“Providing professional development for school staff to improve rates of intervention and increase the number of supportive teachers and other staff available to students;”
(GLSEN, 2016, p. 14)
A couple weeks ago, we had to look up the terms Gender, Gender Socialization, Cisgender, Transgender, Intersexed and Gender Non-Conforming for homework. In the following class, we then watched a portion of Growing up Coy and had a really interesting conversation; however, I must admit, all the terminology, at the end of the day, is slightly overwhelming. Some of the notes I jotted down included:
– Genitalia does not equal sex.
– We can’t see gender, only gender performance/identity/expression.
– Sex refers to hormones, sexual organs, genitalia.
– Gender – our societal role.
– Male/Female are adjectives, not nouns (scientific).
– Cisgender = consistency of sex and gender.
– Queer = non-binary
– Fem = performance
– Masc = butch
– Intersexed = sex of both
Ok, so where I’m 1000% percent on board with all these different classifications and for students to feel completely accepted and respected for their gender performance, identity and/or expression, even I felt inundated with all the different variables. I say “even I” because I feel like I’m incredibly inclusive and open to people’s expression, even though I still had no clue what some of these terms were or what they meant. Imagine an educator who is 1) uninformed and 2) intrinsically biased? I’m nervous that even I may not always understand well enough, so what about them? I don’t ever want to make an assumption about what something means or what something is like, say something wrong and unknowingly offensive or, ultimately, leave any students in my classroom feeling unsafe, but we need to make sure all teachers feel that way. Having been an educator at a school with a GSA (I was even one of the sponsors for the GSA!), I’ve literally never heard of some of the terms and, if I have, I couldn’t have defined them in my own words (correctly). That’s insane to me! We never had meetings as a staff about these students or discussions about how to support them better. The GLSEN report made a great point at the very end of the report that said professional development for staff would be incredibly helpful in improving rates of intervention on the part of the teachers. I think a school with teachers that at least generally understand LGBTQ terminology, would naturally create a much more inclusive atmosphere and, therefore, should be a priority for all schools.
In the articles I read there was also a lot of mention of integrating staff and having these discussions . How can we pretend to promote something we reeaaaaally don’t have almost any understanding of? This worries me as well because I don’t want to be misinformed and potentially insult a student and/or or make him/her not feel included or understood.
Of course, in your case, I would take your leadership in being a sponsor for GSA BECAUSE of your open-mindedness and willingness to accept students and promote an environment of acceptance in school. But yes, one of the first things we need to do- as you stated- is at least assure that staff has a general grasp of what LGBTQ is and it’s “bigger picture” terminologies.