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We celebrate Pride Month as one key strategy to ensure that we bring alive the District’s Cultural and Identity Priority, where every learner will feel safe and thrive personally and culturally.

Pride Month is an international celebration of coming together as a community to show support for students, staff, parents, and community members who are part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ (Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and additional sexual orientations and gender identities). In 1969, members of this community fought for their rights when riots and violence erupted and since that time, politicians internationally have declared and supported Pride Month.

In our District Strategic Plan Cultural and Identity Priority, we aim to ensure that every student feels safe and thrives personally. Through consultation with 2000+ students, staff, and community members in 2021-2022, we learned that, sadly, students do face barriers to feeling accepted, included, welcome, and safe in our schools. Therefore, as a District, we chose to commit to equity: removing barriers and creating environments that provide accessible and empowering opportunities for all students and staff to thrive.

To create accessible and empowering learning opportunities for every student, especially those who have experienced barriers such as racism and discrimination, we focus on creating safe and inclusive spaces for students to share their perspectives on barriers that they have faced and their suggested actions to eliminate them.

In our District, our goal in the Cultural and Identity Priority is: Learners will have educational experiences that are free of racism, discrimination, sexism, harassment, and homophobia.

Please join us in this goal and consider the strategies that we have committed to in our District Strategic Plan:

Visibly acknowledge and celebrate diversity in our learning environments (e.g., multicultural events, multi-languages on signs, Pride poster).

To visibly acknowledge and celebrate diversity can mean wearing Pride colors, having a Pride sticker on your personal items, or hanging a Pride flag. Wearing or sharing Pride colors means “standing up for” or “being an ‘ally’” to 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals and communities. This is an important step in showing that everyone is welcome, included, and safe with allies who acknowledge and celebrate diversity of individuals’ identities.

We invite everyone to learn more in June about Pride and how to recognize visible symbols that show support for 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals and communities.

Q. What is Pride Month?

A: This video explains what pride means, the history, acronyms, and what it means to celebrate Pride month. 

This first video is only 45 secs long and features kids speaking about being themselves:

The video features pride week in Kamloops: 

Q: What is the Pride flag?

A: Rainbow flags have existed in many configurations representing many peoples and experiences throughout human history. The current Pride flag’s exact colours and dimensions have changed from the Gilbert Baker flag, which first appeared as a representation of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in 1977. The Rainbow flag is strongly connected to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, it also is a representation of social change cited as being a symbol of hope and peace.

Q: What do the colors mean on the Pride flag?

A: The six colours of the traditional flag represent the following:

• Red = Life
• Orange = Healing
• Yellow = Sunlight
• Green = Nature
• Blue = Harmony
• Violet = Spirit

Q: How can we celebrate Pride by being an ally?

A: There are 8 steps to meaningful allyship. You can read more :

1. Let the stones hit you – and do so even when afraid. Let someone know when they have said something hurtful. Standing in the way of harmful words or actions from others can go a long way to prevent harm.
2. Presume competence by honouring lived experience. Consider people experts on their own experience and respect them as such. Inviting 2SLGBTQ+ organizations, colleagues, or students to speak to their experience ensures their voices are uplifted.
3. Transfer your privilege. Use your privilege to benefit others, for example by advocating for changes to policy or ensuring your 2SLGBTQ+ colleagues are being heard.
4. Own your mistakes and decenter yourself. Acknowledge that even if you feel hurt, defensive, or guilty, this is not about you.
5. Have a growth mindset. Commit to learning even when it is challenging.
6. Walk your talk. Use people’s names and pronouns, show up at events, and ask how you can best be of help.
7. Value compassion over comprehension. We don’t need an intimate understanding of someone’s experience to extend them empathy and kindness.
8. Respect privacy and confidentiality. Someone’s identity is not yours to share – take their lead on how public or private to be with their information.