Trans Teacher Champions LGBTQ-inclusive Curriculum

This teacher just came out as transgender to his students — and now he's aiming to put an LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum in every school in the country.

Transcript

00:00Teaching without being completely open about who I was and being able to tell my full story

00:06really forced me to hold back on a piece of myself that was really important.

00:10♪

00:21I think as a trans educator especially, and all educators, we have a responsibility to

00:26speak out about those issues and really protect our most vulnerable students.

00:29When I was coming out to my students I put a picture of myself on the board from when I was

00:34in college and at that time I actually identified as non-binary but was much more feminine presenting

00:40and talked about my experience as a person who was assigned female at birth but who is a man

00:46and identifies as a man. There's curiosity about those things especially as kids are

00:50themselves going through changes and thinking about the ways that they want to exist in their

00:55bodies in adulthood.

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01:16I went to a public school in Massachusetts. There was a lot of heteronormativity and a lot of cis

01:21normativity that came up in the things that we talked about, meaning that what was normal and

01:27what was accepted was thinking about heterosexual sex between a cis woman and a cis man and sort of

01:33preparing all students for that future that was inevitable. It has been interesting being a person

01:39who's teaching human biology and health and, you know, really trying to create a curriculum that

01:43matches both my experience of the world and the kind of education that I wish I could have had.

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01:56Nobody is a better expert on how to create a classroom that's inclusive of your students

02:00than your students themselves and I highly encourage any teacher not to burden particular

02:06students over and over again asking, you know, particular groups that may be marginalized in

02:11the classroom to be responsible for their own inclusion but definitely leaving the door open

02:16and I think is a really important practice.

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02:26I think it's especially important for folks who may be questioning their gender or sexuality but

02:33it's also important for kids who are straight and who are cisgender to understand the diversity of

02:38experiences that exist and understanding the variety of what is normal. It is my hope and

02:43my dream that someday in every state of the United States we will have a curriculum that

02:49is inclusive of the experiences of queer people, of trans people, of gender non-conforming folks.

02:55I think it's so, so important for our stories to be told and to be held in the same esteem as

03:01other folks who are in the room. I think as more and more people are speaking their truth and

03:06fighting for the things that are most important to us that it is possible that we'll get there.

03:11♪