"Just Like the Other Boys:" Meeting the Needs of Gender Diverse Students (original) (raw)
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School Policy and Transgender Identity Expression: A Study of School Administrators’ Experiences
International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership, 2017
School administrators are charged with establishing and enforcing school policies that provide safe and equitable learning environments for all students while adhering to state and federal laws as well as adopted school board policies. This qualitative research focuses on school administrators’ experiences with transgender students’ identity expression as it relates to school policies and student body experiences of transgender inclusion. Implications for district and building policy are also discussed.
AERA 2018. Payne & Smith. Refusing Relevance: School Administrator Resistance to Offering LGBTQ PD
The purpose of this paper is to provide insight to the multiple ways that school leaders resist, avoid, or block LGBTQ professional development for their staff and thus resist the conversations around school responsibility to these students and families. School leaders who resisted LGBTQ professional development claimed that such training was not relevant to their school contexts, that the training would attract community backlash, that the school board would not approve the training, or that school personnel would not be interested in learning about LGBTQ students. Implications: Increasing LGBTQ content in educational leadership training is a necessary step for convincing school leadership that LGBTQ-competence is necessary for creating a positive school climate for all. Significant legal and cultural changes are putting pressure on administrators to rethink the work of creating inclusive schools. Same-sex marriage is now legal in all states, and many states' anti-bullying laws specifically protect LGBTQ students. However, conversations about sexual and gender identity remain highly contested terrain in K-12 settings (DePalma & Atkinson, 2006). Reasons for this are multiple, but often it is " because of [educators'] own fear and concerns and because of a prevailing belief that sexual orientation…is not an appropriate focus for education " (p.333). Expanding inclusion efforts to gender and sexual minority students and families necessitates " integrating or embedding diversity into the ordinary work or daily routines of an organization " (Ahmed, 2012, p.23). The work of recognizing and including sexual and gender diversity in K-12 schools requires identifying the normative assumptions about student, family, and teacher identity embedded in all facets of schools—from bathrooms to curriculum to student records to extracurricular activities to dress codes. It requires pursuing opportunities to expand the institutional imagination about who is occupying school spaces and who has always occupied them. Objectives or purposes Educational practices that account for diversity and pursue social justice are critical for improving school life for LGBTQ youth. Broadly, social justice education aims to create conditions of equitable recognition and access to resources and opportunities (North, 2008). Achieving such conditions requires identifying how institutions privilege dominant identities and
Journal of School Leadership
A theory and practice of social justice is fraudulent when it does not fully address lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgender (LGBT) individuals and their intersections with other identities. Faculty who claim to be concerned with social justice cannot focus on one or perhaps two areas of difference while ignoring or giving short shrift to the others. After all, public school leaders oriented toward social justice cannot pick and choose among areas of difference with their students, staff, and community members. These leaders must lead for social justice across areas of difference; faculty should expect no less of themselves. Many LGBT students or students perceived to be LGBT face daily harassment at schools, and LGBT staff, families, and school leaders themselves generally find schools unwelcoming. This article offers practical teaching strategies and teaching resources that can raise consciousness, increase knowledge, arid develop leadership skills to prepare leaders to confidently meet the needs of LGBT individuals in their schools.
Supporting Transgender Inclusion and Gender Diversity in Schools: A Critical Policy Analysis
Frontiers in Sociology, 2020
In this article, we conduct a policy analysis of transgender affirmative policies in Ontario and examine their implications for addressing gender justice and gender democratization in the school system. By adopting a case study approach, we provide a critical analysis of these policies and of how stakeholders with familiarity and knowledge of trans-affirmative policies from two school boards in Ontario are making sense of their impact with respect to addressing trans inclusion in schools. As such, our study offers insight into two trans-affirmative policies and their implications for both supporting transgender, gender non-conforming and non-binary students and envisioning gender-expansive education in the school system. We draw on interviews with key informants-two teachers and a school board official-as a basis for reflecting on the need to move beyond a discourse of accommodation in trans inclusive policies to one that explicitly articulates a pedagogical commitment to gender justice and gender democratization in schools.
Smith & Payne. AERA 2018" No poster child " : Transitioning Genders in a Rural Elementary School
This research contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the experiences of transgender and gender-fluid students in elementary school spaces by exploring a single rural school district's process for accommodating and including a transgender child. In this paper, we explore multiple educators' stories of working with a transgender student and their perspectives on facilitating a " successful " gender transition within an public elementary school context. This case study lends insight to how educators navigate tensions between transgender stigma and their professional obligations to secure safety and provide optimal learning environments for all students. School leaders stressed an expectation for " kindness " from students and teachers, and resisted addressing the role of binary gender in school life and curricula.
Sex and gender in transition in US schools: ways forward
Sex Education, 2017
This paper examines the current state of law and policy in relation to US transgender youth and their lived experiences. We approach this from different disciplinary backgrounds, identities, and ways of writing terms related to gender identity. We begin with an examination of the current legal climate in the USA and explore how students have pushed back against gender and sexuality norms even in a restrictive climate. Some transformations are already happening in public schools and some backlash, too, is being felt. Laws and policies in some locations are encouraging students, teachers, school leaders and community members to collaborate in making schools more educationally concerned about trans student success and teaching the school community about gender diversity. In shifting among scales and experiences of youth thinking and working on gender, we aim to emphasise youth agency and outline young people's frustrations at the obstacles related to trans, gender dissidence and sexuality. In conclusion, we point to changes that can be made in schools to help professionals understand how policy and curricular innovation can bolster the openings that trans, gender creative and gender non-binary youth are already creating, whether or not those opportunities are officially recognised.
ESTABLISHING LGBTQQIA AS A PROTECTED CLASS WITHIN A.P.S1 Transforming Organizational Culture Case Study for Culturally Responsive Leadership: Establishing LGBTQQIA as a protected class within Albuquerque Public Schools district, 2013
Transforming Organizational Culture Case Study for Culturally Responsive Leadership: Establishing LGBTQQIA as a protected class within Albuquerque Public Schools district Sina-Aurelia T. Pleasant Soul University of New Mexico ESTABLISHING LGBTQQIA AS A PROTECTED CLASS WITHIN A.P.S 2 Abstract The need for LGBTQQIA to be established as a protected class is based on the need for: “safe space, inclusive restrooms, locker rooms, and athletics, use of preferred names and pronouns, literature, trained and educated faculty on transgender issues and inclusive policies.” (Rivera. 2013. p.1) Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) has identified the needs of all students, including those of the LGBTQQIA community, as “a safe, respectful, and fear-free environment for all members of the school community including students, staff, parents, community partners, and visitors.” (A.P.S. Student Handbook 2012-13) The handbook states that the superintendent shall implement administrative procedural directive(s) to prevent bullying of all forms and to provide a safe, respectful, and fear-free environment to assist student learning, achieve high academic standards, and establish a positive educational environment. The handbook claims that all members of the school community shall be aware of the A.P.S. Board of Education’s expectation of a safe, respectful and fear-free environment, and that the Board of Education shall model this in its own behavior. There is a vital need for the creation and implementation of comprehensive critical policy, and cultivation of a conscious culture, that ensures the safety, productivity and inclusion of the LGBTQQIA1 students population (identified, non-identified, or self-identified), in A.P.S. The lack of comprehensive critical policy and conscious culture within A.P.S. is inadequate to ensure the safety, productivity and inclusion of the LGBTQQIA community of students attending Kindergarten through 12th grade. Keywords, Key Concepts: LGBTQQIA, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Ally, ArchiteCultural, Prohibition, Preventative, I to We, Mi Casa es Su Casa, Sankofa, Inclusion, Protected, Safe Zone, Celebratory, Visibility, Conscious, Culture
Educator Advocacy for Queer Students in Schools
2019
In this Dialogues we are highlighting educators, community members, and researchers whose work focuses on advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) students in educational institutions. Despite greater visibility, more legal protections, and seemingly greater support for LGBTQ+ individuals, LGBTQ+ students in K-12 schools still face hostile school environments with little to no representation in school curricula. The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s most recent school climate report found that over half the LGBTQ+, or queer, students surveyed reported facing regular bullying and harassment. Additionally, trans and gender nonconforming students, and transgender people in the United States at large, face threats to their rights under the Trump presidency.