Transgender Students In Schools

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Today’s society is recognizing the experiences and needs of transgender people as never before. This trend is most evident in our nation’s schools, where an increasing number of transgender and gender-expansive students live openly as their authentic selves. At the same time, parents, students, educators, administrators and other stakeholders are working together to determine the best ways to support these students.
Many are unfamiliar with the needs of transgender students, and attempts to meet those needs can be fraught with emotion for all involved. Educators may have concerns about their own capacity to support their transgender students, or hesitate to act because of personal feelings or fear of negative reactions from the larger community. …show more content…

This dynamic can create an adversarial relationship among the very individuals working to support the student. Finally, transgender students themselves may struggle with a variety of issues in seeking to be authentically seen, including the fear of social rejection and mistreatment or abuse from peers. As a result, many of these students hope to escape notice and to simply survive rather than flourish.
Even though the needs of transgender students vary tremendously based on a range of factors, a number of guiding principles informed this document. These principles include that every student has the right to learn in a safe and accepting school environment. Supporting transgender students gives them the equal opportunity that all students need. All adults must act as protective agents committed to the safety and well-being of the youth they serve, including those who are transgender or gender-expansive, and should recognize that working as a team is in the best interest …show more content…

An understanding of gender as encompassing a wide range of identities and expressions is known as the gender spectrum. A personal, deeply-felt sense of being male, female, both or neither. Everyone has a gender identity, whether male, female neither or both. An intense and persistent discomfort with the primary and secondary sex characteristics of one’s assigned birth sex is gender dysphoria. Affirming and supporting a person’s gender identity can help to significantly decrease their dysphoria. Conversely, rejecting or requiring a person to conceal their gender identity will exacerbate their level of

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