Pride is a celebration of people coming together in love and friendship, to show how far LGBTQ+ rights have come, and how in some places there's still work to be done.
Pride is celebrated in the month of June, as that was the month when the Stonewall riots took place. The Stonewall riots were important protests that took place in 1969 in the US, that changed gay rights for a lot of people in America and around the world.
Pride month is about acceptance, equality, celebrating the work of LGBTQ+ people, education in LGBTQ+ history and raising awareness of issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community. It also calls for people to remember how damaging homophobia was and still can be.
Pride is all about being proud of who you are no matter who you love.
We caught up with some of our specialist schools and homes who have been holding fantastic celebrations to mark the occasion…
High Peak School, Cheshire
High Peak School held a Pride week event last week, celebrating equality, diversity and inclusion. Classes were provided with individual tasks to complete such as researching the history of the famous Stonewall Riots in New York in 1969. The classrooms have been decorated with bunting, flags and pictures of their favourite people from the LGBTQ+ community.
They have discussed sexuality and equal rights, which led to some great debates in form time!
The children also researched the most recent version of the LGBTIQA+ flag which was adopted in 2021 and aims to be as inclusive as possible.
To finish the week, everyone came to school on wearing an item of clothing containing a colour from the pride flag. The whole school then went on a pride march across the school grounds, waving their flags and celebrating diversity as a school community.
It was great to have the school together celebrating a true understanding of acceptance and tolerance.
Fernways School, Windlesham
Fernways School held a special assembly about Pride month, which has inspired the children to say they would like to make pride flags and bake colourful cakes this week. We look forward to checking in with the school again to find out how they get on.
Mill School Bury
PSHE lessons have focused on Pride this month to promote awareness and celebrate diversity.
In the Hub (KS2) they looked at specific terminology and learnt when/how Pride started. They then painted the classroom windows in all the colours from the flag in support of Pride Month.
In KS3, they also focussed on understanding the terminology and looked at how Pride is celebrated around the world. Some children wrote acrostic poems which have been displayed in the school corridors.
Arc Oakbridge School
A message from the Deputy Head Teacher, Jilly McCarrick…
“For Pride Month 2022, the children at Arc Oakbridge School were given the task to ‘create a rainbow’.
Beech class decorated their classroom, Cedar made a display for their wall and Cherry class created wonderful positive messages using coloured sticks. Cherry class also baked a rainbow cake and went around school sharing it out!”
Pride is something that everyone should celebrate and learn about, it will encourage open mindedness and acceptance in future generations. Great work everyone, sounds like a wonderful celebration!