Faith Curriculum Library: Common Read: A Community for Learning and Reflection

UU Youth Group Common Read

Part of Authentic Selves

Youth Discussion Guide: Authentic Selves

This guide for youth groups, coming in November 2024, offers a UU Common Read of Authentic Selves in two two-hour gatherings. Youth groups can also do this Common Read as four sessions, each about one hour.

Like the UU Common Read materials for adults, this guide visits themes of identity, authenticity, family, support, celebration, and the ongoing struggle for safety and inclusion for trans and nonbinary people. Youth participants will explore new and/or familiar concepts and learn from the experiences of several authors featured in the book Authentic Selves. The curriculum invites youth to reflect on their own identities and understandings of gender and family.

Note to Facilitators

In planning and facilitating these sessions, take care to avoid assumptions. Some youth may be gender fluid, nonbinary, or transgender. Some may be in a time of self-discovery around gender. Some may have kept their gender identities private and still wish to do so.

Commit yourself to protecting the confidentiality of the youth in the group. Whatever statements a youth may make about their gender identity in the group are not necessarily known to their parents or caregivers. Unless you are in a mandatory reporting situation, what’s said in the room stays in the room. Take care throughout the program that facilitators and participants all understand that.

Implementation

This Common Read is recommended to be offered in sequential youth group meetings to give momentum to the group’s exploration and learning. If you are doing this Common Read in two youth group meetings and have a larger youth group, consider adding an extra 30 minutes to both two-hour sessions to allow more active participation and more generous bio/snack breaks.

If you prefer to lead this Common Read over four sessions—for example, if your youth group meets weekly—you can break each two-hour session roughly in the middle. This will give you four topical sessions that align with thematic components of the book:

  • Part I: Gender, Identity, Authenticity and Affirmation
  • Part II: Gender from a Scientific and Historical Setting
  • Part III: The Hard Stuff, Talking About Resilience and Hope When It’s Hard
  • Part IV: The Changing Faces of Family, Love, and Humanity (Euphoria)

Session 1 provides Part I and Part II with a break midway. Session 2 provides Part III and Part IV.

For a four-meeting program, use the guidance within each Session to make sure you have a Chalice Lighting/Opening and a Chalice Extinguishing/Closing each time you meet. Several times you are invited to (1) use opening and closing words from this curriculum more than once, (2) choose any from the Authentic Selves Common Read discussion guides for adults, or (3) use any reading of your choice.

This curriculum assumes that most youth groups will do this Common Read as part of a year-long cycle of learning, so they will already have established a group covenant that can be used. If you feel your group covenant might need revision or expansion in order to do this program, we encourage you to use covenant-building activities from the adult UU Common Read discussion guides. Take care to give your group the opportunity to affirm together whatever covenant you use or create for this program.

Youth groups are one way our younger Unitarian Universalists learn about our shared values. These discussion guides engage youth faith development by offering multiple access points, including storytelling (a form of spiritual partnership), journaling (personal spiritual practices), creative activities including art and music (soul practices), and multiple methods of mind- and justice-centering practices.

After this program, find out if the group is interested in digging deeper. If they do, contact Rev. Dr. Kimi Floyd Reisch, they/them, General Assembly Events Administrator at the UUA and the developmental editor of this UU Common Read resource kit. They can help you arrange a Zoom learning session for your youth (or entire congregation) with some of the Authentic Selves authors or connected chosen family. The youth group or congregation may be asked for a small honorarium.

Multigenerational Engagement

For adults, this UU Common Read offers two four-session discussion guides. One is for a mixed group and one is for a cohort of trans and nonbinary adults. Also for adults, there is a single-session workshop for families/caregivers who are caring for and loving trans and non-binary children. If you have not already done so, read the Facilitator Invitation and Overview for the entire Authentic Selves UU Common Read resource kit. Encourage your congregation to engage with one or more of these programs for adults concurrently with your youth Common Read. Adult engagement with Authentic Selves at the same time the youth meet opens doors to multi-age discussion and action.

This Common Read opens opportunities to engage the youth as leaders and the adults as learners. With the youth, choose times to invite in adults to share in these sessions and learn from/with the youth. Or, you might invite youth to co-facilitate multi-age discussions with adults from the congregation.

Some of your participants may wish to take a leadership role in a youth-led service or performance to highlight issues affecting transgender, nonbinary, two-spirit, and intersex people. Here are some dates, specific to those under the gender-beautiful umbrella within our human family, that may suggest a plan:

  • March 21, two-spirit and Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ Day
  • March 31, International Trans Day of Visibility.
  • Second Friday of April, The Day of Silence, a day to end the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bias
  • April 9, Sapphic Visibility Day, promoting those women, nonbinary, trans, and gender nonconforming people who share a Sapphic identity
  • May 17, International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia
  • From the Sunday before July 14th through the following Saturday, Non-Binary Awareness Week
  • July 14, Non-Binary People’s Day
  • July 16, Drag Day
  • August, Transgender History Month
  • October 17-24, Genderfluid Visibility Week
  • Third Wednesday in October, Pronouns Day (Youth could distribute pronouns stickers for the congregation’s name badges.)
  • October 26, Intersex Awareness Day
  • November, Trans Awareness Month
  • First Sunday in November, Trans Parent Day
  • November 8, Intersex Day of Remembrance
  • November 13-19, Trans Awareness Week
  • November 20, International Trans Day of Remembrance