Awesome Ally Week plan from Science Leadership Academy!

Many thanks to advisor Mr. Block, and the extremely hardworking members of the Science Leadership Academy GSA for sharing their Ally Week plan with the rest of the Ally Program network! Ally Week was developed by GLSEN and their Ally Week resources can be found here. Having an Ally Week at your school can be an excellent way to inform the rest of the students about why your GSA exists and what it does, to identify even more staff and student supporters, and to educate the school about some of the issues that are important to GSAs and to LGBTQ staff, students, and school community members. Congrats, SLA, on your success with Ally Week this year! Check out their plan below:

Science Leadership Academy Allies Week, 5/17-5/21
Allies Week activities will take place during advisory periods and will be run by two student co-facilitators, who attended GSA planning meetings where they were trained to run these activities.

What is Allies Week?

Allies Week has many different intentions and meanings here at SLA. We want Allies Week to be a period of time where students at our school will be educated about certain LGBTQ stereotypes, issues, and awareness in their advisories. We do not wish for this to be the typical, school-like instruction, which may not interest some of our students, yet for this to be more interesting discussions.

What will happen in Allies Week?

Throughout Allies Week, there will be activities and lessons during Advisory periods, which will deal with LGBTQ stereotypes and issues. The two Advisory periods, during Monday and Thursday afternoons, will allow students to enhance and enable discussion, as well as participate in activities dealing with the subject. The synopsis for Allies Week, including the Monday and Thursday Advisory Sessions, are as follows:

Monday Advisory Session:

· Official introduction into the meaning, origin, and purpose of Allies Week (see above).

· A school-climate survey, to be anonymous, asking many questions of stereotypes and what students think of sexual orientation/gender identity. Results will be shared in Thursday Advisory Period.

The survey can be found here.

· Brief intro and then activity about terms, to have participation from entire advisory (See sheets in folder), followed by the online Jeopardy game, which can be found here. To make your own free online Jeopardy game for classes and groups, go to http://www.jeopardylabs.com/

· Discussion on the activity & optional sign-up for Day of Silence

Thursday Advisory Session:

· Advisor(s) will share the survey results collected to the advisories.

· Iceberg Gender Identification Activity. Characteristics to be identified as stereotypically male or female. Larger discussion about how terms “male” and “female” do not fully describe true gender identity. (See sheets in folder)

Friday Morning & Afternoon

Day of Silence – This time will be dedicated as a time of silence for all victims, past and present, to any form of LGBTQ violence. Throughout the day, students will remain relatively if not totally silent. Students will be required to register for this prior to this day, (Sign-up will be up only on Monday). It should be noted that there might be students who will participate in Day of Silence for the sake of being silent in school for a day. All students who register should be aware that this is a not to be a lax time, and that by taking this “vow of silence”, they are being honest and truthful in their commitment to standing up for LGBTQ rights.