Back-to-School with GLSEN Chapters

When people ask me about the places reached by the GLSEN chapter network, they are almost always surprised by the answer. They expect to hear big urban centers like New York and Los Angeles, and some, like those two, are on the list.

But they're not usually expecting Wichita, KS, or Nashville, TN, or Omaha, NE. Then there's Houston, TX, and Greater Kansas City. How about GLSEN Bluegrass in Kentucky, or GLSEN Albuquerque. Schools are a local business in this country, bound up in a remarkable web of local, state and federal systems designed to regulate and support them. GLSEN chapters are a local volunteer vanguard of education professionals, students, parents and concerned members of the community.

They come together to advance LGBT issues locally or statewide in the ways that make most sense, and to partner with GLSEN's national staff and network of student leaders to share experience, learn from each other, and be a most formidable force for change at all levels. I first learned about GLSEN in 1994 from my mother, a straight high school English teacher who had just started volunteering with a nascent group called "GLSEN New York City." She was shocked that meetings and events sometimes had to be held very discreetly to protect the identity of teachers and principals who weren't out at work. She was deeply affected by the ACTUP meetings that she walked through to get to the chapter meetings in the small back boiler room at New York's LGBT community center.

I was so grateful to my mother for taking up this new fight, to bring change to schools and make sure that everyone in every school community is free to be themselves and fully supported in reaching their full potential. Especially after my middle school years as "Liza the Lezzie," and the unthinking anti-LGBT bias of high school in the 1980s.

This week, week four of GLSEN's 25 Days for Safer Schools campaign, we highlight and celebrate the amazing work of our chapters. From resource delivery and training programs, to student leadership and GSA networking, GLSEN chapters are getting it done in communities from coast-to-coast.

Today, there is some level of awareness of LGBT issues in school systems everywhere - at least in terms of bullying and violence. But the fight over whether and how schools must respond is very much alive, whether you are in Westchester or Wichita, Portland, ME or Portland, OR. Is it any surprise then that you will find GLSEN's chapters in all of those places?