“Certainly, there is the potential for all transgender students to feel isolated or insecure in their school environments. This is concerning in that isolation impacts student emotional wellbeing as well as academic and, ultimately, professional success. These issues can be exacerbated when transgender-specific issues come to a head and school officials are forced to make choices regarding the accommodation of not only the transgender student, but all students in the building. Continue reading History is repeating itself. →

Thus, anti-bullying discourses do not offer symbolic or practical resources that boys can call upon for help in negotiating violence and conflict. Rather, bully discourses support the institutionalised structures of masculinity and the normalised gendered power hierarchies and are therefore reproductive of normative social violences, instead of offering viable tools for mediating conflicts for either children or adults. (Ringrose & Renold, 2010, p.584)

Continue reading Bullying and Gender Norms →

Through no fault of their own, in a culture that vilifies those with a nondominant identity and sexual orientation and objectifies the body image of girls and women, they must endure catcalls and put downs, threats of sexual harassment and violence, and learn to measure their self-worth by weight and dress size. (It’s not about grit, p. 81)

Yes, this occurs in New York City too. Sometimes, blinded by the “liberal-ness” of this huge cosmopolitan city, we believe that the types of hardships and trauma described in chapter 4 of this book happen only in rural areas of “fly over” states where they live in repression of sexual identity and expression. This happens in New York City too. This happens in all the big cities of the United States. This happens all over the world. With as much advancement as we’ve made with/towards gender equality, gender identity, and sexual orientation, we still don’t live in a world where the majority of our students don’t experience harassment, bullying, or violence towards them of just being who they are.

It would be purposefully  ignorant not to recognize that these societal standards affect our students on a daily basis and sometimes even cause themselves to distance themselves from society to the point of self harm and danger to themselves. Unfortunately, there is still problematic and violent behavior still regarded as “normal” and its up to us as educators to stand up against that so that are students can, even if for 45 minutes of their day, exist in a space that welcomes and celebrates them. We have no idea what that can do for them and what the extent of that positivity can cause in them.

When we explicitly denounce and go against behavior and language that puts our students down, we show them that we can be or are allies and that they can trust in us. Upon reading the statistics regarding the language schools present around anti-bullying, I remember in a recent class on this topic watching videos and never seeing the topic of sexual orientation come up. Even I, as a member of the community, completely overlooked this glaring chasm in the anti-bullying movement. There was an emphasis on gender, race, size, ability, but the basis of sexual orientation was either never spoken of or grazed over so lightly that I cannot remember it at all. We can all do better for our students. We can all step up and stand up for them, even when that comes with a cost.

The stories in this chapter and articles for this week can still happen in our classrooms. What will we do for our students that experience this?

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)