How to Keep Our Trans Kids Safe at School
These are frightening times for our trans kids and gender minorities and for their parents and those who love and care about trans individuals. What can administrators, educators, and support staff do to keep our trans kids safe at school?
It’s not enough to keep them as safe as we can, we have to create an environment where gender minority youth feel safe. There are some great resources out there for schools that are working to create safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ students that I would direct you to:
I’m simply adding to the conversation here and hopefully contributing some tools that aren’t redundant. As always, I come back to tools of The Shiftless Wanderer. Here, I focus on compassionate curiosity and love and courage as antidotes to fear. First, a true story.
From a master educator
Deacon, a dear friend of mine, is a longtime master educator who teaches high school advanced placement English courses. Deacon shared a profound interaction he had with one of his students—let’s call them Remy, who had turned in a grammar assignment on pronouns with this sentence, “Someone entered the store and then they walked out with their pockets full of stolen candy.” Remy identifies with they/them pronouns.
Deacon marked the pronouns as incorrect, so Remy requested a meeting with Deacon to challenge the mark. After a respectful dialogue between the educator and the student, Deacon agreed that he needed to do some more research.
“I can tell this is important to you,” he said to Remy.
He found in his research that the American Psychological Association (APA) style does accept the use of the singular ‘they.’
Remy responded to the news saying to Deacon, “For the first time ever a teacher listened, didn’t dismiss me, treated me with respect. I feel like someone finally listened and takes me seriously. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
Compassionate curiosity
Compassionate curiosity comes from Self Energy, an Internal Family Systems concept that describes an expansive state of being, wide perspectives, and the ability to make choices that serve both Self and Other. It is curiosity that comes from a place of emotion regulation and nurtures connection. Compassionate curiosity makes enough room for school communities to have open, healthy, supportive communication around transgender issues and issues for gender minorities and others in the LGBTQ+ communities.
Deacon had already created a culture of validation and compassionate curiosity in his classes, so Remy felt safe enough to challenge Deacon and advocate for their preferred pronoun use. The grand and necessary paradox is that we also need to create healthy and appropriate spaces for those who are against transgendered individuals. I stress the parameters of healthy and appropriate for the safety of trans youth.
I suspect there’s going to be backlash regarding this suggestion. But to foreclose on the other side of the conversation will set up a polarization that leads nowhere good. Hate and ignorance fester in dark places. Compassionate curiosity with an enormous dose of love and courage are needed to dig out the roots of fear that drive the intolerance and violence against those who are perceived as Other. [I would point the reader to Alok Vaid-Menon who exemplifies courageous and compassionate responses to the numerous hate-filled comments directed at them.]
Gabor Maté writes in The Myth of Normal, “Contrary to our present ways of operating, a traditional view of self-interest would be enhancing one’s connection and membership in the community, to everyone’s benefit. [Maté’s emphasis] Authentic self-interest need not be conflated with a suspicious and competitive stance toward others.”
Dialogical spaces
Practicing compassionate curiosity is one of the first ways to create safe spaces for trans kids – open dialogical space, where the word transgender can be used freely, with respect, and always aiming towards welcoming and celebration. Just as every child wants and needs to be delighted in, so too the trans youth. Schools can host conversation cafés, conversation circles, and/or ways of council—frameworks that can firmly hold possible volatile material which then allows for individuals to speak and wander a bit as they find their way through and to shifting paradigms.
Compassionate curiosity opens up a different kind of dialogical space where the aim is not resolution. There is no resolution to be found here. In my opinion, there is an unequivocal, unarguable need for safe spaces for gender minorities. What we’re aiming for is conflict transformation, a term and concept developed by John Paul Lederach. This framework for working with conflict “emphasizes the importance of building right relationships and social structures through a radical respect for human rights and life. . . [We are] seeking constructive change” through conflict transformation, according to Lederach.
Love and courage as antidotes to fear
Compassionate curiosity in the face of the current ferocious and unwarranted backlash against trans and gender minority rights requires a great deal of courage and a revolutionary spirit in educators. I do not envy school board members and school administrators who care about the rights, safety, and welfare of children in today’s political climate. And yet, great courage is needed if we do, indeed, care about our children and our communities.
I applaud Deacon’s willingness to pursue a way for Remy to have a voice in their academics. As the head of the English department at his school, Deacon sets an example for the rest of the staff. This takes courage. I have written elsewhere about the revolutionary spirit that educators need to navigate these certain times that we live in. Fear, while a necessary emotion for our survival, is not the place from which to make decisions. Fear does not foster respectful relationships or create safe spaces for our trans youth—or for anyone, for that matter.
I talked about this kind of courageous love/loving courage to the 2016 graduating class of South Whidbey Academy:
“Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only Light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only Love can do that.’
“This is not some woo-woo New Age-y talk. Recent neuroscientific research has determined that the more we use words like ‘love’ our brain increases its capability for cognitive reasoning and often will set the areas of the brain responsible for motivation and action into high gear.
“Acting out of Love is effective. Acting from Fear keeps the world ugly and mean. Of course, there is much to be afraid of. We can’t get through life without having moments, maybe many moments, of Fear. The advice I give today is—Acknowledge the Fear. Then wait. Take care of yourself. Breathe. And then decide what to do, what it would be like to choose from a place of Love.
“And I’m not talking about a mushy push-over Love that has no boundaries. I’m speaking of ferocious, wild, oceanic, mountainous, deep-rooted Love.
“When we look for courage in the face of Fear, we must look to Love.
When we are searching for understanding at the Wall of Anger, choose Love.
When we need strength while vulnerable—
seek justice in the midst of injustice—
look for clarity while in the tumble of chaos and confusion that comes from change—
choose Love.
As many times as we can.”
I know that Deacon chose love, as did Remy, and the classroom and the school as a whole became just a little bit safer for folx like Remy.
Photo by WildMedia