The session today was amazing. We had no idea how many people might turn up, but were in a room that had maximum of 20 people. Luckily there were extra chairs, because we had more than 50 people!!! There were people sitting on the floor (sorry, Flis!) and standing up at the doorway. There were parents, teachers, youth workers and students.
It was amazing to see so many people fired up about this issue.
We decided to merge the session with one by Clare Ellis from University of New South Wales, who was scheduled to run a session called Developing and Ally Network. Clare has developed and run an ally education program at the UNSW for a number of years, and knows a phenomenal amount about the area. She believes many of the principles she applies to the development of ally networks in university settings, are applicable to school settings as well. So she gave us some great tips. I will summarize her material and link to it.
Many amazing things were discussed, including the preliminary results of the Rainbows in Schools Survey, which I will link too, also.
There was a great deal of interest in establishing continued discussion about this issue, and Rainbows in Schools website and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/rainbowsinschools/ and Facebook discussion group https://www.facebook.com/groups/359210574542677/ seem a good place for this until we can work out another solution.
Watch this space!!