LGBTQIA+ History Month: Oct 2026

-Harvey Milk, first openly gay elected city official in the U.S.

Check out the Harvey Milk Foundation's Education page for teaching ideas and resources.

Dear Teachers & School Leaders,

Below, you will find resources for honoring LGBTQIA+ History Month in your classrooms and school communities. These materials are curated to help educators teach in factually accurate, historically robust, and culturally responsive ways that center inquiry and disciplinary literacy.

LGBTQIA+ History Month invites us to create welcoming classrooms and to highlight the diverse heritage of our school communities. It commemorates the history, political activism, and contributions of LGBTQIA+ people and includes National Coming Out Day (October 11).

Thank you for fostering classrooms where students can think deeply, engage respectfully, and preserve the complexity of our shared past.

Your Oakland Schools Social Studies Team,
Molly and Stacie

Oakland Schools is not responsible for any content that is linked to external sites. While OS will periodically review these resources, links should be reviewed for use and approved through your district prior to distribution within your district and/or community.

This is the error message that we received when we tried to access the National Park Service's "LGBTQ Resources" educational page that we previously featured in this S'more.

In 2025, several federal agencies and cultural institutions changed or removed public-facing historical content related to LGBTQIA+ people and other historically marginalized communities. Examples include edits and takedowns on National Park Service pages (e.g., the Stonewall National Monument site removing references to “transgender” and narrowing content from “LGBTQ+” to “LGB”) and removals of signage and web content at national parks concerning climate change, slavery, Japanese American incarceration, and other topics. These shifts followed White House executive orders that directed government agencies to purge content described as "subversive," “ideological,” or “anti-American.” Professional historical organizations have condemned these actions as government censorship that distorts the public record and undermines ethical historical practice and civic education. Professional museum associations have also "expressed alarm at the 'growing threat' of censorship and political interference in museums from the Trump administration."

It is important to note that presidential executive orders do not directly control K-12 public school curricula. The authority over curriculum in Michigan rests with local school districts. Michigan Attorney General, Dana Nessel, clarified this in February, 2025.

Social studies teachers are on the front lines of civic life, helping students develop the habits of inquiry, critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning that democracy requires. When official narratives are narrowed, students lose access to inclusive sources and the ability to weigh evidence, consider multiple perspectives, and practice the habits of civic inquiry. Our role is not to teach what to think, but how to think with evidence—even (and especially) when sources are contested. By fostering historical thinking and media literacy, social studies teachers empower young people to engage thoughtfully with complex issues and to safeguard the democratic values of informed participation and open debate.

Ground the Learning in Inquiry

• Use Compelling Questions
  Frame units with open-ended questions like Who decides what stories are told? What happens when history is erased? ? How much power should the government have to censor ideas? These invite exploration rather than debate over fixed positions.

• Student-Generated Questions
  Begin with a quick-write or a “Question Formulation Technique” session so students help shape the inquiry and feel ownership.

Emphasize Disciplinary Literacy

• Work with Primary & Secondary Sources
  Provide excerpts from government documents (e.g., executive orders), historians’ statements, news articles, and oral histories. Encourage sourcing (Who wrote this? Why?), contextualization, and corroboration.

• Model Evidence-Based Reasoning
  Use simple claim–evidence–reasoning or graphic organizers to help students support conclusions with evidence, not opinion.

Provide Balanced, Reliable Resources

• Curate diverse perspectives from professional historical organizations (e.g., AHA, OAH) and reputable journalism.

• When government sources change or disappear, model how to use archives, cached pages, or academic databases to access historical evidence.

Use Discussion Protocols & Supportive Moves (all grades)

• Contract for Courageous Conversations (co-authored norms, opt-in participation pathways).

• Talk Structures: 1-2-4, Save the Last Word, Four Corners, or Structured Academic Controversy.

• Scaffolds: sentence starters for sourcing (“Given the author’s role…,” “Because this was published on…”), vocabulary frames, and leveled excerpts.

• Care: Provide content notes before sensitive images or accounts; allow alternative but equivalent assessments.

Encourage Reflection and Action

• Metacognition
  Ask students to reflect: How has my thinking changed? What questions remain?

• Civic Extensions
  Offer authentic next steps—writing a letter to a museum, creating a digital exhibit, or presenting to a school board—without mandating activism.

School participation incentives include:

• $5,000 to support planning expenses, program implementation costs, subs/stipends, and bullying prevention activities.
• Michigan Model for Health™ (MMH) training and materials for free of charge.
• Virtual workshops (free, live participation only, continuing education credits available) for 2-3 person teams on creating safe and supportive schools for the LGB+ student population.
• Dedicated time with consultants who will support school teams (e.g. problem solve, talk through issues, etc.) about how to create inclusive learning environments and best support LGB+ students and families.
• Access to resources related to supporting LGB+ students in your school.
• Intensive training and technical assistance related to establishment, growth, and sustainability of supportive student clubs.

If you have any questions, please contact Jessi Shaffer from the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services at ShafferJ3@michigan.gov or 517-449-2906.

NCSS Statement Contextualizing LGBT+ History within the Social Studies Curriculum

People whom we label and understand today as LGBT+ have always existed, and LGBT+ history in the United States extends to the earliest days of our country’s founding. Ample primary source materials from the Library of Congress, National Archives, Smithsonian Museum of American History, National Park Service, and libraries, archives, and historical societies from across the nation testify to this long and rich history. (Read full statement here)

NCSS Statement in Support of Trans Youth, Trans Educators, and Our LGBTQ+ Community

Educators should not be silent on this issue, nor should they fear building inclusive classrooms that serve all of their students. Trans students and trans educators, as well as all students, educators, and families who identify as LGBTQ+, should be supported and celebrated for who they are and should be able to live their lives without fear. States that have passed or are considering legislation that would deny basic human rights to the LGBTQ+ community do not, in our view, represent the democracy we wish to live and teach in. We stand with our students, their families, and our fellow educators who have the right to live authentically. (Read full statement here)

The language used to talk about LGBTQIA+ people is constantly evolving. New terms appear. Terms that were forgotten or unused, even terms that at some point were deemed derogatory, have been reclaimed and have entered into common parlance today. In a move towards inclusivity, the older, shorter, acronym - LGBT - has been expanded.

What follows is an explanation of that acronym and the meaning of the terms it refers to. It’s worth noting that these definitions are not set in stone. Definitions of terms, like language itself, are constantly evolving. Moreover, they mean different things to different people. After all, we are talking about identity, sexuality, and relationships, so there are as many definitions as there are people. -OutRight International, a global LGBTQIA+ human rights group

Human Rights Campaign has a glossary of terms that is useful as a reference.

“An LGBTQ+ Inclusive Social Studies: Curricular and Instructional Considerations” from Social Education (National Council for the Social Studies)

“Incorporating LGBTQIA+ Content in History Lessons” from EduTopia

An inclusive history curriculum benefits all students by providing mirrors to their own lives and windows into others’ lived experiences.

“Incorporating LGBTQ History in Your Classroom” from Learning For Justice

Historian Daniel Hurewitz offers strategies for integrating LGBTQ History into your curriculum. He shares lesson examples from U.S. history and insights from educators already teaching queer history in their classrooms.

"LGBTQIA+ Resources from Facing History" from Facing History & Ourselves

This resource page includes a webinar that addresses the missing voices of the LGBTQ community in our classrooms and curriculum and an interview with Eric Marcus about teaching learning LGBTQIA+ history and the impact that has on students with those identities. It also includes a webinar about Bayard Rustin, as well as an essay about Rustin and his work. Finally, it offers reading lists.

National Coming Out Day was founded in 1988 by Richard Eichberg, a psychologist and Jean O'Leary, a gay rights activist, to raise awareness of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and its civil rights movement. They chose October 11th to mark the anniversary of the second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, which took place 1987.

The first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979 was organized and attended by up to 100,000 gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, and straight allies marching for equal civil rights. Planning for the event had started since 1973, and was momentarily put off after Harvey Milk's assassination in 1978. It was decided that the march would take place in 1979 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. National Coming Out Day is observed throughout the U.S. and other countries around the world.

-Compiled from the American Psychological Association & the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

• When A Student Comes Out Today or Any Day from GLSEN
• What Coming Out as an LGBT Ally Taught Me by Diana Popp, Michigan Project for Informed Public Policy
• Safe Space Kit: A Guide to Supporting Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Students in Your School from GLSEN

Elementary School Lesson Plans: History Frameworks from LGBTQhistory.org

Children's Literature

15 Inspiring Books on LGBTQ Books for Kids of All Ages from We Are Teachers

Read alouds of some of these books:

• Rainbow: A First Book of Pride

• This Day in June

• Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution

• Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag

• Sewing the Rainbow: The Story of Gilbert Baker and the Rainbow Flag

Click the image to access the "Milestones in the American LGBT Civil Rights Movement" timeline.

Here is a short lesson designed to help students grapple with recent efforts to restrict history education and public history: A look at what's behind the efforts to reshape how American history is taught (PBS News Hour Classroom July, 2025)

LGBTQ History and Why It Matters from Facing History & Ourselves

In this lesson, students learn about two millennia of LGBTQ history and reflect on how that history is represented in their textbooks and curricula.

Middle School Lesson Plans: History Frameworks”from LGBTQhistory.org

10 Resources for Teaching LGBTQIA+ History from Facing History & Ourselves

Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement from American Experience

LGBTQ History Collection from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

LGBTQ Heritage from the National Park Service

Milestones in the American LGBT Civil Rights Movement from Social Education (National Council for the Social Studies)

LGBTQ Activism and Contributions Primary Source Set and Teacher’s Guide from the Library of Congress

LGBTQ+ History Lesson Plans from the One Institute

How the Stonewall Riots Sparked a Movement video from History.com

Note: The video does mention “sodomy” in the context of the laws that were in place at the time.

The Lavender Scare: A Lesson Plan… from the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training

“High School Lesson Plans: History Frameworks” from LGBTQhistory.org

Click the image above to learn more about A Queer History of the United States for Young People. Check out the teacher's guide here.

Across the country, communities are facing unprecedented challenges to books in schools and libraries---most of these censorship attempts target Black or LGBTQIA+ authors and content. These censorship attempts raise important questions about education and democracy, and deserve to be interrogated in classrooms in meaningful ways.

The New York Times has suggestions for learning activities to help students think through responses to censorship in Banned Books, Censored Topics: Teaching About the Battle Over What Students Should Learn

Banned Books Week has resources to support advocacy and learning about censorship in the classroom, too.

Here is How Professional Organizations in MI Are Responding:

Freedom to Read in Michigan Joint Statement from MAME, MCTE, MRA

MCTE Freedom to Read Support

Contact us with questions, for support, and with additional suggested resources to add:

Stacie.Woodward@oakland.k12.mi.us

Molly.Gale@oakland.k12.mi.us