storyboard:

‘D’ Is for Divorce: Big Feelings on Sesame Street

In early 1992, a census report predicted that 40 percent of children would soon live in divorced homes. As one of the most famous children’s television programs in the world, Sesame Street was determined to take on a topic most kid’s shows wouldn’t touch. They cast Snuffy, a.k.a. Mr. Snuffleupagus, for the part of child divorcee.

With a team of its best writers, researchers, and producers, a segment was scripted and shot. It went through a half-dozen revisions, with input from the foremost researchers in the field. And on a typical sunny afternoon on Sesame Street, the furry, red, elephantine muppet known as Snuffy prepared to drop the bomb on his loyal preschool viewers. 

“My dad is moving out of our cave,” he confides to Big Bird one afternoon, distraught after knocking over a house built of blocks. “I’m not sure where,” he continues, crying. “Some cave across town.”

Big Bird, naturally, is horrified. “But why?” he asks his friend. 

Snuffy blinks his long, dark eyelashes, and pauses. We know what’s coming. Well, he explains, “because of something called a divorce.”

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kateoplis:

Yesterday, board member Steve Zimmer out-gayed the rest of the state’s school districts — even San Francisco Unified; woot woot! — with the state’s first solid plan to implement SB 48.

Under his resolution, all schools within LAUSD must do the following in their classrooms within three months:

• Promote positive images of LGBT individuals.
• Make available age-appropriate LGBT inclusive curriculum for elementary and secondary schools.
• Require that newly adopted social studies materials include positive representations of LGBT and persons with disabilities.
• Include LGBT sensitivity in outreach, education, and training for students, parents, and staff.
• Remind staff of their duty to ensure that all students are safe and affirmed on campus, and to proactively intervene with acts of bias, harassment or bullying that they see, including, but not limited to LGBT-biased language and bullying.
• Implement for all staff a training specifying legal responsibilities, effective practices, and concerns unique to LGBT individuals, similar to the district’s child abuse module.

LAUSD’s human relations coordinator, Judy Chiasson, tells the LA Daily News elementary-schoolers with same-sex parents will now “be allowed to make two Mother’s or Father’s Day cards without questions or concerns being raised by teachers.”

Read on.

(via latimes)

(Source: theyuniversity)

sweettalksbooks:

You know that kid that walks into your classroom on the first day and tells you his name is Jesse (when it’s really Jesus), John Paul (when it’s really Juan Pablo), or George (when it’s really Jorge)? You need to read them this book.

This book by Helen Recorvits (2003) tells the story of a…