How can I, a straight male teacher, make my classes more welcoming to LBGT teenagers?

They don't seem to have ';safe havens'; anywhere at our school. I teach Chemistry, Physics, and (perhaps, next year) Geometry. Gaybashing is rampant here. I don't even like to hear ';That's so gay,'; although it's difficult to get straight teens to understand why. Any suggestions would be welcome.How can I, a straight male teacher, make my classes more welcoming to LBGT teenagers?
Make your classroom a safe haven. Ensure that you have a no-tolerance policy regarding hate filled language, including ';that's so gay.'; Also include a no-tolerance policy for hate filled activities such as teasing and physical violence in that policy. Make sure the kids in your class can come to your class and know that, at least while they are with you, that they won't be teased, made fun of, etc... You could also be the faculty sponsor of a Gay-Straight Alliance student organization.How can I, a straight male teacher, make my classes more welcoming to LBGT teenagers?
(1) The most important thing to do is to absolutely allow no sexist jokes, gay-bashing or any type of bashing in your classroom. If a student even hints at something akin to this, stop him in his tracks and do so publicly.





(2) Do not single out a gay person or any other type of person you sort of suspect might be LGBT. Treat everyone the same.





(3) Don't label someone LGBT when you have no proof that they are. Quite frankly, if you saw some of these student twenty or thirty years from now, you might be surprised at who was actually LGBT and who was actually straight.





(4) Realize that you are not the school psychologist -- don't talk about things in class you know nothing about. Stick to your areas of expertise. Just don't allow anyone to be abused in your classroom. Do not allow teasing of any kind.
depending on how strict your school is about ';teaching to the test,'; i bet you could find a lesbian/gay scientist or mathematician whose life story you could tell in class...the only one coming to me at this instant is alan turing, but he's better suited to a computer science class.





it's awesome that you are setting out to do this, and you will accomplish more than you know just by prohibiting homophobic slurs in your classroom and letting students know you're available, in general, if they ever want to talk.
During lunch break, let your students know that you will eat in the classroom and tell them that they are welcome to join you if they have any reason to be uncomfortable eating in the cafeteria. This is an opening to more conversation about their home life, whether they are LGBT, abused, etc.





When you hear ';That's so gay';, tell the student saying it that they shouldn't be saying that. If they question you, tell them why.





Tell your students that you want to help them outside of the period times and will always be open to listening to their concerns and trying to help them.
I think everytime someone is embarrassing to someone else you could intertwine and say that you don't accept that; not in your class, not at this school, not in your city but just everywhere. Why should they, do they feel stronger. You could tell them it says something about the person itselves when he/she says nasty things. But no, that isn't a good solution.


ehmm, if a gaybasher is hurting someone you could say something about that, and after lesson or so you could step to that gayperson and ask if he/she is ok. And if he/she ever needs help you will be there for the gaycommunity. If they ever have strugglings or so you want to support them. And I think that person will talk about that with gayfriends and if they don't come to you, you always can ask them if everything is ok, or if they have suggestions
Well the ';that's gay'; is stupid, it seems to have ballooned up, and will stop soon, it's just a speech thing. I hate it, but I know it'll die down.





Anyways, I think maybe you should work to get more change in the entire school. Maybe get a non-discrimination policy in there. Or have some form of a gay speaker, talking about the issues so that kids understand that being gay isn't such a bad thing.
Just treat them exactly as you treat any other attentive student. And make it a strict policy that there will be no derogatory remarks in your class room about anyone. But do draw your battle lines carefully: Making a big deal out of ';that's so gay'; may be overkill, although I do know what you're getting at.
Straight teens wanna be mainstream. To teens, gays and lesbians just aren't. You're best bet is to just talk to your class about where to go to receive help, guidance, and inform the straight ones about how it would feel to be made fun of. Coming from a straight person, thats the best I could do.





Good Luck!
Make your class a safe haven for the GLBT community by offering it as a place where they can go at lunch and at break and so forth. Also, you should lay down the lay in your class room that gay bashing will not be tolerated. About the comments like ';that's so gay'; and so on... I feel, and you don't have to agree with me, but I think that this phrase has changed over time. At my school people would say that all of the time and we didn't think anything of it because it wasn't a bash, it was an expression.
If your serious about this, maybe help the students start a Gay-Straight Alliance in your school. Once the students learn your a open minded teacher, they might open up to you.
Perhaps, when you're teaching, you can tie in some LBGT anecdotes from your past (if you know/are friends with any LGBT people) if it fits in with the topic at hand, or you could give ';life lessons'; at the end of your period. That's exactly what my chemistry teacher did for us on several occasions! She would tell the girls not to let guys abuse them for the remaining 20 minutes of class, or she would tell us about how she got a golf-ball size of potassium from a friend and threw it into her ex-husband's pool when he was with his mistress, sending them both into a frenzy because the pool was a-blaze, or how she should've killed her ex-husband when she caught him in bed with her then-best friend (still not sure if she was joking or not on the whole ';should've killed him'; thing...)





Anyway, just say something off-hand to your classes to let them know that you're cool with the LGBT community, y'know? You don't have to announce it over the PA system, and you don't have to jump on a bandwagon and make people suspect that you're gay, but just hang a poster on your wall *subtly* implying that you support the LGBT community. In this way, gay people will understand it, and the administration won't ask you to remove it should a straight person complain, y'know?
That's tough given the curriculum. Maybe you could just let it be known that it takes all kinds of combinations of chemicals to make a reaction, some are good, others are volatile. No one want volatile in their face. It's not healthy to the whole. We all interact but we have to be careful not to mix certain things so we don't blow ourselves up. Let them know that some minerals are rare and sought after just like gay is rare and well, not sought after but people fight over the two nonetheless. Makes no difference, they are both there, a fact of life and not worthly of argument. Then tell them that two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do. I hope this helps.
gay makes life complicated. you wonder if you can take off your clothes off in females changing room without the other starting to look.