conference

Seeing as this blog is all about what we're up to, I thought it might be an idea to update on what I've been doing.

On wednesday I attended a short conference in Gloucestershire about Stonewall's Education Champions Programme, designed to help tackle the issue of homophobia in schools. It was a launch of this program in Gloucestershire City Council and I attended as a representative of the Bristol Youth Select Committee. The first section outlined the statistics of homophobic bullying in schools and how teachers respond to that, what the program can do for pupils and teachers, and finished with a Q&A section. After a short break the film 'Milk' was shown. This told the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to state office in California.

It was a good opportunity to see what this program was about, and highlighted some key factors about discrimination and homophobia in school. I think this especially important now, as we have recently gained a prejudiced and discriminatory party in the European Parliament. Giving teachers and pupils the help to fight this can only be good.

http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/schoolsnet/index.cfm?articleid=92517

There is also an amazing film I saw the other day called 'A Classroom Divided' about a teacher who did a two day lesson in discrimination (mostly racism) in her school in the 1960's.
It's one of the most interesting and scary things I've ever seen. The entire thing is here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6189991712636113875&ei=VhM0SsXgAYz4-Aai08ykCQ&q=a+classroom+divided

Colby