My Story Part 157 - The True Colors Conference Tomorrow

I will be at the True Colors XX Conference all day tomorrow and Saturday, the conference is the largest conference for LGBT youth in the world! Over the two day conference they will have almost 3000 attendees!
I will also be presenting a workshop…

Policies for Gender Variant Students
This workshop will examine barriers that gender diverse students face in schools and how the non-discrimination law affects them. In a school system, some of the obstacles gender diverse students face in their educations can easily be overcome by having a policy in place. This workshop will cover briefly the transition process and the Connecticut anti-discrimination law. Then we will look at what a school policy should cover, such as name change, changing records and the use of bathrooms.

This is a spinoff from a speech that I gave this past summer for the Commission of Human Rights and Opportunities at their Civil Rights and Anti-Bullying Leadership Summit. I was talking to the director of True Colors and she suggested that I do a workshop on the topic.

The idea for the speech and workshop was from my work with the Safe School Coalition that wrote “Guidelines for Schools on Gender Identity and Expression” and for references I used GLSEN and NCTE’s "Model District Policy on Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students" and "Safe School Research Brief 13: Understanding Safe Schools for Transgender Students."

So this afternoon I will be up at Staples running off copies of my handouts and also shopping for new clothes for the conference.