We have always been here, beyond Stonewall 50: LGBTQAI+ Curriculum

June 1, 2019

GLBT Historical Society, Market Street, San Francisco

Lilith Paige Benjamin

In 2014 California became the first state to mandate the teaching of LGBTQAI+ history and culture in public primary and secondary school. Until now the GLBT Historical Society, California’s premiere archive, research center, and museum has not had material to support educators teach California student’s their state’s LGBTQAI+ history.

Materials are designed for students from third grade to seniors in high school to have meaningful engagement with LGBTQAI+ history, culture, and activism. Students can engage in age appropriate ways that allow them to learn about minority gender and sexuality, in a way that promotes dignity, self respect, and self love.

This curriculum allows students to meaningfully engage with parts of the GLBT Historical Society’s collection, from historic photographs, to Harvey Milk’s ponytail which he cut off to symbolize his commitment to run a serious campaign in 1977. Students should be able to find people who look and live like them in these lessons, from Angela Davis, black liberation firebrand and influential public scholar to Flicia Elizondo, a trans woman of color who fought back against police brutality against transgender and gay people at Compton’s Cafeteria, and later becoming a prominent AIDS activist.

The GLBT Historical Society is producing this material with its own collection and is the sole sponsor of the project.

Research began in June of 2018 and continued until March of 2019 with lesson plans being written concurrently.

Material will be released and marketed as part of GLBT Historical Society’s programming related to Pride 2019. In the United States Pride 2019 will mark fifty years since the Stonewall Uprisings, and the beginning of the mainstream lgbtqai+ liberation movement.

The curriculum has yet to be released so outcomes are hard to determine. Moreover this is the Historical Society’s first attempt at such material. So the risks are fairly high that the
curriculum will be more of a lesson learning experience than necessarily a massive success.

Thanks to Nalini Elias Programming Director, GLBT Historical Society. The millions of brave lgbtqai+ people who have shaped history and bent the arc of history a little closer to justice. Most of all to the people working up the courage to come out, you are seen, you are loved, you are not alone, you are why we fight.

Curriculum / Lesson plan

Aromantic, Asexual, Bisexual, Gay, Intersex, Lesbian, LGBTQAI+, Queer, Questioning, Transgender