On the 14th of April, the SSTUWA hosted a Wine & Cheese night, with guest-speaker Daniel Witthaus reading excerpts from his book “Beyond ‘That’s so gay!’ Challenging Homophobia in Australian Schools.”

As part of the WA leg of his national tour Daniel spent time in Perth, as well as visiting places such as Esperance, Bunbury, Kalgoorlie and Geraldton (see: his blog http://www.thatssogay.com.au/ ).

Hosted by Bronwyn Croghan (Women’s Officer) and Anne Gisborne (President), guests at the evening included Clive Kelly and Ross Fallen from the union/ B-LeGITS, Pat Burke (SVP the SSTUWA), Yvonne Henderson (Commissioner for Equal Opportunity), Alison Xamon MLC & Lynn MacLaren MLC from the Greens, Malcolm Fialho (Snr Diversity Officer, UWA) and Sandra Norman from the Gay & Lesbian Community Services of WA.

They heard Daniel read from his book as well as amusing and, sometimes, sad anecdotes of his time in schools and in the community.

Daniel is an internationally recognised authority in ‘challenging’ homophobia and also developed a school-based package, called “Pride & Prejudice: An educational package to challenge homophobia in secondary schools” (with assistance from Dr Daryl Higgins and Dr Ross King), designed to facilitate change in the attitudes of students towards gay men and lesbians. The resource discusses some of the strategies teachers can use in schools to overcome homophobia.

Daniel has been working with students in Victorian regional schools for the last 10 years, highlighting homosexuality and the issues confronting gays and lesbians.

We sat down and chatted before his talk at the SSTUWA:

How did you get started?

I started off as a Youth Worker, supporting gay & lesbian youth through a Local Government project that was running out of Youth Services. I identified that most of these young people were saying that school was not great for them. They were experiencing bullying and harassment.

I piloted a ‘Challenging Homophobia Program’ in an all-boys’ Catholic school. At first I did a lot of PD with the teachers....as they grew more comfortable, and realised it wasn’t a 6-week course about sex, they realised I looked at it from a welfare point of view and, from that point on, people said that if you can do that with an all-boys school Catholic school and the roof didn’t cave in, and people didn’t run around with their hair on fire, then you can do it anywhere!

That was seen to be successful and, as a result of that, people asked me to go to their school.

How did your program start?

What I realised with time is that this is something teachers can do, and they can do well, so in the past 10years I’ve focussed more on working with health workers and teachers in giving them the skills to use in their classrooms and school yards.

Our program is based on integrating the skills and rapport you already have with our approach, not about giving extra work, which teachers are relieved about as they have that time pressure, daily, and they don’t have to do anything extra with this.

If teachers felt competent, confident and supported in doing this work, then there would be no need for me to have written Beyond “That’s so gay!” Reading the book gives them and their schools a head start.

Is there an age group this is aimed at?

With the Victorian school model, it is middle school years, but I have worked with older students in year 11. People have thought that the younger years (8/9) might not handle it but we have actually run successful courses with year 8 groups as well.

Do you have any backlash to what you are doing?

There is resistance to this work in general but, as I am working on reputation and invites, I am not knocking on school doors pushing myself in: the school s I go to want me there. People have said that maybe I should market a bit wider but I find that, with this issue, word-of-mouth makes a difference to allaying people’s fears.

There have been times when the school has let the parents know that this program is happening (different schools decide whether or not they are going to let parents know- some of them see it as ‘...we run lots of different programs; why do we need to make this one special?’), as opposed to other schools who say that they just want to cover themselves, which is fair enough. There have been isolated cases where parents refuse to allow students to participate.

As Daniel shared with the audience and believes, “...real change will not come from multi-million dollar projects, legislative reforms and a 180-degree shift by educational authorities. Instead, real change can be led by schools, teachers, students and others making small changes in their daily behaviours.”