CLOSURE OF THE FIRST EXCHANGE MEETING

    One of the last events before the farewell was a small tour around the school through historical LGTB personalities: writers, politicians, mathematicians hang on the walls and a brief biography was explained. This activity contributed in a modest way to fill the void in the academic curriculum concerning LGTB personalities. We are pefectly aware that there is still a lot to do, because LGTB students normally lack of references they can identify with, as if the only job for LGTB people were related to art, so we proposed this activity that could be also watched by any other member o person that visited our school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Finally, before saying goob-bye we raised the LGTB flag in our school. This flag repressents what we are workin on: Tolerance, respect, diversity. It's also our way to say to the students, teachers or any other member of our community that we are all very welcome. That we don't care who is cis- heterosexual, trans or whatever. Our business is only to educate future citizens to teach self-esteem and respect for others.

PLAYING WHILE LEARNING

     One of the remakable moments of this exchange occured when the students showed the games they had ellaborated and whose common topic was LGTB. Students created different games such as memory games, goose games or even a kind of trivial. The aim of this activity is to spread our knowledge while playing. For example, a memory game cards was made with the different flags and colors that represent the LGTB community.
     We think this kind of game are necessary at school for different reasons: First they contribute to fight against the ignorance, secondly they make visible the contribution of the LGTB community to our society and culture and finally they help to normalize any kind of gender identity or sexual election. Becuase schools normally suffer a kind of contradiction: On the one hand, we say that being lesbian, for example, is absolutely natural and nothing to be ashame of; but on the other hand students only see heterosexual model. Nor their books, neither their games reproduce any other kind of models, even not the language the teacher use, so our children have to grow up without references, feeling thenselves a kind of exception that is silently tolerated.

On the contrary, we do believe that it is more healthy to grow up with model, with references, feeling that their options are included and respected by all the community. Moreover, heterosexual students will grow up being respectful as their schools have shown them with respect any kind of option.

Here there are some examples, many of the games were physically produced, so we can share them with other nearby schools, our games were also digitally uploaded with common licence, so anyone who whish can use them (https://lgtbatschool.blogspot.com/2020/01/gamification.html)

A quiz game:

 

Students are divided into international groups and they are asked different questions about LGTB rights all over the world,such as where same gender marriage is allowed...Then they have to show in the map their option. Those who have more right answers are the winners. 

Here they are our students explaining their games: 

And here they are while playing:

Day Trip to Córdoba

     We wanted to take adventage of this exchange to show our partners a little bit more about our culture. In this sense we chose Córdoba because it represents an example of tolerance, as different cultures (Christian, Jewish and Islamic) lived there peacefully and this mixture contributed to its cultural development.
     Of course, it is a crime to visit this city without getting into la Mezquita. So this was our first stop.

 

But later on we had an appointment with "Personas"  where we joined a workshop on LGTB rights. There, while playing, we learnt about the legal framework all over the world students were able to do any kind of questions or to give and exchange their opinion in a safe enviroment.

FIRST EXCHANGE OF STUDENTS IN MÁLAGA

     HERE WE ARE! OUR FIRST EXCHANGE OF STUDENTS TOOK PLACE IN MÁLAGA.
     After being working on LGTB legal framework, we met in Málaga to share experiences and learn more about the way to get more respectful schools and societies.
This was our plan










However, pictures speak louder than words, and here is a brief summary of the week in this beautiful video done by the English teacher Ana Concejero

    As we can read on the program, we started talking about the current situation concerning LGTB rights or phobia in our schools. The results of the different countries were rather similar, except for Romania, as we were told that being LGTB was a kind of taboo. In this sense, we want to thank this country for taking part in this project as they set an examle for other schools.

    We would also like to thank the lawyer Charo Alises who is always willing to help. She had visited us before and on this occasion she was was accompanied by a member of the Erasmus Student Network who translated her lecture about  hate crimes

    Then we continuedwith a LGTB Tour through the city.  Erasmus Students Network and Apoyo Positivo were in charge of it. They introduced the city to our partners, its past and its present, talking about LGTB personalities from Málaga or places. So it contributed to make more visible LGTB  community and how they have contributed to create more spaces of freedom in the town.

Jorge Suáres Muñoz from the Erasmus Student Network

Apoyo Positivo

 

   
     We would ike to mention an interesting anecdote that speaks about how much stereotypes are spread, even if we want to fight against them: 
 After the tour we were handing out among the people we met some badges with the logo of the project to let them know what we were working on. We saw, then, a young man wearing dreadlocks, so we adress to him, but he refused to takeone of our badges, because he said "he disagrees with homosexuality". On the opposite, a middle aged woman came to meet us and congratulated us for the project, that she considered quite necessary, specially because her daughter was trans. This situation made us think that, although one of the aims of this project is to fight against stereotypes, we ourselves aren't safe from them, as we had just thought that a young boy was going to be more open minded just beacuse of this age and of the dreadlocks.

End of the Tour

     

    Other important moment of this exchange was the presentations about LGTB rights, historical personalities and the results of the diagnosis in each school. It was quite interesting as we could compare the situations of the different countries and enrich our knowledge. Students had been workin on this topic for a couple of months and they did it quite well.

Thanks to our students' research and the presentations they ellaborated, we could also learn more about LGTB rights and personalities in different countries:

VISITING PASAJE BEGOÑA WITH APOYO POSITIVO

After the first morning working we joined Apoyo Positivo in Torremolinos. This association was born in1993 to defend the rights of the people afected by the HIV virus and to help them being integrated into the society.
Since then, they have evolved as an GNO focused on three main areas: health, education and civil rights. Their commitment and willingness to help is amazing. Not only they helped our schools to elaborate our Must and Never Code for good practices, they also showed us their work in Torremolinos and guided us through Pasaje Begoña and La Nogalera, the most popular lgtbiq areas.

 LA NOGALERA.
 La Nogalera is a serie of 6 buildings, gardens, relaxing areas and they are interconnected by corridors. It was an important architectonic project during the sixties. Back then, the area underneath these buildings were comercial locals, but now is the main party area in Torremolinos and its where most of the lgtbq clubs are placed.
 In 2014 Torremolinos did celebrate its first Pride parade. A few hundred people and a couple coach participated in this first Torremolinos Pride and it’s has been growing exponentially in the following years. For example, in 2019, more than 50,000 people attended this event. A dozen floats pareded through the streets and associations such as Apoyo Positivo, toured the streets claiming Diversity, Equality and Respect in a party full of rainbows and glitter.

     We can't forget that 2019 is a very significant year due to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first protest movement of the LGTBIQ + collective that took place at Stonewall In in New York on June 28th, 1969 and that gave rise to the first Pride that took place, a year later, as a reminder of that rebellion.  The motto chosen for this pride was "50 years being visible".

 Pasaje Begoña
     Another important point for lgtbiq community was Pasaje Begoña.
     In the 60s, during the Franco dictatorship, repression was happening on a daily basis, and LGTBIQ+ people were persecuted by law as in almost all countries.

     But Torremolinos, a small fishing village at that time, began to arise in international tourism, not only for the hotels in Costa del Sol and its fantastic weather, but for a place that began to gain international recognition as a point of tolerance, respect and sexual freedom in southern Spain.
The Begoña Passage was the epicenter of this phenomenon; In its annexed areas, more than 50 music and dance venues were installed where everyone was welcome regardless of their sexual condition, although their majority public belonged to the LGTBIQ + community.

     From 1962 to 1971 The Passage Begoña lived its golden decade.
Bars such as The Blue Note, Gogó bar, La sirena, La Boquilla, Tony`s Bar, (First gay bar in the country.) Catapulted Torremolinos as an international gay destination par excellence.


     Foreigners, celebrities, intellectuals, bohemians and artists were attracted by the good weather, the sea and  respect for the diversity that was Torremolinos. In this streets public figures, like Grace Jones, John Lennon and the Beatles Manager, were usually seen having fun and socializing.
In the late 60s and early 70s, the Franco regime hardened its policy against homosexuality and periodic raids were carried out against the LTBIQ + collective throughout the country.

     On June 24, 1971, a large police raid ended with more than 300 people identified and 114 people arrested for the only crime of “violating public morals and good habits” under the Danger and Social Rehabilitation Law. Some of the people arrested that night were jailed and foreigners were deported.  

     Many of the clubs were closed forever. Even the name of the alley was changed so there was no trace of what was the Begoña Passage. After 40 years closed, five new stores have opened in the Begoña Passage in tribute to those clubs with the intention of energizing the site with exhibitions, concerts and cultural activities.

The Begoña Passage has been declared as a place of historical memory and cradle of LGTBIQ+ rights by the Congress of Deputies in Spain; In addition, in 2019, on the occasion of the World Pride week in New York and the 50th anniversary of the StoneWall riots, an event was held at the Cervantes Institute in New York where the Stonewall Inn bar bonded The Begoña passage, both epicenters of respect and tolerance and cradle of LGTBIQ+ rights in their respective countries, with the aim that these historical moments do not fall into oblivion.

Since that time it has rained a lot and Torremolinos has been steadily recovering its title of diverse and respectful place where everyone is welcome regardless of their origin or sexual identity. Torremolinos is once again a place of tourist interest for the LGTBIQ + community and has become one of the international vacation reference destinations within the community.


We are aware of the need to demand and fight for the LGTBIQ+ community  rights, not only on the streets but in the school too, so our students can feel safe and confortable being whoever thay want to. Besides, if they grow been respected and learning to respect each other we will surely have respectful adults in the future, which is the basis for a democratic society

Short-Term Training Meeting

We are starting to work on LGTB at school!!!!

Teachers from Belgium, Germany, Romania and Spain have met in Málaga (IES La Rosaleda) for a brief training course.

Before working with our students we wanted to learn how to get the best of eTwinning. Belgium has led this course. But the most important part of this training was meeting social agents that have been working on LGTB rights for a long time and know first hand what schools should do or should avoid doing.

We met Apoyo Positivo to Know about their experience working on LGTB rights, Chrysallis Andalucia,which is a trans- minor’s families association, to know their point of view about schools, Ersamus Students Network that shared their opinion as students and IES Politécnico Jesús Marín that has been working on Diversity at school since 2011 .

They all have been extremely generous, coming to school for free just to teach us how implement good practices at school

After all these meetings one idea is clear: If we want to make our students feeling confortable at school, if we want to include all of them, normalizing and making visible is absolutley necessary. We have to show different options so everybody can feel included. And this is our aim for this project. School are places not only for cisheterosexual people but for all of us.

THANK YOU!!!!