Workshop

Allyship in Action

Overview

Facilitating an Allyship in Action training is a great way to encourage people to take action and make schools safer for LGBTQ students. Use this guide to help you facilitate your own training to engage participants in activities that will get them thinking critically about further actions they can take as allies.

Objectives

  • To provide understanding about what allyship in action is.

  • To increase the belief of why allyship is important.

  • To encourage effective allyship in action in schools.

Things to Prep & Tools Needed

Print GLSEN Ally Week blogs (www.glsen.org/allyweek), flip chart paper, a written flip chart paper with allyship definition written on it, stats from GLSEN’s National School Climate Survey or State Snapshots, markers, paper, pens.

Facilitator Notes

Know your audience (adults vs students). That way you know which framing might be more effective to use.

Define terminology. Make sure to let people know that they can ask for definitions if they don’t know them. Try not to use acronyms throughout the presentation.

Have a supportive adult present during the presentation. That way if you need adult allyship, that they are there to help you and validate what you are educating people on.

Get support from your administration. Try to get permission to do your presentation beforehand so that if there is pushback you have administration support.

In the activity below, the parts in italics are directions, actions or notes. The parts in bold are to be read to the group. You don’t have to read these words verbatim, but these are examples of how the facilitator might speak to the group.