Teaching LGBTQ History

Teaching LGBTQ History is a website which provides instructional resources for educators, students, and families, particularly for those who live and teach in California. Although the site was created with California teaching standards in mind, the lesson plans, professional development, and other resources can be adapted for other contexts.

The Teaching LGBTQ History site was created and is maintained by Our Family Coalition and ONE Archives Foundation on behalf of the FAIR Education Act Implementation Coalition. In 2012, the Fair Education Act was passed and amended the California Education Code to include the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful reference to contributions by people with disabilities and members of the LGBTQ community in history and social studies curriculum. This collaboration was natural as Our Family Coalition is a family justice organization that “advances equity for the full and expanding spectrum of LGBTQ families and children through support, education, and advocacy,” and ONE Archives Foundation is another community based organization but also houses and promotes the largest collection of LGBTQ+ material in the world. By combining their efforts, the three organizations brought education, social justice, and historical material together to form Teaching LGBTQ History.

The website features detailed lesson plans for Elementary, Middle, and High school teachers and you can browse them in a few different ways. The main lesson plans page organizes them by school level, but the Keywords section under the Lesson Plan tab organizes them differently. Here, you can browse by Grade Level, California Standards, Time Period, Groups, People, Topics, and even Lesson Plan Authors.

Whether you are a California educator or not, these lessons can be used to teach both United States and World History. For World History instruction, you might explore the Global Topic. Here, you will find lessons such as “What were men and women’s experiences of World War I?” and “Homosexual Life Under Nazi Rule: The Legacy of Paragraph 175.” Combining lecture, discussion, primary source analysis and more, students will explore personal histories of World Wars I and II through the lens of discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.

Some of the Topic groupings of lesson plans that may be of most interest to U.S. history teachers are Colonialism, Slavery, McCarthyism, Equal Rights Amendment, Jim Crow, and Stonewall Riots. For example, the lessons titled “Two Spirit and Non-Traditional Families,” “Early Colonial Gender Roles,” and “Native American Gender Roles and Spanish Colonialism”will deepen your students’ understanding of cultural impacts of imperialism and conquest in North America. Through a mixture of presentations, discussion, videos, and other interactive elements, these lessons will ask your students to explore questions such as: How did differing gender roles and practices shape Native American, British Colonial, and Early American history? What impact did colonization have on the meaning of family or community structures? What are gender and family roles and how do they change over time?

Under the Resources tab, Teaching LGBTQ History provides information on best practices and other supplemental materials. “How To Teach LGBTQ History” includes a guide on the topic for California teachers which could be differentiated for different school systems. “Resources, Aids, and Tools” includes content from workshops, timelines, teaching aids, books, and more. Also under the Resources tab is a very informative Timeline and other multimedia supplements like podcasts and videos.

In all, Teaching LGBTQ History is an organized and comprehensive website that can be utilized for educators teaching any grade level or subject matter. The makers’ mission of a quality and social-justice oriented educational resource shines through in the wide diversity of adaptable lesson plans and connection to outside community based and digital online resources.