On April 10th at 8 PM ET, come join us for a special event: Teacher Town Hall: Sparking Change for LGBTQ+ Youth. Learn valuable insights and strategies from seasoned educators who've used Pride & Less Prejudice's books and resources to create inclusive classrooms. Plus, leaders from Garden State Equality will share tips on fostering acceptance for LGBTQ+ students and handling pushback in your communities.

Kick off 2024 with new resources to create more inclusive classroom communities! Here at Pride and Less Prejudice, we do more than give away free books to teachers – we also provide the tools you need to facilitate meaningful discussions!

Learn about the #ClassroomBookADay initiative and ways you can incorporate these titles into your read alouds along with the policies & language that can help support educators in using diverse books in their classrooms.

Ticket Price: $20 (Individual), $50 (Supporter), or $100 (Activist)

In the last decade, the representation of LGBTQ+ people in the media has skyrocketed, with countless movies, TV shows, books, and podcasts devoted to queer stories. But historically, queer people have not always been the ones writing those stories or acting in those roles.

Join moderator Sa’iyda Shabazz, she/her (Autostraddle) as she discusses the importance of queer people telling their own stories with:

Actor, singer, and author Chris Colfer, he/him (Glee, The Land of Stories);

Comedian, actress, and author Cameron Esposito, she/they (Take My Wife, Save Yourself, Queery);

Actress, singer, and author Alexandra Billings, she/her (Transparent, This Time For Me)

All ticket proceeds will be used to support Pride and Less Prejudice, a non-profit organization that sends LGBTQ-inclusive books to PreK - 3rd grade classrooms in the United States and Canada.

Join Rebecca Kling(she/her) and Vanessa Ford(she/her), MAT to dig into their framework for creating inclusive schools. Based on their upcoming book “The Advocate Educator’s Handbook: Creating Inclusive Schools with Transgender and Non-Binary Students Thrive” (Jossey-Bass, 2024), Rebecca and Vanessa will share their framework for inclusive schools (Educate, Affirm, Include and Interrupt). Participants will develop knowledge and skills to apply to their school settings the next day as well as resources to support further professional development.

Join moderator and librarian Kit Ballenger (she/her) and early elementary educators Elisa Gall (they) and Elana Fruchtman (she/her) as they explore Pride and Less Prejudice's book bundles and offer suggestions for extension activities and lesson plan tie-ins for a variety of picture books.

Join Moderator Rafael Walker (he/him) and panelists Lindz Amer (they/them), Michael Leali (he/him), Joanna McClintick (she/her), and Sarah Prager (she/her).

In this interactive presentation, Dani Glass (they/them) spoke about gender development and exploration in young children, and the importance of trusting children to tell their own story when it comes to gender and all forms of identity.

Join moderate Katy Butler and panelists Daniel Alonso, Heather Eig, and Kieran Slattery in discussing how to create and sustain GSAs in elementary schools.

This panel discussed how to be out in the classroom. Moderator Tricia Friedman was joined by panelists Kyoung Mi Choi, Nate Lyon, and Victoria Thompson.

In this 1.5 hour workshop with Ty Kitchen (they/them), participants will get hands-on practice with gender affirming language, with a focus on pronouns. We will practice how to use gender-affirming language for trans children, and also how to explain the importance of using this language to colleagues and peers. Being a book-loving organization, we'll also take a look at a book that introduces this topic to children. This workshop offers a more focused follow up to Ty's workshop earlier this past Spring, to dig deeper into the HOW and get practice using affirming language.

In this workshop, titled after their spoken word poem “violet delights,” Quinn Casey (they/them; Mr.) led a three-part journey into the beauty and chaos of gender, as we know it today. Starting with their own partly poetic and partly educational story on the privilege of being trans, Quinn encouraged workshop attendees to flip the script on the ways that trans stories are told and represented. Attendees left with an understanding of why trans and nonbinary people’s creative self-expression is not only worthy and loveable but also invigorating, powerful, and celebratory.

This workshop was infused with hands-on activities that offer practical strategies for addressing transphobia in your school community based on common scenarios. Attendees were also introduced to flexible lesson plans that can be adapted for various age groups and that aim to reveal how to kindle all the things that make gender fun.

Free. Suggested Donation of $10

In this 1.5 hr workshop with Taryn Kitchen (they/them), educators and other youth-serving professionals were given concrete strategies for supporting gender expansive youth and talking about gender with children ages 3-10. We gave an overview of gender neutral language, practiced using they/them pronouns, and discussed activities and strategies for normalizing gender diversity in your classroom and youth spaces.

Ticket Price: $20 (Individual), $50 (Supporter), or $100 (Activist)

Moderator Eboné Bell (Tagg Magazine) will be discussing LGBTQ media representation with Nicole Maines (Supergirl; Bit), Darryl Stephens (Noah’s Arc; B Positive), Theo Germaine (The Politician; Work in Progress), and Andrew Keenan-Bolger (Newsies; Submissions Only). Join us in raising money to provide free, age-appropriate, LGBTQ-inclusive books to PreK - 3rd grade classrooms in the United States and Canada.

Author Rob Sanders will be interviewed by Pride and Less Prejudice Founder Lisa Forman. Rob Sanders is a teacher who writes and a writer who teaches. He is known for his funny and fierce fiction and nonfiction picture books and is recognized as one of the pioneers in the arena of LGBTQ+ literary nonfiction picture books. Rob's 2020 releases included THE FIGHTING INFANTRYMAN: THE STORY OF ALBERT D. J. CASHIER, TRANSGENDER CIVIL WAR SOLIDER (Little Bee Books), MAYOR PETE: THE STORY OF PETE BUTTIGIEG (Henry Holt & Co.) and BLING BLAINE: THROW GLITTER, NOT SHADE (Sterling).

Mia Ibrahim will be facilitating activities and conversations around normativity and how it affects our marginalized students. We will uncover what makes us marginalized, the intersections of identities, and how we are all impacted by what has been deemed "normal." Together, we will unpack how to combat these prejudices in and out of the classroom. This workshop will be a 60 minute presentation, followed by a 30 minute Q&A session.