A new lease
I feel energised. The responses I'm getting from my representative materials is wonderful. Honestly, the ELT community is fantastic. To think that at the start of the year I'd only published one self-made resource (in collaboration with Lottie Galpin and Liz Marqueiro) and now to have a small collection is unbelievable to me.
I can feel my brand coming together and this is helping my confidence grow enormously. It would be incredible if I could end up being self-sufficient with my resources - that's to come in the future, I'm sure. And hey, if the copyright holders would like an updated version of Taboos and Issues, I'm all ears - give me a price and I'll let you know.
I'm loving getting creative with resources and the people it's getting me in touch with - making resources is also about teaching the resource maker, encouraging them to go further than they already know in order to represent people who are marginalised. It's not enough that publishers are taking small steps - where are the big steps? Where are the representative books? Until then, I'll keep doing what I'm doing, in between freelancing jobs and breaks in large projects. And I've got ideas. So many ideas of things I want to do with resources and people I want to represent.
In order to help me achieve this, I've signed up for the LGBT Foundation Academy Champion Package and I've just paid for the first 4 modules. I'm very excited about this because I believe it's going to help me represent my own community much better, as well as becoming an ambassador for the programme. The full ten modules include:
- LGBT 101: Terminology, legislation and inequalities
- Trans and Non-binary inclusion
- Asking LGBT inclusive questions and having challenging conversations
- Being an LGBT ally at home, at work and in the community
- LGBT health inequalities, access and signposting
- Multiply Marginalised: Intersectionality in practice
- Understanding discrimination, hate crime and minority stress
- Making LGBT people count: Monitoring Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Trans Status
- LGBT inclusive workplaces
- LGBT leadership
Ideally, I'd love to graduate with a Gold accreditation and I'll do my best. However, this doesn't mean that I'm forgetting my commitment to other marginalised groups either. I'm still just as committed as before and will continue to represent in my materials. I still intend to do the ELT Well training as I believe it will be invaluable.
Really, this post is saying thank you for all the support, but also to watch this space for more ...