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Shelley Svidal
Ample resources are available to help educators create safe, caring and empathetic learning environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified and queer (LGBTQ) students, and Joe Demko, former superintendent of St. Albert Protestant Separate School District, would like to see more educators access those resources.
Demko, who retired from the superintendency at the end of September, will deliver a keynote address at the 5th Annual Agape Education and Culture Conference, scheduled for November 25–26 at the University of Alberta. Joni Turville, Alberta Initiative for School Improvement coordinator for St. Albert Protestant Separate School District, will join him in highlighting the steps the district has taken to nurture and support the rights of all student groups.
Throughout his 35-year career with the district, Demko has served as student teacher; teacher; special education teacher; counsellor; principal; assistant, associate and deputy superintendent; and, most recently, superintendent. During his tenure as principal of Lorne Akins Junior High School in the mid-1990s, he started Girl Power, an optional course for Grade 9 girls focusing on women’s issues. The course included a field trip to the Edmonton Women’s Institution organized at students’ request.
Demko now realizes that LGBTQ issues likely arose in students’ discussions with inmates. "At the time, it just didn’t occur to me. I just didn’t have the information, and I just didn’t think of it," he says. "There are opportunities, lots of opportunities, [not only] to try to work with these students in the school system to make their lives easier and to help them to cope with what they’re going through but also to help the regular student population to get a greater understanding of the issues and to develop some empathy toward the situation they’re in. . . . Now that I know, I wouldn’t miss that opportunity, and I hope others don’t either."
According to a study conducted in 1997, gay and bisexual male youth in Alberta are 14 times more likely than heterosexual male youth to attempt suicide. LGBTQ students are also more likely than their heterosexual peers to drop out of school, abuse alcohol or drugs, or withdraw from society. "We’re talking about 10 per cent of our population. In a school district of 6,500 students, that’s 650 kids," Demko says. "Don’t we want to do something?"
He and the district’s senior administrators decided they did want to do something, and so they applied for a grant from the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) and started providing in-service workshops. As the workshops proceeded, some interesting things began to happen. For example, one school decided to put Safe Place stickers bearing the rainbow flag on the windows of the counsellor’s office, and within the first week, four LGBTQ students dropped in to discuss their sexual orientation. "You don’t think that it applies to you until you actually go out and start to do some things and then you realize, ‘Yeah, we’re like anybody else. One-tenth of our population [is LGBTQ], and those guys need help,’" Demko says.
The former superintendent uses an Aboriginal analogy to describe his philosophy. "We’re really the elders in our school district, and . . . we’re there to help and to lead and to share our knowledge and not to just be caught up in other people’s agendas. We need to look for agendas that will help our kids." Even though LGBTQ issues may prove sensitive within some communities and with some groups, the basic question remains for educators. "Do we want kids to feel safe and secure and cared for?" Demko asks. "Yes, we do. No matter what they’re like, we need to help them."
He urges educators to take full advantage of available LGBTQ resources. Those resources include the free Agape conference as well as in-service workshops and grants. "Don’t tell me I have a problem and walk away. That is no help to me as a superintendent, as a school administrator, as a teacher. Tell me that these are facts about students in my class, in my school, in my district, and there appears to be a need for some support, and here are some things that will help me in dealing with those issues. I need the help to deal with the issues, not just the problem. I believe right now that not only are there a lot of resources out there—and many of them have been developed through the ATA—but there are also people who have gone through some of these experiences and started down the line of in-servicing and dialoguing on the topic and the world hasn’t come to an end."
Demko is convinced that if key people in the educational community—teachers, school administrators, central office administrators, trustees and Alberta Education—start dialoguing about LGBTQ issues and working with one another, "even greater things will happen [and] I’m hoping that over the next little while, some of that will happen with our society."
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