YEAH is now represented at Zoe Barnum High School, Eureka High School, and most recently Arcata High School. The two Eureka clubs have also presented trainings at Humboldt State’s Youth Summit and an all-day training at Humboldt County Office of Education.

According to Zoe Barnum teacher and YEAH! advisor Dave Orphal, “Schools are still unsafe places for many of America’s school children. One group of young people who are the targets of current hatred and attack are sexual minority youth.”

According to the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the average high school student hears 25 anti-gay epithets every day. When teachers hear these comments, 97% of the time they fail to respond. Eighty-percent of gay youth report being verbally abused. Forty-percent of gay youth are threatened with physical attack and twenty-seven

percent of sexual minority girls and twenty-two percent of sexual minority boys report being attacked by other students (GLSEN, 1999).

At Zoe Barnum High School, after an attack on a student in 1997, a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and supportive-straight students formed YEAH!. YEAH! decided to create and deliver a workshop for teachers that would provide them the tools they needed to interrupt homophobic behavior and language at school. Using recourses from GLSEN as well as

their own testimonials, and adding a skit they created, the students designed Homophobia 101.

Since 1997, approximately five students have participated in YEAH! each year. In 1997, YEAH! provided workshops for local AmeriCorps members in addition to the training at Zoe Barnum. In 1998 YEAH! provided workshops again for Zoe and AmeriCorps and included a workshop for a local teen-theater group. In 1999, YEAH! provided workshops for Eureka’s

Winship Junior High, traveled to Los Angeles to present at the California Association of Peer Programs Conference, provided a student version of Homophobia 101 at the McKinleyville Youth Summit, and designed an advanced workshop, Homophobia 201, for the CCEA District 1 conference. They also traveled to San Francisco to facilitate a workshop for other Gay-Straight Alliance Clubs about how to create a Homophobi101 workshop.

YEAH! created their workshops and materials without funding; photocopying costs were covered by the school. In 1999, YEAH! wrote and received a grant from the California Dept. of Education for $5,000. With this money, YEAH! members traveled to Los Angeles and San Francisco and in October of 2000, two members of YEAH! went to Chicago for the National GLSEN conference, “Teaching Respect for All 2000.”

For more information contact Zoe Barnum teacher Dave Orphal at 441-2467.