Lost in Transition: When Transphobia Harmed Me in My Classroom
I made the decision to teach while trans in Providence Public Schools, not in private schools or suburban districts, because I honestly believe our kids are the best in the state.
I publish today with a sense of memorial for those murdered in the American Indian holocaust, something that commenced with the colonization of the Americas by Columbus.
I do not come with timeless truths.
My consciousness is not illuminated with ultimate radiances.
Nevertheless, in complete composure, I think it would be good if certain things were said.
These things I am going to say, not shout.
-Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
I never had a single delusion about commencing gender confirmation therapy while an urban core classroom teacher working with a high-poverty student body. The proposition otherwise would be demonstrative of a hubris bordering on megalomania.
If there is a single point to understand, it is that the Providence School District has failed to provide adequate workplace safety provisions while simultaneously managing their budget in a fashion that has led to a fiscal precipice. This happened to me because of fiscal decisions made by the Department of Education as the authority holding the District in a State Takeover.
In some sense, I initiate this discourse with a set of contradicting feelings and emotions predicated upon visceral impulses. The sense of being subjected to heightened scrutiny is not, as far as I can tell, unwarranted given the circumstances. These conflicting impulses include hurt, embarrassment, sadness, regret, shame, and sorrow, yes, but there also is a sense of rebellion. For it is only in the voyage against the dominant tides that I involuntarily find myself compelled to sail into these stormy seas alone.
Yet uncommon as I may be, it is incumbent upon my voice to be heard so as to ensure what has occurred does not happen to the next person. I don’t want to lose my job because of it. One year, at the start of my time holding a teaching position whilst out as trans, a student yelled loudly that I was a pederast. I’ve been dealing with abuse like this for a long time; I grew up outside Pawtuxet Village in Warwick and kids from parochial school could be pretty harsh. I was bullied out of that parochial school, had to go to the Emergency Room in middle school after getting punched in the nose, and have struggled along with later challenges, which is to say I’m used to it.
I absolutely detest the racist “concrete jungle” insinuation that this exceptional level of workplace harm can be attributed to our students and their families owing to their nationality. I have read far too many education reporting articles that stigmatize BIPOC students for behaving in the exact same way their Euro-American peers would have behaved in the same circumstances. Instead, the reality is that if a student from East Greenwich were denied the pediatric healthcare, services, and supports in the school buildings that our students are forced to go without, they would have done the same thing. Austerity’s denial of services is the ultimate culprit here. Our kids are the best in the state and they deserve far more support and structure so as to accommodate the unique needs of the urban core. It is a disgrace how they are failed through lack of tax dollars.
It was the decision to remove the Deans as a faculty position in the buildings, a role that was dedicated to the administration of restorative practices in the classrooms, that created these unnecessary harms. Former Superintendent Christopher Maher originally came into office with creating that Dean position as a major prerogative in 2015.
Here’s what one of these Deans had to say at the time when the position was about to be phased out due to State’s Takeover of the District by Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green, who was appointed in April 2019 by then-Gov. Raimondo.
“The year before the [Deans] position was created, we had over 900 suspensions in a school of about 1,000 students. That’s not a good number. We did it little by little and, two years ago, we were just over 200 suspensions. [In 2020], before the pandemic, we were on pace to be under 200,” Ryan Connole, a former middle school Dean and the current Treasurer of the Providence Teachers Union, said in a May 2021 interview. “I had always thought of going into [non-union] administration but would much rather work with the kids. I thought it could be a very helpful position for kids. Instead of getting kids into trouble, it was designed to get them out of trouble.” Connole was the Dean of Del Sesto Middle School, just adjacent the Hartford Avenue housing projects that abut Olneyville, and so it is a student body including stratospheric childhood poverty rates amongst the community’s most vulnerable constituents.
This is the supposed improvement brought about by the State Takeover of the Providence School District.
There never was a doubt in my mind that it might get rough because of dressing like this. It comes with teaching Secondary English Language Arts in the nitty-gritty city, something I have known for nine years now. The District has been my primary employer since 2015 and I worked my way through six years of subbing to finance my tuition at Providence College, all while quietly waiting to initiate transition.
But likewise, I had to grapple with this fact: The sillier the costume, the safer the queer students feel. By pushing that Overton window further and opening the margins wider, I attract attention that otherwise would be targeted against students.
My PTSD related to the pandemic in the workplace was beyond anybody’s imagination when I was in Student Teaching. I am part of the generation that taught during the pandemic, one that will have a unique health profile emerge in years to come.
I was hired in 2022 after earning my license. In that time, I built relationships with teachers and students across the District because of subbing at all but two of the high schools. Once I had my health insurance card, I decided I needed to initiate gender confirmation and wanted to do it while teaching in Providence.
Post traumatic stress is a cause of serious harms and it alienates people who used to rely upon one another for support.
I wish that those who have been harmed by my PTSD might simply understand this behavior was not generated by my true character.
I have a great deal of embarrassment and shame for toxicity and acts that have been brought about as a result of these traumas on the job. Let it not be claimed that I do this seeking fame, for in fact I fear further financial hardship might arise for me after making my voice heard. Instead, the author types these words with trepidation alongside a sense of civic responsibility to my colleagues and students, what is known in trade unionist parlance as solidarity. I owe it to my fellow union members, cis and non-cis, to highlight these circumstances in order to prevent repetition.
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The present author, as a trans woman classroom teacher, carries scars that require convalescence in order to heal. Furthermore, the pain of the COVID-19 pandemic sits deep inside me as a Providence frontline worker. Maybe I should not return to Providence classrooms? Who knows? I have little to no sense of security about the future.
It is therefore more profitable that accord be reached in simple acknowledgement that the absolutely-predictable happened and now it is time for reflection.
This is injury on the job in administration of work-related tasks, now what does remediation need to be defined by? As it stands, I am currently enrolled in a yearlong outpatient program attenuated towards my PTSD. I am not interested in recriminations and blame so much as healing in a manner that prevents students from being harmed as I was owing to cis-/hetero-sexism in the classroom.
I therefore would emphasize at the outset that this is an issue of choice. I made the choice to commence gender confirmation and therefore I choose what to do with regards to these circumstances, a decision no other person can make for me. I chose not to use carceral documentation methods so as to not feed my students, inadvertently, into the school-to-prison pipeline.
This resulted, regrettably, in lack of proper documentation for these aforementioned workplace injuries and now I face potential job termination as a result. I made the decision to teach while trans in Providence Public Schools, and not in a private school or a suburban district, because I honestly believe our kids and their families are the best in the state and deserve that kind of dedication from their teachers. Over the past several election cycles, Providence has consistently had the largest electoral returns for Democrats and not anti-trans politicians. This District has LGBTQ+ kids that deserve to see this affirmation in their faculty. And meanwhile, the cis-heterosexual students need to be taught the norms expected of interpersonal relations within the premises of an employer or institution for higher education matriculation.
I was not prepared for the relative indifference to my claims of hardship. I yearn above all else for the bosom of camaraderie that might succor me.
And yet my ailments have alienated most of my friends. Though they might doubt it, in fact I miss their friendship, which previously sustained me for so many years.
I readily admit that I have made mistakes owing to the extended period that I struggled with my ailments. But I likewise appeal to reason and sympathy so as to emphasize aberrant conduct stems from being differently-abled. Some of my symptoms first began manifesting in December 2021, whilst I was employed still as a per diem, and I only recently have found adequate relief for them.
It is important here to emphasize a certain reality:
I understand quite well, particularly for our undocumented students, that a Pentecostal or Evangelical Church is no mere house of worship. Instead, it is the free clothing donations basket or thrift store, the food pantry, and the hot evening meal. Undocumented workers and students are precluded completely from access to any welfare state programs in Rhode Island, meaning they are barred from accessing EBT Food Stamps, WIC, and other public sector avenues of food security.
Today, the urban churches now find heavy injections of capital into their coffers can require embracing the most reactionary elements of fundamentalist theology. I say this after disputatious exchanges over the telephone because I am openly trans and queer in the classroom.
It is easy but also wrong for school teachers to begrudge a student for holding religious beliefs that yield prejudices. Instead, the task of pedagogy is to indicate student mistakes in a holistic, affirming, and restorative manner. It is possible for me to teach religious students in a fashion that is not offensive to their sensibilities so as to denude their notions of cis-/hetero-sexism as they find expression in the classroom. This is predicated upon a basic legal argument and social reality. First, it is a mandate under Title IX and the Equal Opportunities Employer statement that gender identity is a protected status in the workplace. Second, the school district Mission Statement mandate is to make students college- and career-ready. There are no employers or campuses in Rhode Island that allow these prejudices to flourish in a fashion that proves injurious to other employees. In the sense that trans women’s integration into the workforce is protected by these two laws, likewise they should be able to find a level of workplace protection that is not subordinate to whatever dictates might be suggested by management.
Simultaneously we must also account for the needs of the closeted or questioning students. On average, LGBTQQ+ students grapple with extraordinary stressors that find relief when they have queer educators serving as healthily-integrated members of the school and civic community. These two statistics in a recent report by The Trevor Project describing the year 2023 should be enough to garner serious consideration:
39% of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year — including 46% of transgender and nonbinary young people.
50% of LGBTQ+ young people who wanted mental health care in the past year were not able to get it.
This is the average life of an LGBTQ+ student. Consider this recent presentation from Rhode Island Kids Count attenuated to the topic of pediatric LGBTQ+ health, including the important lens of racial disparities as so manifested in the negative outcomes for youth mental health and wellness. I carry these burdens alongside my students.
I speak from experience in that instance as a survivor of Catholic schools.
Indeed, my whole purpose even being in the classroom was so as to prevent that from happening again to another person.
The notion of ‘witness trauma’ becomes acute when students see anti-queer bullying of their teachers. This LGBTQQ+ student cohort deserves the same affirmation and protections as the religious student in the classroom.
My injured body tells its own story about harms that I experienced. I believe this is an important story about inclusion and equity to teach the students of Providence.
The reality is that I have to take every student into my classroom, no matter how cis-/hetero-sexist they might be. If I am a serious abolitionist, meaning the principled position that seeks to eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline, that means I need to not report workplace injury and trauma using carceral methods, which entails a far greater risk of harm and other hardships for me as an employee.
Textbooks were thrown at me, pencil shavings were poured into my water canteen, and Pride decorations in my room were vandalized. I’ve dealt with this for years in a quiet manner so as to observe norms of an abolitionist’s demeanor in the classroom.
This is therefore incidental to the larger question:
Is the instance of a trans woman classroom teacher being injured by students a matter that now engenders or risks carceral outcomes for a youth?
No.
I am staying true to my abolitionist principles and views whilst I am dealing with such outcomes in the best way I possibly can given the assets and capabilities I am so accorded by my circumstances.
I got hurt but never got a student fed into the school-to-prison pipeline as a result.
That is worth emphasizing because of the tremendous value it might offer our kids.