The necessity of teaching LGBTQ history has never been more apparent than in the current political climate. Over the past year, hundreds of anti-LGBTQ laws have been proposed across the country. Several have specifically attempted to prohibit teaching about these topics. California educators remain committed to an inclusive curriculum and continue to lead the charge modeling best practices in teaching LGBTQ history.

But, the path has not always been clear. When California educators started to implement this flagship law, SB48, otherwise known as the FAIR Act, which called for inclusion of LGBTQ Americans in U.S. history courses at the K-12 level, so many questions arose. Most of the discussion has centered around how to make our curriculum more inclusive while efficiently managing our limited instructional time.

One of the key issues has been about whether to create stand-alone or integrated lessons. Stand-alone lessons are significant because they allow students to do a deep dive into a specific topic. This can be useful when addressing big issues in the LGBTQ past. Here are a few examples of lessons that do just that:

This is the second open educational resource inspired by the Daisy Asquith's film Queerama (2017).  Queerama marks the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offenses Act, which partially decriminalized private homosexual acts in England and Wales. The documentary was created from footage from the BFI National Archive and captures the relationships, desires, fears and expressions of gay men and women. You can follow the three learning blocks in order or pick and choose. This OER produced under a CC-BY license. This module is designed to help us think about what happens when we bring different stories together in to collections or archives.

This is the third open educational resource inspired by the Daisy Asquith's film Queerama (2017).  Queerama marks the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offenses Act, which partially decriminalized private homosexual acts in England and Wales. The documentary was created from footage from the BFI National Archive and captures the relationships, desires, fears and expressions of gay men and women. You can follow the three learning blocks in order or pick and choose. This OER produced under a CC-BY license.

This is the first of three open educational resources inspired by the Daisy Asquith's film Queerama (2017).  Queerama marks the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offenses Act, which partially decriminalized private homosexual acts in England and Wales. The documentary was created from footage from the BFI National Archive and captures the relationships, desires, fears and expressions of gay men and women. You can follow the three learning blocks in order or pick and choose.This resource uses resources from the JISC funded project 'Observing the Eighties' and is OER produced under a CC-BY license.