Social relationships cultivated from feelings of safety, support, and belonging have been shown to directly impact academic performance in all students, yet safety, support, and belonging are aspects of the educational experience that are consistently inadequate for gender expansive students (Kurt, 2017, pg.8).

As previous reading that I touched through this course, I realized students’ underachievement related to various factors from each students’ background (i.e. house condition, parental issue, family economic status, etc.) As teacher’s position, some strategies and improvements discussed to motivate these students in an inclusive school setting, and I acknowledge it’s inevitable. However, another obstacle raised after I read Kurt (2017)’s piece about transgender students. What if transgender (or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer) students in our class? What about “Double Jeopardy” students? How would we respond and engage their learning?
Students who belong to the category of LGBTQ are hard to dissolve in the majority group of people (such as heterosexual students) because the society still exists the prejudice of their identities even the same-sex marriage legalized by Supreme Court. Goodman (2018) mentioned such students being bullied and beaten up by their classmates, which result in the endangered situations like joining gang groups, isolating from the school community, or even worse, dropping out school (pg. 83). Likewise, Kurt (2017) narrated about school experience of a transgender student Lila, as being treated different either from not girls or boys (pg. 9). As the reflection of teacher’s perspective, I am thinking the school community should support these students initiative. Especially, the separation of the restrooms, school should avoid such regulations because just being transgender that doesn’t mean these students should use their own restrooms as being segregated. The only way to preserve these students in school community is to understand their perspectives of being transgender (or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer) and make them feel safe and comfortable to being part of the community. In order to have that, I strongly believe there should a curriculum about the recognition of LGBTQ group, so every student have chance to learn about the history of this group and able to understand the struggles and difficulties if students were them (we need to encourage students to understand being transgender or else are NORMAL). Personal recommendations such as extra-curriculums or afterschool programs might help to bridge these students into school community because apparently, it shows every single person care about their circumstances. Not just students, teachers also need to show the same respect as their students. Therefore, all students will learn in a comfortable environment without any biases, which increase students’ academic achievement positively.

Reference:

Goodman (2018). It’s Not About Grit—Trauma, Inequality, and the Power of Transformative Teaching, (pg.81-107)
Kurt (2017). Creating School Climates—Gender Nonconforming Students, (pg, 1-20)