Teaching Channel Talks Episode 98: Educate. Affirm. Include. Disrupt. Supporting Our Trans and Nonbinary Students (w/ Rebecca Kling & Vanessa Ford)

Dr. Wendy Amato: Welcome to Teaching Channel Talks. I’m your host, Wendy Amato, and as often as I can, I jump into conversations about topics that matter in education. It’s my pleasure to welcome Rebecca Kling and Vanessa Ford. They are the authors of the Advocate Educators Handbook, creating schools where transgender Welcome, Rebecca and Vanessa.

Rebecca Kling: Thank you. So great to be with you.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Let’s jump in with some introductions. Help everyone understand who you are. How do we get into this conversation?

Rebecca Kling: Sure thing. I am Rebecca Kling. I use she, her pronouns. And I am an advocate and activist from Chicago. And I actually got into education and advocacy through theater and performance.

So I grew up taking after school theater classes, which is great. I did that through middle and high school. Once I got into undergrad, I continued to be an assistant teacher and later a teacher in after school theater programs and realized along the way that all of these tools that I’ve been gathering about adaptation and direct address to the audience and audience engagement and even post show talkbacks really lent themselves to initially exploring my own identity as a trans woman, but then as I got older and as I got more confident in my own identity, in helping educate and helping other people learn about trans identity, as well as helping other people share their own stories.

And so as I continued to do that, to both work with young people through theater and performance, through some summer camps, as well as doing education work around my own identity as a trans person, I ended up at the National Center for Transgender Equality in Washington, D. C., where I was the Community Storytelling Advocate, which is a title that I’m very proud that I’m able to have worn at one point.

And through that work, I was helping trans folks and allies like Teachers and educators, as well as parents, family members, medical providers, elected officials, share their own stories to advance trans rights and to help people understand what it means to be trans and what it means to be an ally to trans people.

And it was while in D. C. doing that work that I was able to connect with Vanessa. And Vanessa, I will hand it to you.

Vanessa Ford: Hello, everyone. Vanessa Ford, she, her coming to you from outside of Boston. I’m going to go to about 2015 when I had two small children. And at the time we thought they were both our sons.

And our youngest child was having a birthday party that was in a frozen theme. Wendy and a car’s theme. It was both. And again, we thought we had a son at that point. And so at the end of the night my child was walking up the stairs in this beautiful frozen gown and these cars, Lightning McQueen slippers.

And I said, You are my favorite princess boy. And Ellie, my child looked me right in the eyes and said, I’m not a boy. I’m a girl in my heart and my brain. And Fast forward. a whole lot of nine years. My family, Ellie, my husband JR, and my son Ronnie all decided to be advocates for trans youth.

In 2015, there were not a lot of families speaking out about trans youth as young as Ellie. Ellie was four when they told us who they were. And there weren’t many dads and my husband’s African American and there were not many African American dads speaking out. So we knew we needed help. We were just a family in Washington, D.

C. with a child who was socially transitioning to live as a girl. And we met Rebecca, who immediately took us under her wing and helped us tell our story across the nation for a period of time. for having me. At the same time, I was a teacher in DC public schools and had been for 14 years. And I, because of that fact, people were asking me to come and do trainings at their schools because I wore the teacher hat and I wore the parent hat and therefore I must know everything.

And I knew nothing. I was just researching with everybody else. But I started to research what was out there and there was. A lot of resources, but I have ADHD and I need to organize to make my executive function work. And I organized all those resources into four buckets to help teachers and schools understand when I would show up to say, we have an hour together, let’s learn.

And those buckets were educate, affirm, include, and disrupt. And fast forward seven years when we were asked by Wiley Jossie Bass to write this book, they became the tenants that Rebecca and I worked on together.

Dr. Wendy Amato: When you think of the way you’ve organized your resources, what have you learned just through the organizing process?

These are valuable for students, families, educators who need them. What are you learning about this?

Rebecca Kling: Part of what’s been exciting to learn is how complimentary all of these tactics are. And so when we say educate, affirm, include, disrupt, what that means is to educate particularly the adults in a community, faculty, staff an entire school community, to educate the adults.

To affirm in policy and practice, so making sure both the written policy and actually what’s happening in classrooms supports trans and nonbinary students. To include in curriculum and culture, so making sure that the posters on the wall and the emails being sent home all reflect those values. And then to disrupt pushback.

And that might be pushed back on a one on one level, like a bully. It might be a family who has some concerns or misunderstandings, or it might be an elected official or policymaker. So again, educate, affirm, include, disrupt. And one of the things we very quickly found is that those are all complementary.

In a perfect world, they happen simultaneously and in parallel. But that a lot of the folks we spoke with for this book, and we spoke with over 50 people, including educators, and researchers, and trans youth, and students, and parents, and families of trans folks, and advocates, and elected officials, and all of their resources and tools were also fitting into those buckets.

So it was really exciting to see That even if they weren’t thinking about it that way, that all of the folks we were talking to very quickly were able to align with and click with that idea of we need to educate folks, we need to inform in policy and practice, we need to include in curriculum and culture, and we need to disrupt.

Vanessa Ford: And you know what was really fun, Wendy, I put on my academic hat. And after we interviewed over the 50 folks we had, 6070 hours. We printed it all out and coded it. for the categories and for anything we’d missed. Resources, quotes, stories. And so it was, I can’t say validated in a scientific way, but we did our best as as authors to ensure that we were not missing anything.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Let’s talk about not missing anything and what students are experiencing right now when they don’t have an environment that honors the four tenets. What’s it like when there’s a void in a school?

Rebecca Kling: Absence is something that’s really scary for a lot of students and a lot of parents. Of, I don’t know if I’m going to be respected in what people call me and how they refer to me.

of I don’t know if what I’m taught in health class is going to reflect my body and how my body works. I don’t know if what I’m taught in literature or English or social studies is going to include me in both what we’re learning about and how we’re talking about the world. And part of what we tried to touch on in the book is that this is not just true for trans and nonbinary folks.

This is stuff that communities of color, communities that have disabilities, communities that have that are neurodiverse and have brains that work in different ways, folks who don’t have English as the first language, that there are all of these populations that educators are already working with that have similar, that can have similar positive experiences of.

I feel really validated and embraced in this education community. And the opposite, unfortunately, can also be true. That if my teachers and my school administrators aren’t thinking about students like me Whatever that means then of course That’s not going to be as good of an experience and one of the things that We were able to learn through this is that the research really does back that up that researchers at the CDC and at colleges and universities who are doing Ph.D. studies all agree, broadly across whatever type of diversity is in a school, that if not everyone is supported and uplifted, the entire school suffers.

Dr. Wendy Amato: When we know that schools are involved in quite a bit of DEI and belonging work, how do we ensure that transgender and nonbinary populations are included in the conversation with the same seat at the table? It seems like That’s not always the case. So I think it’s

Vanessa Ford: important to know that they may have a seat at the table, but maybe they’re going to be sitting on someone’s lap because of intersections like D siloing.

These DE& I initiatives and this DE& I work to understand that our students are complex. And one of the things that we did in this book is take intersectionality and really build it out. Talk to experts. around neurodivergence and trans identities. Talk about disability law and IEPs in the ADA and how they intersect.

Talk about race and racism and how the black trans population is disproportionately targeted. I think part of it, and we talked to one teacher, I’m thinking about him finding commonalities for places that it’s left out. It’s often left out for, I would say, and this is my opinion, two reasons. One, you’re not thinking about it.

And two, you’ve made a choice to exclude it. And if you’re not thinking about it, you’re probably not thinking about what all your kids are needing. If you made a choice to exclude it, you’re thinking about it as a separate thing versus I’m already talking about all these other ways that our children show up in the classroom and those children may also be trans or nonbinary.

Dr. Wendy Amato: It seems like some of the work that happens in schools when we think about differentiation or we think about neurodiversity, people are able to hide behind instructional strategies or the curriculum or some kind of academic practice. And when we know that Full human beings are in our classrooms and it is our responsibility to tend to them.

Why are we letting educators get away with this?

Rebecca Kling: And so much of it is, it boils down to just being nice to people. And we were actually, but as we were prepping for this, we talked about, am I Rebecca or Becca or Becky? If I said, please call me Rebecca, and you insisted on calling me Becky, That just makes you a jerk.

It doesn’t, you’re not standing up for the reality of names, you’re not standing up for gender, you’re not making a stance about how people should be referred to, you’re just being rude. And so much of this stuff boils down to use the language people are asking you to use, include the reality of the existence of trans people and nonbinary people.

And everything flows from there. Vanessa and I have joked that we would love for a business card-sized version of this book to really just be, care about your students. Don’t be a jerk.

Vanessa Ford: Yeah,

Rebecca Kling: we know it’s not that simple. And we know that there are lots of reasons that the reality is a lot more complicated than that.

But if educators and adults and education communities are really going back to what do my students actually need to succeed? Not what do I want them to need, not what I wish they needed, not does what they need align with what I learned when I was learning about gender 10 or 50 or 60 years ago, whatever it is, it’s what do my actual students actually need and going from there.

Vanessa Ford: And it was, it even showed up Wendy when we interviewed folks from the National Board of Teacher Certification, right? We talked to them about the tenants that they use for board certification. And one of the major ones is knowing who’s in your class, modifying and differentiating and making sure they’re included and represented.

And ultimately, if you knowingly have trans or nonbinary students in your class and you are not doing those things, That means you are not being the best standard of a teacher that exists in our country and that is holding all teachers accountable whether you go through national board or not.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Every framework I know every rubric, every evaluation tool, every observation guideline talks about knowing your students and representing them in the instruction.

Accommodating, making sure that they are celebrated. There’s no way for us to deny the importance of representing all the layers of the complex human beings in our classrooms. Let’s jump in and think about the experience of your book. Let’s imagine I’ve got it, I crack it open, I’m skimming through. What is that going to be like for me as an educator?

Rebecca Kling: So we open the book with a lot of context and background and I don’t want that to scare folks. There is available data and information and language and definitions and the research of how many students are probably trans or nonbinary and research about how we have a suspicion of what those numbers are and the difficulty of surveying young people.

We include a joke about when I was in high school and taking youth surveys. I would sometimes lie on them just because sometimes when you’re 15 lying is funny. And so the difficulty of knowing exactly how many students there are and then language as well. But I don’t want that to bog folks down or scare people.

I would much rather someone totally skip the section on language and really try to learn about how to know their students. It is much more important to me that people are trying their best to engage with and embrace with folks, even if they don’t necessarily understand them. And much less important that there’s a dictionary, a list of dictionary definitions to memorize.

We have some in the book, it’s available and we hope it’s useful, but I don’t want to overemphasize it. We then really get into those four pieces that educate, affirm, include, and disrupt. And people are certainly welcome to read those in order, but we also encourage folks to flip around. If you know that there is a parent or an elected official or a policymaker in your community who’s really pushing back, maybe you skip to disrupt.

If you have a specific curricular question and are really interested in how do I make biology more inclusive, or how do I think about the language I’m using in math class, then the section on include might be useful. If you’re in the district offices and know the policies of your district backward and forward, then maybe the affirm section is the place to go.

And if you’re really trying to find your allies and figure out who is going to be with me in this journey, then maybe starting at that educate space and learning who else is around. And what are their perspectives right now to figure out where to go next?

Vanessa Ford: I love that. And I will also just add that we have a section at the end of every chapter about putting it into practice.

I always put my little backwards design hat on and think if I were jumping into this book for the first time, I may actually use the index, find out where those are. Read those pieces, the personal reflection questions, the real world challenges so it could frame what I’m looking for in the text, just so you know a little instructional strategy there for you, but we wanted to build the book so that people could jump around, ask themselves questions, and Personally, I really hope it’s used in book clubs of sorts, groups of teachers, groups of educators who are coming together to say, every Thursday at seven, let’s zoom and talk about a chapter of the book.

And Rebecca and I have talked about putting together some kind of framework. I know we’re working with districts across the country on book clubs that we moderate for them, but there have to be ways that folks do this on their own, and sometimes it comes back to finding out who else in your area is interested in this, because we, one thing we’ve left out, Wendy, I think is really critical, is the urgent nature of this.

With over 500 anti-LBGTQ bills that have been heard this year, many targeting trans youth, the national conversation is hyper-local no matter where you are. I’m in Massachusetts, I’m the parent of a trans child, and my trans child is hearing national anti-trans talking points. In their daily life. And our friends in places where they’re having to testify and fight for their laws are hearing it even more.

And so we need educators, I would hope educators will use this asa shield of knowledge because educators like to know everything before they jump in. And if you wait to know everything, there’s going to be kids left behind. And we would just say jump in now and email us if you have a question.

We’re really easy to find.

Dr. Wendy Amato: In order for this work to be scalable, we have to ask educators to build within their communities.And figuring out who your network is. Where are my people is the way we’ll cast the question. That’s really important.

Rebecca Kling: I want to give one more tool, you’d asked about tactics.

And I want to give something really specific and concrete. There is a powerful phrase, which I use a lot, which is, I don’t know the exact answer, but what you just said made me uncomfortable and I want to dig in a little deeper, I, it is scary as we’ve talked about, it is scary to not know everything. And to still try and raise your hand or interject.

It’s also really important to be able to say, this isn’t my community. I’m not an expert, but that thing you just said, whether, again, whether it’s about a trans or nonbinary identity or BIPOC or racial identity or neurodivergence or any of the other many ways that our students are individuals and diverse individuals, that it is okay.

And not only okay, but I would encourage folks to say, I’m not an expert. I don’t have all the answers. I still want to pump the brakes and talk about this a little bit. And I would really encourage folks to take that language.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Even add on and invite educators to weigh in a little bit with an ouch when they hear something that doesn’t sound right.

We want to acknowledge when we don’t have all of the answers, or when we know we need to gather more information, but I think it’s also okay to put them on the scale and say, you know what? This doesn’t sit right either, and I may not be able to say exactly why, but ouch.

Vanessa Ford: And that ouch, Wendy, we’ve even provided a framework in the book to do when you hear an ouch.

It’s ten steps. It’s take a breath. I’d have to actually go and look in the reference of the book because I’m still learning, even as a mother, to do some of these things. But, take a breath. You don’t have to answer right away. Involve an administrator. Connect on values, talk about your mission and vision of the school, right?

So there’s ways that we’ve hopefully provided in this book, things that, that could be used the next day or the same day, if we do have to stand up for our students, which

Dr. Wendy Amato: we sometimes do. That’s another lovely reason to think about using the book In Community at your school to share the language and to remind one another of the best practices or options or avenues for responding.

Let’s shift gears while we’re thinking about operationalizing and helping teachers to engage in behaviors that will make their classrooms everything they should be. What kind of call to action might you offer to the education community based on this conversation, your book, your work, or yourselves?

Rebecca Kling: We’re going to encourage educators and folks in education communities to start by doing some learning themselves. And in particular, again, not needing to memorize dictionary definitions, not needing to understand every part of every community, but learning what are the rules or policies or laws, if any, around trans and nonbinary students in your education community.

That might be a specific policy or guideline in your school, that might be written policy at the district level, that might be law at the state level, or it might be resources that a union can provide, or resources that your education home or school or institution can provide. And at the very least, starting from, are there policies that are going to be an obstacle to supporting trans or nonbinary students?

Is there a blank? Is there a gap there that might provide some opportunities, but also some potential for bumps in the road? Or, hopefully, are there policies and laws that you can draw from as, proactive tool to be able to support trans and nonbinary students. And a caveat, or not a, I’m going to start that thought over.

Something that is connected to that is returning to your school’s mission, vision, and values. That just about every school is going to have something touching on supporting all students, supporting our entire school, supporting all learners. And even in the absence of positive policies or laws. Even in the presence of negative policies or laws, teachers and educators can always return to it.

It is the value of this institution to support all learners. That includes learners who are trans and nonbinary. So once you’ve learned a little, then it’s time to start taking external action.

Dr. Wendy Amato: It seems wonderfully reasonable to ask educators to be informed. That sounds like a baseline, and I appreciate it as your call to action.

Rebecca Kling: We hope so. Thank you.

Vanessa Ford: So my call to action will piggyback on Rebecca’s in that once you know what’s happening in your district, county, state, and federally around these pieces. You can then be an informed voter, right? So the ballot box is really where these issues are being fought for educators and ways that we can really affect change is to vote and be an informed voter.

And we often forget that those hyper-local elections are the ones that are dictating What’s happening in our schools, and what we’re allowed to do. And I would say, get people out to vote where you are, be informed about the policies, and then when you’re ready to speak out connect with others who are doing the work and don’t go it alone.

Dr. Wendy Amato:

We’ve been made aware of the incredible resource of your book. Maybe we’re on a pathway where we can support one another to do the things that our students need and hope from us. If educators are not there supporting families and students, then we’re in a tough spot. So I’m especially grateful for this conversation with the two of you.

Vanessa Ford: Thank you so much for having us and being in conversation with us about this. It’s so critical on behalf of my own child and the thousands of other youth in our country.

Rebecca Kling: And I would echo that as someone who, I was in middle and high school in the late 90s and early 2000s. And so I was in a school that had a gay straight alliance, had a GSA.

There weren’t resources yet for trans and nonbinary students. And so as a student who went through that, not with negative resources or with opposition, but without positive resources, I really appreciate it, it makes such a huge difference. And having worked with. Trans youth for now many years. It makes such a big difference to have teachers who are thinking about these things and talking about these things and working on these things and really appreciating the folks who are taking the time to listen and to go turn these thoughts into action.

Dr. Wendy Amato: Thank you, Rebecca and Vanessa. And thank you to our fellow educators. If you’d like to explore topics that we discussed today, please check out the show notes at teachingchannel. com slash podcast. And be sure to subscribe on whatever listening app you use. It will help others to find us. I’ll see you again soon for the next episode.

Thanks for listening.