If you haven’t noticed already, rainbow signs featuring the words “Safe Zone” have popped up in the past months all around the school – from classrooms to lanyard pins, to a very large collage outside the middle school counseling office. 

As it turns out, this designation originated as an extension of the international Safe Zone Project – a program dedicated to education about gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ+ identities. 

Ms. Stephanie Finnell (MS Counseling) is the person behind the introduction of Safe Zone trainings in SAS. Since arriving on campus in December 2020, she has held a 2 hour training session for around 50 teachers throughout the divisions, who volunteered to attend. Another training has been held since on May 11th, 2021, bringing the total number of trained and certified staff members up to 86.

The stickers and pins, created by the Communications office, are meant to designate staff who have undergone the training. “We wanted it to be visible and accessible to students who want to talk,” she said.

LGBTQ individuals are twice as likely as cisgender and heterosexual people to have a mental health disorder in their lifetime, according to the American Psychiatry Association in 2017. Specifically, they are 2.5 times as likely to experience depression, anxiety, or substance abuse. The goal, Ms. Finnell said, is to make the school community more accepting and understanding of queer identities and issues, and for students to be able to reach out one another and faculty when they want to talk.

“[The teachers] learn about topics like LGBTQ vocabulary, how to incorporate resources into a classroom setting, and how to use pronouns,” said Ms. Finnell, regarding the content of the training. The trainings involved roleplaying scenarios and responses, as well as a tool called the Gender Unicorn, created by TSER (Trans Student Educational Resources).

According the creators, the Gender Unicorn was designed to help individuals better understand and recognize distinctions between different aspects of gender and sexuality. The graphic takes inspiration from previous organizers like the Genderbread Person and variations on Tumblr, making additional distinctions between sex, gender, and expression, as well as nonbinary identities.

In addition to training sessions for teachers, Ms. Finnell has also expanded the Gender Unicorn and related safe zone training into middle school classrooms. Ranging from home base lessons to collaborations with middle school sex-ed, she said that the feedback from students and teachers were generally positive. The projection for the near future, according to Ms. Finnell, is to host another training session for teachers, as well as officially extending the program to high school students as well.

Keep posted for Safe Zone Part 2: on student responses.

Moral Support credits to Amy Francis Huang.

(Title image from Unsplash).