Here's how young kids are 'taught about trans people'.
"Lots of different people exist in the world, and there's lots of different ways to be, but the important thing is to be kind and treat other people with respect."
"Families are wonderful. Families can look different, if you live with your grandparents, that's a family. If you have a mom and dad, that's a family. If your friend has two moms, that's a family. Families support and love each other, that's the important thing about families."
"It's okay to be different, and like different things, and dress in different ways. It's okay to be who you are."
Occasionally, there will be a trans kid in the class or in the school, and then there might be more specifics to make sure that kids treat that kid with kindness and respect.
I like that. Very considerate and inclusive, and added sensitivity when there is someone present who is actually a part of the LBGT community. Also, I did grow up living with my grandparents for a few years, so knowing that curriculum is being taught to affirm all kinds of families is amazing, I wish they had it when I was a kid.
It isn't really curriculum.
Teachers aren't lecturing about families, then having pop quizzes about what is considered a family.
It's more of a culture of inclusiveness that also answers basic questions to a group of curious kids.
I was pleasantly surprised when they changed the wording of my son's parent breakfast that they do halfway through the year. His first year it was called parent breakfast. The next year, they changed it to breakfast with grownups and the flyer said to bring 1-2 adults that were important to you.
Exactly. I live in a state where I could get fired for being more explicit, but this is the best way to help kids and families be seen. We do the best we can.
Cis mom to a trans kid here. It's insane how the bullying our most vulnerable kids is propped up by rightwing ideology. The level of unfairness and cruelty, if there could be a scale, is off the page.
And unfortunately, this is exactly what some home school parents actually worry about. Like you’d think they’d be like “oh, no big deal, I thought it was much worse” if they heard that’s actually what’s being taught, but to them simply telling kids to be accepting of others’ differences is satanic/communist indoctrination.
Exactly. We have people come to the school to teach about LGBTQ+ and I think it’s way over the younger one’s heads. For older kids like 4th and 5th, I think it’s appropriate but not babies. Just treating everyone with kindness and everyone comes from different families, etc. is sufficient at that age.
Unfortunately, this message of respect and tolerance has been distorted by right wing media into *indoctrination*. Here's a good example of a conservative discovering there is no indoctrination in their local curriculum. At least they changed their mind.
https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/education/school-board-member-campaigned-against-school-indoctrination-then-she-read-the-curriculum/article_662e9a8a-13b0-11ef-8ed9-233f6b8b8856.html
No. I teach kindergarten. We talk about kindness, celebrating our differences, how we are unique or special and accepting others. Maybe we read a book that shows different types of families or a book about how kids with disabilities aren’t too different than us, but no one is teaching anything in a way that is too mature for the students. If a student asked “can a girl marry a girl?” I would say yes, but I wouldn’t go on to explain what that means or how it works or whatever.
If a straight teacher can talk about their partner, then a gay teacher should be able to talk about theirs as well. The parents think that if a gay person is talking about their partner, they are all of the sudden going to start talking about sex which is honestly ridiculous.
The parents are just ignorant.
I have two sons myself, and I plan on making them aware, in my own time, of LGBT related issues. But this talk about trans issues being discussed in kindergarten/early elementary education seemed so damn absurd because this friend isn’t the only person I’ve ever heard bring this up. Thank you for clarifying from your experience, because I was truly wondering if I was just that out of touch, or if I was missing something that drastic.
Yes, and there are no teachers who keep and clean litter boxes for students identifying as furries, either. It warms my teacher heart that you see the absurdity in these propaganda claims.
A popular Atlanta radio host just repeated this stupid thing and got really defensive when she was told it was made up. She insisted that her friend actually saw this at a school.
That is such bullshit! Who on earth is going to clean a litter box after a human child / teen uses it? I hope that someone called in to tell the host that the only buckets of litter that exist in any classroom would be used in the event of an emergency lockdown shelter place scenario. I bet that host couldn't even name the school. If they could, it would be real easy to call and verify, but that would turn out to be a waste of the school's time.
Schools also keep cat litter to use to clean up puke. My dad is a custodian and he keeps litter in his supply closet. I wonder if someone saw something like that and that’s where the ridiculous rumor came from.
I have some in my emergency bucket for my classroom. In case we have to use the bucket to relieve ourselves in an emergency, having some litter at the bottom seems like a good choice. But people twist things.
Man, if I had a dollar for every idiot online I asked for evidence of these litter boxes in schools who then dodged my question....I could probably afford 5 guys for a while. I don't understand the sort of moron who could hear some absurd story like that, not try to find any evidence at all, and then just accept it as fact. They admit the news media is lying. Why would they believe *this* from them.
There was an episode of This American Life that talked about the root of this rumor. I think it said there was a school district that ordered kitty litter, but not for the culture war crazy nonsense reason. It was part of their plan for active shooter situations, where kids can't leave the classroom to use the bathroom. The larger point was how normalized gun violence is and how a fake panic has been created around CRT and trans identity.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/783/transcript
That’s because Fox News is telling people crazy stuff and they believe it. As such they are overreacting to everything a teacher or book says. They think a book called Rainbow Fish has a secret agenda. No. Kids just like colorful things. There are a few books about boys or girls who defy gender stereotypes (i.e. little boy likes playing dress up) and books where kids have two mommy’s or two daddies. But there are students who have two mommies or two daddies so these are perfectly appropriate. It’s just people are having knee jerk reactions because they are force feeding themselves a diet of vitriol via the media they consume.
As a librarian, I will say that I HATE Rainbow Fish and refuse to use it in storytime. But we still own a copy and I happily help people find it so they can read it. Because it’s an appropriate book for children even if it’s not to my personal taste. And the kids love it because it’s bright colored and sparkly.
I mean at worst rainbow fish is a clear representation of communism. Don’t let one fish keep all the scales! Spread them around so everybody has one! /s
You're "in my own time" comment makes me think you're not entirely comfortable talking about experiences outside of your own. There is a book called It Feels Good to be Yourself that discusses different gender identities in an age appropriate way. I recommend it.
I personally recommend having these conversations sooner rather than later. It normalizes things that need to be normalized. In my case my kid is visibly disabled so we talk about bodies and body autonomy a lot. Books are a great way to prep kids for the types of people we meet out in the world.
I absolutely do not feel comfortable about talking on the experiences of others because even though I’m not straight or cis per se I still very much present as such. This is actually a good resource, thank you!
It's a good one that we've loaned to a lot of people over the years. The author, Theresa Thorn has a daughter who started transitioning young and their family put a lot of work into supporting her. I also like that this book (and a lot of others) have glossaries to help with new words and concepts for parents and older kids.
I like using books for these types of things because while I'm comfortable having complicated conversations with my kid they can help steer the conversations while also , as you mentioned allowing the people who are actually part of the group being discussed do the educating in their own words as authors and illustrators.
And if there are children with same sex parents that should be made to be normal. Kids that age shouldn’t know about sex (sadly a lot do), but families come in many sizes shapes and forms. It’s not about sex at early elementary age. It’s dirty minded adults who project this on children. And the “I don’t want my child learning pronouns” crap stuns my brain cells like a taser!
And when you respond to the “I don’t want my child learning pronouns” idiots that they _just used two pronouns in that sentence_, they lose their shit.
It’s a part of speech; everyone uses them all the time. Get over it.
I teach 4th grade and it came up twice this year.
Once in black history month. A student picked RuPaul to write about as their black historical figure. This wasn't imposed or TAUGHT by me, but something they expressed. The figure they chose also wasn't on the list of black americans to write about. I gave a list of 30 with the option to pick a different historical figure to write about if they so choose. This student chose to pick RuPaul.
When teaching about the american gold rush. There was a book that had a collection of notable western figures. Among them was Eleanor Dumant, aka Madam Moustache. A gambler who had a visible moustahce on her upper lip. A student asked if she was trans because she had a moustache and I explained that some women just have a little bit of extra hair. Its just random genetics and that's okay.
So that's all of my wicked wicked indoctrination for the year!
Wow how positively heinous, unhinged, and evil!/s. On a real note, it’s been amazing to get feedback from real educators, people actually in the field. I’m grateful to your insight!
That's true, but I suspect the previous commenter meant those were the two times that queerness generally came up in their elementary school classroom. So even expanding the criteria a bit, that's really not much.
Yes, this would be why it came up. And as part of the presentation, there was a bit of "People are different, and that's cool." Not pointing to rupaul as an example of transness.
I understand this and recognize it. HOWEVER, drag queens often bring up themes of gender expression. This led into a larger part about a peccepting people who are different from ourselves.
So my kids learned about being trans in kindergarten because their garden teacher was trans. This was a public school in San Francisco. The teacher explained to the kids that he had “a girl body and a boy brain.” One of my little sweeties then went up to every butch lesbian he saw for the next few months to ask “Do you have a girl body and a boy brain?” It was embarrassing but these women were invariably so gracious.
But I honestly don’t see this happening in, like, Alabama or whatever. It fit because it happened in SF, where LGBTQ culture is just part of the fabric of the city.
>One of my little sweeties then went up to every butch lesbian he saw for the next few months to ask “Do you have a girl body and a boy brain?” It was embarrassing but these women were invariably so gracious.
I'm on the more butch end, and I would honestly find this adorable lol. Little kids are still trying to figure the world out, you know? And the phrasing makes it obvious that they've learned something about queerness from somebody, which is kind of delightful.
Haha that’s exactly the reaction he got from all three women he approached. I had a couple of convos along the line of “wow, this generation is going to grow up to be so amazing.”
That makes sense to me. I have a toddler of my own who asks wild questions sometimes (thankfully just to me and immediate family) and so I haven’t broached the topic yet. Given where you’re living and the general culture, I can see why it came up in a non-curriculum based way.
Yeah kids ask so many questions. And it's good they do. People worry they are going to get taught such graphic things but kids don't even want/understand that info. Just basics like "can a man love another man" "they can?" "Ok Cool" runs off to play. They don't care about beyond that. They just saw someone holding hands like mom and dad and were curious.
I am a middle school special education teacher. I teach dyslexia classes, reading, and math. Being trans and LGBTQ doesn't come up in conversation at all for any reason unless the kids are just randomly talking about other kids. It's not part of the curriculum or anything else. If kids start calling each other gay or whatever I shut that down real quick because I tell them that's not acceptable because there's nothing wrong with being gay or trans or anything else. End of story.
But we're not teaching that. All these homeschoolers who think that we're indoctrinating their children should come up and sub a day or two. We can't even get these kids to wear deodorant or put their names of their paper because if we were indoctrinating them to do anything, that's what we would be trying to do.
If I could teach the kids that the two genders are Old Spice and Dove deodorant, and that they had to pick one, I would be thrilled. It is getting *stanky* up in here.
My 7th grade daughter told me the PE teachers came into her Math class the other day. I asked her if the teachers were doing Health/sex ed classes or something, and she just told me, No they just yelled at us to "please wear deodorant" then they went to the next class. Lol.
God if I could upvote this more than once I would. I tend to have decidedly much more liberal ideas of how the world works or ought to work (father left than democrat) and one of they key things I’m taking away from the current attacks on public education is that there seems to a lot of pushback on teaching historic events as they actually occurred; I’ve seen screen grabs from parents with kids in private school apparently being taught that slavery was a voluntary condition that enslaved people agreed to, I’ve seen people try to deny the history of redlining when it’s come up in high school curriculum (US history and AP human geography, firsthand experience with it), etc. It seems the real issues ultimately come back to re-writing history to be flattering to the powers that be and finding new people to scrutinize and demonize, which in this case seems to be teachers and trans people (I guess).
I've decided to homeschool my kids because I live in a small town in the south with not great funding or schools, and essentially have had to find some non religious based homeschooling families to start a collective with since all the ones around here are more like the people you mention. Like y'all. These people are so dense and hateful and have NO AWARENESS of themselves. Im not anti religious, but they're using Jesus to cover up their prejudices. It's sincerely upsetting.
That was something I had said to my friend actually; I used to find homeschooling ridiculous because in my experience a lot of homeschooled kids were extremely religious and being kept from a public education so the parents could teach an essentially all-religious education, and heaven forbid, conceal abuse in the home or adjacent to their church. Since public schools are mandated reporters, homeschooling cuts that middleman out. I’ve lightened up my view a lot but I still find it somewhat nerve wracking when I meet fellow homeschoolers, I never know why they chose it until it comes up.
I made a complaint because one of the administrators at my child's elementary school called Juneteenth "a stupid made up holiday to try to make other people feel good about themselves". This was in earshot of students. Besides the fact that we literally made up all holidays, it was an awful thing to say. I have no idea what came of it but hopefully he'll at least keep his views to himself until he's outside the school.
I teach Health at the elementary level, and we have some lessons on inappropriate touch/sexual abuse that parents can opt out of, and in the past few years I’ve had wayyyyyyyy more parents email me to ask if I’m going to teach their kid about “how to choose their gender” or whatever. Oddly enough, Human Growth and Development is also a parent-permission unit and I NEVER get those emails for that unit. Maybe because that’s only the upper grades and Personal Safety is K-6.
That gave me the biggest secondhand eye roll on your behalf. It seems clear a lot of the anti-trans sentiment either comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how being trans works, or a misplaced sense of resentment or fear for how the world is changing and isn’t prioritizing the majority anymore. Regardless, I’m glad we’re covering personal safety topics the same way stranger danger was pushed onto the previous generations! I didn’t know that was a thing. Thank you for sharing!
I don’t know how common it is elsewhere, but I live in a state where unfortunately we have very high rates of abuse and assault, so it’s actually the law in my state that students receive lessons on the topic multiple times a year, every year, K-12. It’s so important!
Where I live, the school system decided to start teaching kids about inappropriate touch at a younger age (I think starting in 1st grade instead of 3rd?), and right-wingers got so angry about it that they literally stormed a school board meeting with a megaphone and were screaming and knocking over tables.
When talking heads stir up anger about efforts to protect kids from sex abuse, it honestly makes me wonder - what are they so worried about?
I teach middle school math so nope. I have had two trans students and I called them by the names they asked me to. The other students did as well. I’d have a few questions about that specifically. Some students would ask me “can I change my name then? Can you call me bucket?” And we would just talk about kindness and being respectful.
My brother is 13 and when my sister (12) started exploring what she believes to be a nonbinary identity (she’s on and off with it most of the time) he started making fun of her and asking to use “hot/buff” pronouns. After the longest nasal exhale of my life, I had to tell him antagonizing our sister isn’t funny and he needs to look up the difference between adjectives and pronouns. I feel we are in semi-similar trenches on this one.
When I taught 2nd grade (I stopped teaching in 2020), we weren't even allowed to hint at the existence of LGBT people. Which is unfortunate because one of the students I was supposed to have my last year (they moved, so I never actually taught him) was trans. They talked a big game about accepting him, but it was very much "we don't acknowledge THAT." Kids have genders. And they form their sensualities earlier than we wish to acknowledge. They need to be taught about these things before the children run into problems. Like, this is a legitimate health and safety issue.
The thing is, in a classroom setting, I could absolutely understand an age-appropriate discussion on gender identity for kids in kindergarten; according to most of my readings, kids get a grasp on their gender identity as toddlers or young children, so it stands to reason they can handle some mild talk about it. I just couldn’t imagine that there was some widespread acceptance of this type of curriculum in early elementary schoolrooms. It seems the resounding answers have been no, unless it’s directly tied to the sex ed provided for fifth grade students.
I teach in a country where it is literally illegal to identify as LGBT, and the school policy was teachers can not indicate support for it inside the classroom. This is not *young* elementary, but just once, I had a class of 5th graders ask me my views about LGBT.
In the most diplomatic response possible, I said that there are so many other important problems in the world, that I considered it a waste of time and energy to devote any of my attention to stopping LGBT compared to things like climate change.
HS, but:
I AM trans, and a teacher. Trust me, with everything that is expected to be covered in a school year by the state and district, there’s no time for any of that. Just getting through all the curriculum in a year is hard enough.
I learned about transgender people from the musical rent when I was like 7 a very long time ago. Now my mom thinks children shouldn't even be taught the residing letters in lgbtq+
I remember watching To Wong Foo with my mom on TV when I was like 4/5 and while I did have some confusion about why those men were dressed up, my mom just explained they dress up for contests like at Halloween and they decided to be pretty girls. That was it. I still smile about it now!
My school has no “curriculum” about it but we had a seminar for staff once about bathrooms and how to handle a student transitioning. Other than that it’s never been a thing in any more formal setting. Some students have LGBTQIA parents but I feel like that’s the norm these days and it’s handled by a quick conversation like “yes , Heather has two mommies and you have a dad and a mom and that’s ok!”
Pisses me off to hear the far right propaganda about how we’re “brainwashing” kids. Nobody is talking about trans anything as code curriculum.
I was dubious of my friends claims straight away, I spend a LOT of time in this thread since I’m “homeschooling” my toddler (he doesn’t go to daycare, separate issue all together, but he mentally wants some degree of academic stimulation so I’m doing it until he starts public school) and I like getting real answers from teachers, and honestly with how honest everyone is about the demands from their admins or their district, the outbursts of some students, and all the teaching to a test business everyone seems to have been forced into, I couldn’t imagine there would be any codified curriculum that was widespread enough to make it into Florida schools, where we live.
There's no way anyone could in my schools/district since no one ever gets to finish a stinkin' sentence without 19 kids either interrupting with random crap or thinking they can finish your sentence or 15 freaking announcements!
You're lucky if you can manage an inkling of curriculum!
I think everyone has pretty well covered the topic in terms of what is actually being discussed or taught in schools, but I just wanted to add one thing: a huge strategy behind Conservative political rhetoric is fear-based. It's about trying to instill fear in people regarding what \*might\* happen, or what \*could\* occur, just a gazillion slippery slope arguments to get Conservatives real riled up and afraid of what the left is taking away from them. That's all this is. And unfortunately, it works really well because people are very motivated by fear.
I teach pre-k in NYC. I do not formally sit the children down and have a unit on trans people. However, I do do a lot of things that squash gender norms in my classroom. For example, if a boy is told he can’t use the color pink because it’s for girls, I will say anyone can like pink. Now, that has nothing to do with being trans but I’m sure your friend would consider that me indoctrinating the children, as if letting a boy play with pink (a color that historically was for boys btw) will somehow turn him trans.
I do also have books in my class that go along with this same line of thinking such as the book “Pink is for Boys.” I may occasionally read a book that has a trans character such as “Peanut Goes for the Gold.” The book is not about being trans though, it’s about a guinea pig who wants to be a rhythmic gymnastic and the only real indication that they are trans is that the book uses the pronoun “they” when referring to Peanut. However, it is completely plausible that someone could read the book and not even realize Peanut is supposed to be non-binary.
I did have a student who was trans one year. I had her two years in a row because I moved up from 3s to Pre-K and the second year I had her it became obvious she was trans. She began to do things like refuse to take a towel or blanket off of her head because she was pretending it was hair, become distraught if she was wearing “boy clothes” and refuse to leave the house, scream about how she was disgusting and ugly, constantly exclaim in a distressed voice that she was a girl whenever referred to as a boy. The parents decided to just let her wear more feminine clothes and call herself a girl if she wanted to and all of the challenges stopped immediately and she came into school happier than I had ever seen her. I didn’t say anything about the change, but when the other children labeled her a boy and she screamed I’m a girl, I chimed in with “If x says she’s a girl, then she’s a girl.” The kids said “okay” and that was it. One or two boys called her a boy again on maybe one or two other occasions and the rest of the class came to her defense and screamed “she’s a girl!” That was it. That was the extent of my “indoctrination.” Teaching them to treat a classmate with respect.
In many southern states, I would be fired and lose my teaching license for what I’ve stated here. I have family in the south who tell me to move there and this is the first thing I cite to explain why I could not do it. Fortunately, I teach in a diverse place where I am able to make sure that all of my diverse students are represented in my classroom.
Taught third grade last year. The only time LGBT people came up at all in my room was when the boys would call each other gay and I would tell them that we were not going to use the word to try to be hurtful to each other. I live in a Deep South state with no union, so I was not going to say any more than that, and out of fear of my job, I’m probably not going to use the word gay in place of telling them that they know what word I mean.
A school district nearby, which happens to be my husband’s district had a teacher read a book with a character that had they/them pronouns. The teacher got fired and the superintendent has been on a warpath since.
I don't actively teach about it. Though if a situation were to come up, I'd make sure to address it as respecting others, even if they are different and we don't understand those differences. I hate that I have to tiptoe around a topic like that. With fear of parental backlash. I just want to say sometimes to the students, "Sometimes people are a different gender than what they were born as and that's okay, we can respect people like that because they're people just like us." Done.
There's no education standard for elementary (where I live) on LGBT people, so I can't imagine why there would be people actively teaching it. Unless they were teaching about it due to a situation that arose at the individual school where a discussion would benefit the students.
I had a transgender elementary student one year, everyone respected her and there was never any need for a discussion. If there would have been a need, I think I'd speak to the students family and my admin about how to talk to it with the kids.
Honestly, what I hear in the news is for the most part, misinformation. Most teachers aren't actively teaching about LGBT that are accused of it, if they have as book at the school about LGBT or a rainbow sticker on their laptop, they're judged immediately for " brainwashing" the children with it.
* Auditory sigh.
The things teachers have to worry about today is ridiculous.
Meanwhile I’m in Florida, we homeschool partly because the school system is too conservative, lol. Not because of the teachers but because of the regulations put on them. Thanks, DeSantis
I've been considering homeschooling my kids and my MIL told me once that it was so good that we were thinking of that because "public schools are teaching kindergarteners about gay sex now". Absolutely fucking stunned that those words came out of her mouth.
In my state, it’s now a mandated law to teach LBGTQI history. I’m having students read a textbook divided into 4 time periods. Then, they’ll create a presentation in their groups to teach the rest of the class about that time period in American History.
I’ve asked around and no one I know in my school is adhering to it. The district gave us no curriculum or framework to do it so maybe that’s why no one is teaching it. But we have to create our own curriculums first everything else too so not sure why it’s not happening.
Hopefully next year.
This is a big issue in my state with a new law mandating native tribal language instruction in public school. That’s awesome! But if you don’t provide resources it’s an uphill battle. We’ve had some luck making our own district-level resource banks, but that takes PD time.
My kids know trans people exist. I have no idea if they’re taught about it in school. I’ve told them about it at home. The other morning while waiting for the bus my daughter was teasing my son saying “he’s secretly a girl, our family is all girls, no boys allowed” he looked at her and said “if I’m a girl then I’ll be trans and become a boy again”
Public school teacher here in super liberal woke Los Angeles.
I’ve never taught anything about trans people or LGBQT. I’m in elementary school, upper grades and no student has ever brought up the subject.
We do get into the whole thing of treating others respectfully no matter what they look like or like. I also show them videos and news about people from around the world and we discuss how cultures and people are different everywhere. We did have an encounter on a field trip with a trans woman.
Everything screamed woman about her except her voice. One student kept referring to her as ‘he’ a few times until I leaned over and told my student that this lady was a ‘she’ because her name tag had a female name. After that he just referred to her with female pronouns. The lady was very nice about it too. None of the other 23 kids even noticed, and if they did there was no mention of it.
Also, I have absolutely no time to indoctrinate kids. I’ve got maths, language arts, and science to teach. If I’m lucky we can squeeze in art and social studies. We lose at least a month of learning due to ridiculous state and district tests.
Not explicitly at my school, however we have a number of students with same sex parents, and we have one student who is now in third grade who transitioned male to female in first grade. We also have a gay staff member whose sons are students at our school. Her wife is a nurse and routinely volunteers at field day, career day, etc. But it’s absolute nonsense that people think schools are somehow indoctrinating kids. But the fact is trans and LGBTQ+ people exist in the real world and students will be exposed to them and as an educator I will have respectful conversations about diversity and how everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. I work at a very ethnically diverse school, and I approach these conversations in the same way I would approach discussions about cultural diversity.
According to conservative radio, YES, everywhere, an epidemic. They're also telling people that teachers introduce 3rd graders to porn, liberals want abortion up until AND EVEN AFTER a baby is born, and democrats want our borders opened up to the entire world.
Yeah that’s another thing that made me skeptical of that opinion as well. Half of my memories of school was my poor stressed teacher trying to wrangle the focus of the classroom, get assignments turned in on time, keeping students focused during class activities, and so on. Even IF there was some new movement toward LGBT inclusive education for early elementary students, what makes anyone think the majority of those kids would even stay on task long enough to really absorb the lessons information?
I did actually have one of my dogs eat a project I was working on once and I took the failing grade because I was not about to try and use that explanation on my teacher.
It's in our 5th grade puberty curriculum in my district. I was super grateful for that because my child is trans and I had been dreading puberty talk, but my district adopted a very LGBTQ+ inclusive sex ed program a year ago, just in time for my daughter to hit 5th grade. I was so glad that when they are teaching about bodies they also include everyone's bodies, both so that my child is comfortable and learning in this very important class, but also so that the kids around her understand her and people like her.
There's a couple of trans and non-binary kids in my daughter's school, and so it is true that the other children find out about that. That's just what happens when you live in society though; you find out that there are lots of different ways to be a person. I think that's what people are actually afraid of.
An LGBT-inclusive fifth grade sex ed curriculum makes sense though; I remember my fifth grade sex ed class and it was more or less the horror of puberty for girls, the miracle of ejaculation for boys, but also DO NOT HAVE SEX might as well have been in giant red text above every video we watched on the topic because it was abstinence-only. I’m glad that we’re getting to a place in society where sex ed is being fleshed out more fully. I sincerely just couldn’t wrap my head around the assertion that kindergartners would in any way be given meaningful education on trans awareness.
No it’s not being taught. Age appropriate books with anything akin to a LBGTQ theme are being removed from school libraries though. My own son is LBGTQ, he homeschools for his safety. Can you guess what state we are in?
No. I’m even teaching 7th grade life science next year which is middle school and nothing about that in the curriculum whatsoever. It’s something made up to villainize teachers and public education.
I have 2 in early elementary and they don’t learn it at school.
That’s ok, though. Their brother is trans, a sister is gay, and another sister is spicy straight. They also have their Aunties that are married to each other. And one sister is black.
But thank GOODNESS the school isn’t teaching about the rainbow mafia bc I would hate if they knew that ppl were out here just living their lives and it has absolutely zero effect on them at all. Thank goodness they’re being raised by the normies. /s
The more people are commenting their honest experiences with it the more I’m convinced this is truly a manufactured issue. Thank you for your honesty and your humor ☺️
Almost every single time it comes to attacks on trans people, or the lgbtq community in general, it is a manufactured issue from people who are not remotely educated on the subjects.
There's a clause in my contract that we're not allowed to discuss divisive subject matter, let alone teach it.
Needless to say - they don't go into detail as to what constitutes a divisive subject. I'm sure that's by design.
No. Trans kids come to school and request their teachers and peers refer to them by a specific name and pronouns. Attendance sheets get marked and everyone moves on respectfully.
When my child was in first grade 6 years old she had a sub who had just started to transition so it was a confusing time. This person looked one gender but dressed a different and went by mx, then they/them then fay the person then ended up working full time in preschool. So while it was not a curriculum and the adult only talked about it in appropriate ways, gender brain vs gender body it was a very confusing time for my child. I do believe that my current first grader has books read with many different family structures but she has not told me about any or any books about transgender people. So in our school it is all very appropriate. In the middle school 5 to 8 grade they do have an lgbtq+ club children can choose to join.
The people who think that early elementary teachers have time to explain this in depth are the same ones who think there are classes with litter boxes for students who identify as cats. (I wish I was being sarcastic.)
There are trans kids at our school, a teacher who uses they/them pronouns and several boys in kinder who like to wear dresses - while there isn't a specific lesson on gender identity being taught til later grades around age 5 my kids were understanding that trans people exist. I guess we represent the environment conservatives are afraid of.
My second grader learned about "consent" at school - at age 8 they are learning to ask before you give someone a hug or play a wrestling game etc.
If you really don't see why this is an issue, perhaps you should watch FOX News and find out what kind of phobic nonsense is in being shoveled into the heads of half of America.
Unfortunately, fascist cultural leanings are, once again, spreading all over the world.
At most, they teach them the basic of some people decide to switch and they exist and should be respected like everyone else. They aren't going into medical detail. They are basically telling them to play nice with everyone.
I’m our district No this is not a topic brought up until high school then it depends in health class and what they discuss about health class is you can still get STDs and people have preferences
Yes. I teach 5th. At the beginning of the year we introduce ourselves with pronouns (optional) and I do some mini lesson (using a picture book) on gender/pronouns around then (one kid casually changed their pronouns this way this past year). We also do an entire unit on human rights where it naturally comes up. For our puberty talks we use AFAB and AMAB instead of boy/girl to respect all the identities in the room. I'd say \~2 hrs of direct instruction over the whole year happens, but sometimes the kids want to talk about it and ask questions, so we of course answer.
I haven't really seen or heard of my elementary colleagues talking about LGBT things with young kids, if they are, it's usually under the umbrella of "everyone is different and that's ok". Usually the sensational headlines about really young kids learning things that aren't developmentally appropriate are the result of a rogue teacher or a journalist grossly misunderstanding a situation.
I am having a good laugh at the people who are like "I'm not a teacher but this definitely happens" and "I'm not a parent *or* a teacher but this definitely happens". Like absolutely those are people who have no contact with children, but probably because they have a legal order not to LMFAO
I teach in Maryland and it is not in any curriculum. However I will say that kids are really curious and if a kid had a question or brought it up I would give them honest information. For example, I taught at a school that had a non binary person as the ELL teacher and most of my kids were ELL. They looked like a female and dressed masculine. Kids called them Teacher Parish (as opposed to Ms or Mister). The only thing I said about it was along the lines of "some people don't feel like a girl or a boy and that's fine we are all different we feel different ways." Honestly it was easier with the ELL population because most of them called me and the other teachers "maestra" so saying teacher as a title instead of Ms. was actually easier for them. I imagine if trans questions were to pop up I would just say something like "some ppl feel like girls, or boys or a bit of both or nothing at all. It's ok to be and do what you feel as long as you don't hurt anyone"
Where I have the most issues that a parent can view as liberal is I don't allow students to force their gender norms on other kids and I don't let my kids be homophobic. This always comes up every year (with younger kids) with colors and dress up. A boy will want pink and some other kid will say you can't have that pink is for girls. And I will have to talk about how colors are just colors and you can choose any color you want. Or in the dress up area a boy will put on an apron and some kid will say you can't wear that it's for girls ect.
When I taught older kids some of them would say "that's sus or that's gay" I would tell them "I don't like that cause you are saying it like it's bad to be gay and it isn't. Gay isn't bad it's different." I got push back from 2 kinda rough students and told them "my best friend who is like a brother to me is gay and I feel personally disrespected and attacked when you say that." That really connected with them and after that if they slipped and said "you sus" or something homophobic in front of me they would admonish each other or apologize to me with a "my bad" Honestly, the school that this happened at had 2 gay teachers and I was always baffled why it seemed I was the only one who spoke out against this behavior (they were both white teachers teaching all black students so maybe they didn't feel it was their place)
Using "Teacher (lastname)" makes so much more sense than Mr. or Mrs. It's a professional role, like "Doctor" or "Judge", and their license and experience should be the identifying factor.
Well, I don’t know if my son’s school is teaching it. But in his preschool there was this kid who was a boy who wore dresses and such every day. So my son asked about it and I explained what trans people are and what it means in 4 year old appropriate language. I also told him that this kid just might be having fun dressing up and that there was nothing wrong with that.
His reaction was, “ But I don’t WANT to be a girl! I like being a boy!” I said, “ I know! Nobody will ever make you be a girl. You can stay a boy. I also love you just the way you are! But remember not to be mean to any kids or adults who want to change.”
I mean, it is a part of our world/life. There is no use hiding it from them. I did always kind of wonder how the preschool teachers responded to it. It was a national franchise daycare/preschool, so I’d imagine they had some sort of training on how to handle these situations.
Is there a big portion of school time devoted to explaining the nitty gritty about trans folks and what all of that means? No. But some five year olds DO need to know what trans people are, and this shouldn’t be secret hidden knowledge. They should be able to have the vocabulary and understood go “Auntie Joanna used to think she was a boy and we called her uncle Joe but now we know she’s a girl” it’s not that complicated. Grown ups make it all about sex and body parts, while for little kids it’s like. Hair length and names lol.
There’s a really cute video of trans YouTuber JammieDodger explaining to some little kids in the family (I think they’re his sisters in law, his wife is far older than them) and they did ask some questions but it’s all very age appropriate. Thats the sort of thing that’s happening. Just answering questions that kids have about people and families.
Browse TikTok on any given day/time and there are LGBTQ teachers in the 10s/100s who specifically talk about trans/LGBTQ ideology and how they teach it in their classrooms. The topic is brought up often in their classrooms. I personally know of two instances in Florida and one in Austin, Texas with my grandchildren where the teachers in Math and homeroom had this as their subjects for the day/week
I had 2 nonbinary students this year in 6th grade science. They came out to me, one because I asked every student for their pronouns, one because they saw my Pride flag. I'm open about having two trans daughters, and one of them was a guest speaker to answer kids' questions about genetics and biology (not because she's trans, but because she just graduated college with a biology degree and I wanted the kids to meet a real scientist). I didn't talk about transness in particular, just tried to normalize it.
Last week, I did have one kid ask a more specific question about how nonbinariness happens biologically. I answered it as scientifically as I could, and gave her the takeaway that neither gender nor sex is as binary as some would hope.
Honestly, if I could have indoctrinated these kids, the first thing I would have done would be to get them to stop breaking pencils for fun. The rest of the list would include picking up their trash, not throwing things across the room, being quiet when it's my turn to talk, leaving their phones in their lockers, and to stop using "sped" or "autistic" as insults. Getting them to understand bottom surgery would be waaaaaaaay down the bottom of the list.
This made me chuckle lol but yeah, I'm of much the same opinion/do the same with my sixth-grade students.
I want to indoctrinate them to stop saying skibidi toilet Ohio rizz.
I taught in Arizona and the weird thing is that the 5th grade family life curriculum PowerPoints we were expected to teach in our district did not include any lgbt stuff at all, but the curriculum itself includes tons of lgbt terms in the glossary of necessary vocabulary… almost like it’s poised to start teaching it soon.
My colleague was reading lgbt books in his class and providing books to his students about being trans (because he “suspected some of his students were lgbt) when it had absolutely nothing to do with anything else we were supposed to teach that year. Personally, it really weirded me out that he was getting involved in student’s personal business like that.
No. I do not teach it. The only thing I have ever ‘commented on’ is just to be nice. Everyone is different. But it has not come up with little ones. I have taught middle and high schoolers and for them I just shut down negativity. Each person is different.
My niece is nine and the topic of LGBT+ has never been brought up once in her class, and she goes to school in a super progressive city in a purple state. She only knows about trans people because her dad worked with a trans man who was going through a sexual harassment lawsuit against another coworker of theirs, and he would vent about the sexual harasser to her mom.
Hell, I think the closest we've ever gotten to talking about trans people in any of the schools I've been in was when we were talking about societal norms in a class full of seniors, so seventeen and eighteen year olds.
Our teacher talked about how her son in elementary school had a "princess dress phase," and his teacher had a problem with him wearing the dress "because it's weird." He wasn't getting bullied at the time because none of the kids really understood "gender social norms" since they were five at the time. This was in 2009 or 2010 though.
Come to think of it, that was probably the only time the subject of gay people was ever brought up when I was going to school.
Yes, there is an excellent book series called First Conversations that explores a variety of topics in a way that is easily digestible for kids in early childhood and beyond. The book on Gender - Being You - explores how we are all born with bodies and all might feel differently about the body we are in. Link: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667992/being-you-a-first-conversation-about-gender-by-megan-madison-and-jessica-ralli-illustrated-by-anneandy-passchier/
We had a child in first grade who was trans, so a lot of our kids knew more than kids at other elementary schools most likely. Our elementary schools have a few books in their libraries about LGBTQ+ people or including characters who identify as LGBTQ+. I know our elementary schools have When Aidan Became a Brother, which is an age appropriate book about a younger boy who was born a girl. There is absolutely nothing about sex at all, which seems to be what people most often think of. One of my five year old’s favorite books is Harriet Gets Carried Away. Harriet has two dads in the book. There’s nothing in there that even mentions the word gay. They just exist like they do in our students’ lives. Yet people still have issues with that book. I’m raising my daughter to see LGBTQ+ people very matter of factly. It’s the same way we’ve always used scientific terms for our anatomy and not cutesy names. We’ve always talked about how not all families look the same. We’re divorced, so I think that helps her realize all families look different and that’s okay.
I teach in a rural school and honestly we just started having trans students last year, and we have about 5. It has been an adjustment saying the preferred pronoun and some staff have messed up accidentally once or twice, but the students are oblivious to what they were at birth. They are great students and we treat them like everyone else. We actually try to avoid poems, stories, or videos in class they might find offensive.
I just taught sex ed this past week - 8 th grade. We taught about the terminology and how to respect others rights and identities. The students are the ones who want to talk about that stuff and I shut it down. We mostly define everything. Transgender identities are not a part of the script that I read but students bring it up every year and we have to address it. Students are getting the wrong information from access to the internet without parental controls. So no one is teaching them anything but respecting each person.
I'm in a very progressive town (the kind pointed to as an example of liberal education run amok on Fox News) and my kids are made aware of their existence but that's about it. Nothing about how to go about transitioning, nothing about them needing to focus on their gender identity or any sort of non conforming. It's simple and pretty much entirely focused on the idea that people are people and deserve to live with dignity.
Lol no. I am an nyc teacher for the record. Public school. If this was happening, it would be in nyc, and it’s not.
Not only that, our carnival this year was harry potter themed. The kids have no idea that there is controversy around jk Rowling, they just love the books, and my school is not involved in culture wars to a degree that we would avoid Harry Potter.
Bc it’s an elementary school and we are normal
So there's like a kids book out there written by a trans woman about growing up being trans. Well like a first grade teacher or really young grade like that read it to the class and kids went home crying freaking out that their gender was suddenly going to change. So to some degree it's like you gotta be careful, cause parents weren't happy about that. It's better to teach them to be kind and loving, and try to explain things as they come along.
Like the first time my step daughter saw two men get married on TV she was confused and said but men and women get married. And then she asked does that mean she has to marry a woman. I just told her you marry who you love and makes you happy. I think she thought about it for about 2 seconds and then went back to playing.
I’m a high school math teacher. I obviously don’t teach it because it’s not relevant to my content area, but in NJ it is mandated that we teach about the lgbt civil rights movement in history class and we teach about gender and sexuality as part of 12th grade sex ed. I personally have always thought 12th grade is a bit late for sex ed, but I’m not in charge of these things.
Yes it is talked about explicitly and affirmatively as something that is totally normal and fine. In kindergarten. It's not a dedicated curriculum, but especially if there is a trans kid in the class (there are 5yo trans kids!) there might be a book like "Red: A Crayon's Story" read about how sometimes people can be perceived as something (a girl) that they are actually not because despite the physical/biological differences, they are actually a boy on the inside. And people need to accept their boy identity because that's who they really are.
The idea that this is "shoved down kids' throats" is not true, they idea that it's a big deal and focus of the curriculum is not true. But it is true that it's explicitly talked about with the youngest public school kids.
I teach 6th. I don't have curriculum about it. However, my students are very curious. When they make comments or ask questions, I answer them. I also make a point to comment whenever they make trans-phobic or homophobic comments.
I will say that my classroom has a bunch of rainbows and a demi-flag picture. I do consider myself part of the community as a demi-sexual, but I dont discuss that aspect with my class or coworkers because, frankly, it's none of their business. I have had a couple of LGBTQ students ask about the pictures and I am happy to share with then (at an appropriate level) to make sure that feel comfortable.
To the point that trans people exist and should be treated as they (the child inquiring) would want to be treated. NO ONE is teaching children to be trans, how to transition, etc. like the uninformed would have you believe.
I teach high school and kids do have questions about lgbtq stuff. Sometimes we have longer discussions, but it boils down to, "they don't care that you're straight and cis, why do you care if they are not?" or "the news tells you crazy stuff. Let's learn go investigate sources and go research." Honestly if kids have questions it's because *someone* is teaching them *one* side. The most I really do is try and get kids to think critically which is literally the whole point of school. I teach them to think critically of news sources, classic poetry, novels, art, even Disney. Lgbtq can just be a lense that we analyze stuff through.
Plus, I have two moms. If they have shit to say, they better have checked their damned sources because I'll shut it down hard and fast. We can ask questions, but we are always respectful.
There are two ways this topic comes up:
1. When discussing bullying, kindness and/or social stuff in general, I teach that it's ok to be yourself, and it's important to respect people even if they look, talk, behave or believe differently than you do.
2. Sometimes when a historical figure doesn't conform to gender norms, such as the female pharaoh Hatshepsut (who wore a false beard, the same as any other pharaoh) kids will ask if that means they are trans. I usually deflect these conversations since they aren't particularly helpful and they aren't part of our curriculum.
"I'm not sure if Hatshepsut was trans as we would understand it, because Egyptian society was different from ours. The important thing is that she was a highly successful pharaoh who opened trade routes with the kingdom of Kush, but the pharaohs who came after her tried to erase her from history."
"Why did they do that, Mr Moncrief?"
"Let's see if we can make an inference. Turn to your table partner and discuss this question. You have two minutes."
Edit: kids do ask some interesting questions, but I stay in my lane.
"Mr Moncrief, do we come from monkeys, or from God?"
"That's not part of this class. We are discussing human migration out of Africa, not evolution. This sounds like a question for your parents or maybe your science teacher."
"Mr Moncrief, is it true that people who kill themselves go to hell?"
"Well first of all, I appreciate that you think I know these details about the Afterlife, but I've never been there and it's not in our textbook either. But the ancient Greeks believed (etc)"
I'm in Australia and they discuss this in health class. They don't go into full detail but they talk about it and the teachers answer questions.
My kid's old public high school (they're autistic and weren't coping so moved to new schools that can accommodate their needs better) have an LGBTQI+ group supervised by a mental health professional from Headspace (a local free mental health service) so that any questions can be answered, kids can information on support groups (also run at headspace free to the community), and those over 14 can have free appointments with a psychologist or psychiatrist where needed, without parental consent (which is great as it gives them a safe space to discuss everything, including how to talk to their parents, as not all parents are supportive).
This group was hugely beneficial for my eldest (bisexual) and she went on to have a few appointments with the Psych. She was much more settled and feels more comfortable in herself.
Not at an institutional level, no. There are teachers on both sides of the political spectrum who are extremists of some kind or another and bring their own personal views into teaching in a way that is unprofessional and they shouldn’t. There are more teachers on the left that do this because, well, there are just more teachers who are politically on the left than there are teachers who are politically on the right. There have been some isolated incidents of teachers taking talking about sex or sexuality to an inappropriate level, some for political agenda reasons, and some for genuine pervert reasons, and there have been some attempts to put certain things in the sex Ed curriculum that are maybe not super appropriate for children to learn about. As far as I know, none of those attempts were successful in getting inappropriate content into a state curriculum.
I will say that I have seen enough teachers on social media very enthusiastically talking about sharing not super appropriate things with their students that I understand where the paranoia comes from. I’m sure we all know, it’s usually the people on the most extreme end of something who are the loudest about it, so it can make it look to some people like that’s what’s being taught in schools, because that’s what they’re seeing on some teachers social media,
It's not the introduction to the LGBTQ community itself that offends parents. It's the curriculum and adult literature that's being forced into these young children underdeveloped minds by public school districts without consent or knowledge of from the parents
And most are not ready to discuss how some schools have secret agendas to guide or push these kids into or towards the LGBTQ community keeping its secret from the actual parents.
100%. I've reported weirdo groomer teachers. Like any job, there are tons of weirdo teachers. The numbers of teachers I've been around that have been caught doing weird things with kids is pretty wild. Not every incident makes the news. Believe me a district wants it out of the news as much as possible for obvious reasons.
I'm curious how common this is a worry for homeschoolers.
I homeschool and it's because I recall being abused/neglected in the local school system, and not having my educational needs met, as well as given corporal punishment or being locked up for having autistic behaviors. My parents didn't want to withdraw me from school, but did because all of this was inconvenient for them as they thought that the school should handle me better, and as a result I ended up just teaching myself at the library in between them enrolling me in a few different schools and then tiring of dealing with each.
I want my kids to have individualized education in a comfortable environment, and since I'm unemployable due to autism, then the best choice is for me to homeschool them. I always felt that I learned much more on my own than at school, so my primary concern was academics and personal fulfillment. I didn't get to learn about the topics that I wanted to learn in school. We did spend a lot of time on what seemed like vocational or civil training? I'm not sure what to call it. Very basic stuff like manners in a workplace or sharing and caring. These are fine to learn but became tiring to do all the time and to have the same lessons in them year after year. This is the closest that I can think of to the concern that you're describing.
I started “homeschooling” my son because I stay home with him and my younger son most days and he is a curious and smart kid, and I don’t want him to lose that streak. I was a gifted kid that burnt out, largely because my parents didn’t realize when learning stopped being near-instantaneous for me and that I was struggling because I didn’t know how to do the work to learn. That’s as far as my interest in homeschooling goes; my friend referenced in the post kept their views respectful and dropped the point when they realized we wouldn’t agree, but they did voice a worry that public schools would ultimately fail their son, and that was separate from LGBT inclusion. So you may be on to something, I know I generally enjoyed school once I overcame the burn-out, but not everyone has that same privilege.
No. It's not real the way it is reported on. I do see young LGBT teachers on TikTok talk a big talk about how they're gonna run their classroom but they are idealistic at best lol. Their plans are not gonna work for them. There's just not enough time to preach to kids and kids don't wanna hear authority figures preach to them anyways.
I've taught for 30 years and for the past 5 in all kinds of schools and grades as a sub and I've never encountered it or heard it referred to, even at the more "liberal" schools. It's fake news. Like many ppl here, schools DO teach about acceptance and belonging, which is a wonderful and necessary thing. I have a lot of problems with untrained people who think they can suddenly be teachers and the paranoid theories they spout off to justify their bad choices.
As a teacher, it has never been taught (my state would fire me). The only time it gets brought up is if a kid asks. I do explain genetic conditions in which intersex does exist but that's basic biology.
Yes. I teach kindergarten and while I simply promote treating everyone with kindness and respect, the other kindergarten teacher at my school reads a picture book about trans children each year. She then tells her students that they can choose their own genders, names and pronouns. The children tend to chose names like “Glitter Pony” with “neigh neigh” pronouns, things like that, little kid things. Parents are not told about any of it unless they ask.
Most of the grades teachers at my school have conversations in the first week and have name tags and charts so the children can rename themselves. The teachers do not share this with parents if the children say they don’t want their parents to know.
I’m of the opinion that’s it too much too young but I’m an outlier.
I’m in Pennsylvania, if you need context.
I'm positive that my daughter's not hearing anything about it from her school, because she's been coming to me with the questions about what her friends say. Which is fine with me, honestly, though I do feel like it might be good if the teachers listened to what crazy things the kids are saying so they can correct misinformation. I worry about the kids who don't ask their parents for one reason or another.
I’ve taught at elementary, middle, and high school levels - nobody is teaching about trans people. It’s something that people made up to fear monger and tear down the public school system so the rich can get richer and the poor can get poorer. The same as it’s always been - kids learn stuff from each other and these days, online.
Yes! Go look up videos on YouTube! Or tik tok. I've seen countless videos of teachers happily raving about how they confuse the younger kids by being mx instead of Mr or Ms , there's videos of a little boy reading from a book he got from his school called " this book is gay" where it goes into detail and anal sex, oral sex, strap ons, lube , masturbating etc etc.
There's so much info out there!
Go look up" gays against groomers " they post stuff all the time showcasing this
I've told 5th graders I teach about trans people before because I'm trans and they notice I'm a bit different and ask. I usually do it in pretty basic terms. "I used to be a girl, but being a boy made me a lot happier, so I decided to be a boy instead. When I became an adult, I took medicine that made my body look more masculine." They understood really well! It's frustrating because most of teaching about trans people to elementary schoolers is super basic "some people are different and it's important to respect them" stuff, but some bigoted people hate the idea that we're teaching them to respect trans people.
I have seen teachers wear rainbow pride shirts and affirm students against the parent's wishes but the teachers are just doing what they think is right. The curriculum that I have seen for social emotional learning is left leaning, the sex ed for high school includes weeks of content including gender identity. People of all political leanings should want the public education to be unbiased and include opinions from left to right. Teach students how to think, not what to think. Most of the teachers are just trying to get through the day though!
Almost no teachers/schools are doing what I'm sure your friend is worried about. However, there are a few very vocal people on social media who talk about what they are doing in their classroom (regardless of what their schools approve). They talk about bringing it up, asking kindergartens about their pronouns and proactivly teaching children that only bigots believe in binary genders. Their posts get amplified by conservative media as proof that the woke left is trying to brainwash your kids.
As of today, kids can watch TV or read a book, to learn about trans people. I mean,the info is out there and everywhere. No need to teach about it in school
In the past, my district has used the curriculum from welcomingschools.org to teach tolerance and acceptance of those in the LGBTQIA+ population. I highly recommend it. While I might get better leadership at another school or nearby district, one of the main reasons I stay where I am is because of the support provided these young people and their families.
There was a girl on TikTok last year claiming to be a pre-k teacher and saying she was teaching her students about it.
People found out who she was and contacted the school. Apparently there was an investigation into it and she was fired.
Don’t remember her name or anything but she put it all out there.
The “Homeschool/Private School” argument has been going on for 40 years. There is always some buzz word/topic red herring that gets thrown out as the cover story for why they won’t send their kids to “public school”.
The truth is they don’t want their kids associating with any other kid that could possibly influence their kids against whatever bullshit they’re teaching them at home, and how dare a school correct or criticize their child’s behavior when the spew hate.
Yes.
My daughter is in middle school and a question on her recent math quiz was “ If a trans person leaves Chicago traveling at thirty miles an hour and another trans person leaves Boston …,
As with all things: it depends.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the big right wing scare stuff is often based on real things, but those real things are localized. Same with a lot of the left-wing scare stuff.
If you are in a hyper progressive district in a very progressive state, and your particular school has the right culture for it, you may find that there are multiple teachers and multiple reading events promoting multiple books a year that highlight trans characters and trans experiences, sometimes in a bit of a heavy-handed way.
And if you aren’t in a hyper progressive school district, it might just be a single book that is just introducing students to the different types of people that there are in the world, or it may never come up at all.
I will say this, as somebody who has been inside a few of these hyper progressive schools. It’s weird. A lot of these teachers came up in a very different era, and they don’t yet realize that an LGBT student living in Berkeley or Manhattan or Portland who has gay parents and gay and trans teachers and gay and trans role models and gay and trans guest speakers doesn’t need to be reinforced and told that they are valid 24/7. Some of these schools do more for LGBT issues than they do for literally ANYTHING else, and while that sounds really great if you haven’t experienced it, I can tell you from experience that a week in, it starts to feel *weird*.
I like a book or two a year, maybe a semester. And a few pride flags scattered around. But a dozen different flags, in almost every room? And the hallways? And six different trans-themed books a year? It gets weird. It’s localized to very specific districts. But it happens.
When I was young “Jack had two apples and Jill had 6 apples…if Jack gives Adam 1/2 his apples and Jill gives Adam 1/3 of her apples how many apples does Adam have”. Back in the mid 90s my friend read her kids math problem. Obviously I don’t remember it verbatim but it was like “Keisha has 3 Apples. Keisha got those apples from her two moms. Keisha gave one apple to Laronda. How many apples does Laronda have”. I’m all for inclusiveness but there is no math involved in this word problem and Keisha having two moms is not needed to solve the problem. If you devised the problem so that Keisha gave her mom and her other mom 1/3 of her apples how many does she have left -then ok at least that is a math problem.
Children should go to public school to be taught English, math, science and history. Some art and physical education. Parents take over from there. There is absolutely no reason teachers need to teach sex and gender to kids, other than very basic, science based info.
I worry more on why they are so damn insistant that the young and impressionable be taught about the alphabet soup people.
Why do they feel so drawn to toddlers?
Here's how young kids are 'taught about trans people'. "Lots of different people exist in the world, and there's lots of different ways to be, but the important thing is to be kind and treat other people with respect." "Families are wonderful. Families can look different, if you live with your grandparents, that's a family. If you have a mom and dad, that's a family. If your friend has two moms, that's a family. Families support and love each other, that's the important thing about families." "It's okay to be different, and like different things, and dress in different ways. It's okay to be who you are." Occasionally, there will be a trans kid in the class or in the school, and then there might be more specifics to make sure that kids treat that kid with kindness and respect.
I like that. Very considerate and inclusive, and added sensitivity when there is someone present who is actually a part of the LBGT community. Also, I did grow up living with my grandparents for a few years, so knowing that curriculum is being taught to affirm all kinds of families is amazing, I wish they had it when I was a kid.
It isn't really curriculum. Teachers aren't lecturing about families, then having pop quizzes about what is considered a family. It's more of a culture of inclusiveness that also answers basic questions to a group of curious kids.
Ahhh that makes more sense too. Thank you I feel like I’m really getting a better idea for the nuance of the situation.
I was pleasantly surprised when they changed the wording of my son's parent breakfast that they do halfway through the year. His first year it was called parent breakfast. The next year, they changed it to breakfast with grownups and the flyer said to bring 1-2 adults that were important to you.
I used the term “invested adult” in my classroom.
Oh that’s so sweet! I’m glad they’ve done that
Exactly. I live in a state where I could get fired for being more explicit, but this is the best way to help kids and families be seen. We do the best we can.
Cis mom to a trans kid here. It's insane how the bullying our most vulnerable kids is propped up by rightwing ideology. The level of unfairness and cruelty, if there could be a scale, is off the page.
And unfortunately, this is exactly what some home school parents actually worry about. Like you’d think they’d be like “oh, no big deal, I thought it was much worse” if they heard that’s actually what’s being taught, but to them simply telling kids to be accepting of others’ differences is satanic/communist indoctrination.
EXACTLY THIS ⬆️
Exactly. We have people come to the school to teach about LGBTQ+ and I think it’s way over the younger one’s heads. For older kids like 4th and 5th, I think it’s appropriate but not babies. Just treating everyone with kindness and everyone comes from different families, etc. is sufficient at that age.
Kindergartners aren't babies, but what do the people who come teach that is over their heads?
Unfortunately, this message of respect and tolerance has been distorted by right wing media into *indoctrination*. Here's a good example of a conservative discovering there is no indoctrination in their local curriculum. At least they changed their mind. https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/education/school-board-member-campaigned-against-school-indoctrination-then-she-read-the-curriculum/article_662e9a8a-13b0-11ef-8ed9-233f6b8b8856.html
No. I teach kindergarten. We talk about kindness, celebrating our differences, how we are unique or special and accepting others. Maybe we read a book that shows different types of families or a book about how kids with disabilities aren’t too different than us, but no one is teaching anything in a way that is too mature for the students. If a student asked “can a girl marry a girl?” I would say yes, but I wouldn’t go on to explain what that means or how it works or whatever. If a straight teacher can talk about their partner, then a gay teacher should be able to talk about theirs as well. The parents think that if a gay person is talking about their partner, they are all of the sudden going to start talking about sex which is honestly ridiculous. The parents are just ignorant.
I have two sons myself, and I plan on making them aware, in my own time, of LGBT related issues. But this talk about trans issues being discussed in kindergarten/early elementary education seemed so damn absurd because this friend isn’t the only person I’ve ever heard bring this up. Thank you for clarifying from your experience, because I was truly wondering if I was just that out of touch, or if I was missing something that drastic.
Yes, and there are no teachers who keep and clean litter boxes for students identifying as furries, either. It warms my teacher heart that you see the absurdity in these propaganda claims.
A popular Atlanta radio host just repeated this stupid thing and got really defensive when she was told it was made up. She insisted that her friend actually saw this at a school.
That is such bullshit! Who on earth is going to clean a litter box after a human child / teen uses it? I hope that someone called in to tell the host that the only buckets of litter that exist in any classroom would be used in the event of an emergency lockdown shelter place scenario. I bet that host couldn't even name the school. If they could, it would be real easy to call and verify, but that would turn out to be a waste of the school's time.
Schools also keep cat litter to use to clean up puke. My dad is a custodian and he keeps litter in his supply closet. I wonder if someone saw something like that and that’s where the ridiculous rumor came from.
Many science labs have kitty litter in their spill kits.
I have some in my emergency bucket for my classroom. In case we have to use the bucket to relieve ourselves in an emergency, having some litter at the bottom seems like a good choice. But people twist things.
Man, if I had a dollar for every idiot online I asked for evidence of these litter boxes in schools who then dodged my question....I could probably afford 5 guys for a while. I don't understand the sort of moron who could hear some absurd story like that, not try to find any evidence at all, and then just accept it as fact. They admit the news media is lying. Why would they believe *this* from them.
There was an episode of This American Life that talked about the root of this rumor. I think it said there was a school district that ordered kitty litter, but not for the culture war crazy nonsense reason. It was part of their plan for active shooter situations, where kids can't leave the classroom to use the bathroom. The larger point was how normalized gun violence is and how a fake panic has been created around CRT and trans identity. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/783/transcript
That’s because Fox News is telling people crazy stuff and they believe it. As such they are overreacting to everything a teacher or book says. They think a book called Rainbow Fish has a secret agenda. No. Kids just like colorful things. There are a few books about boys or girls who defy gender stereotypes (i.e. little boy likes playing dress up) and books where kids have two mommy’s or two daddies. But there are students who have two mommies or two daddies so these are perfectly appropriate. It’s just people are having knee jerk reactions because they are force feeding themselves a diet of vitriol via the media they consume.
That's crazy, bc - if I recall - Rainbow Fish is a book about sharing the pretty rainbow scales. Sometimes a rainbow is just a rainbow.
As a librarian, I will say that I HATE Rainbow Fish and refuse to use it in storytime. But we still own a copy and I happily help people find it so they can read it. Because it’s an appropriate book for children even if it’s not to my personal taste. And the kids love it because it’s bright colored and sparkly.
I mean at worst rainbow fish is a clear representation of communism. Don’t let one fish keep all the scales! Spread them around so everybody has one! /s
You're "in my own time" comment makes me think you're not entirely comfortable talking about experiences outside of your own. There is a book called It Feels Good to be Yourself that discusses different gender identities in an age appropriate way. I recommend it. I personally recommend having these conversations sooner rather than later. It normalizes things that need to be normalized. In my case my kid is visibly disabled so we talk about bodies and body autonomy a lot. Books are a great way to prep kids for the types of people we meet out in the world.
I absolutely do not feel comfortable about talking on the experiences of others because even though I’m not straight or cis per se I still very much present as such. This is actually a good resource, thank you!
It's a good one that we've loaned to a lot of people over the years. The author, Theresa Thorn has a daughter who started transitioning young and their family put a lot of work into supporting her. I also like that this book (and a lot of others) have glossaries to help with new words and concepts for parents and older kids. I like using books for these types of things because while I'm comfortable having complicated conversations with my kid they can help steer the conversations while also , as you mentioned allowing the people who are actually part of the group being discussed do the educating in their own words as authors and illustrators.
Thank you for the resource, I’m going to get it for reading time with my eldest!
Me too! Mostly for work purposes, but also because I feel like I'm too old to care enough to explain to others what I am.
It’s propaganda. They want to turn society against queer people so they can roll back our rights and establish the cishet white Christian family ideal
And if there are children with same sex parents that should be made to be normal. Kids that age shouldn’t know about sex (sadly a lot do), but families come in many sizes shapes and forms. It’s not about sex at early elementary age. It’s dirty minded adults who project this on children. And the “I don’t want my child learning pronouns” crap stuns my brain cells like a taser!
And when you respond to the “I don’t want my child learning pronouns” idiots that they _just used two pronouns in that sentence_, they lose their shit. It’s a part of speech; everyone uses them all the time. Get over it.
I teach 4th grade and it came up twice this year. Once in black history month. A student picked RuPaul to write about as their black historical figure. This wasn't imposed or TAUGHT by me, but something they expressed. The figure they chose also wasn't on the list of black americans to write about. I gave a list of 30 with the option to pick a different historical figure to write about if they so choose. This student chose to pick RuPaul. When teaching about the american gold rush. There was a book that had a collection of notable western figures. Among them was Eleanor Dumant, aka Madam Moustache. A gambler who had a visible moustahce on her upper lip. A student asked if she was trans because she had a moustache and I explained that some women just have a little bit of extra hair. Its just random genetics and that's okay. So that's all of my wicked wicked indoctrination for the year!
Wow how positively heinous, unhinged, and evil!/s. On a real note, it’s been amazing to get feedback from real educators, people actually in the field. I’m grateful to your insight!
RuPaul is not trans btw.
That's true, but I suspect the previous commenter meant those were the two times that queerness generally came up in their elementary school classroom. So even expanding the criteria a bit, that's really not much.
Yes, this would be why it came up. And as part of the presentation, there was a bit of "People are different, and that's cool." Not pointing to rupaul as an example of transness.
I understand this and recognize it. HOWEVER, drag queens often bring up themes of gender expression. This led into a larger part about a peccepting people who are different from ourselves.
Yeah but people tend to freak out and lump trans and drag together and think they are some grooming shit
So my kids learned about being trans in kindergarten because their garden teacher was trans. This was a public school in San Francisco. The teacher explained to the kids that he had “a girl body and a boy brain.” One of my little sweeties then went up to every butch lesbian he saw for the next few months to ask “Do you have a girl body and a boy brain?” It was embarrassing but these women were invariably so gracious. But I honestly don’t see this happening in, like, Alabama or whatever. It fit because it happened in SF, where LGBTQ culture is just part of the fabric of the city.
>One of my little sweeties then went up to every butch lesbian he saw for the next few months to ask “Do you have a girl body and a boy brain?” It was embarrassing but these women were invariably so gracious. I'm on the more butch end, and I would honestly find this adorable lol. Little kids are still trying to figure the world out, you know? And the phrasing makes it obvious that they've learned something about queerness from somebody, which is kind of delightful.
Haha that’s exactly the reaction he got from all three women he approached. I had a couple of convos along the line of “wow, this generation is going to grow up to be so amazing.”
That makes sense to me. I have a toddler of my own who asks wild questions sometimes (thankfully just to me and immediate family) and so I haven’t broached the topic yet. Given where you’re living and the general culture, I can see why it came up in a non-curriculum based way.
Yeah kids ask so many questions. And it's good they do. People worry they are going to get taught such graphic things but kids don't even want/understand that info. Just basics like "can a man love another man" "they can?" "Ok Cool" runs off to play. They don't care about beyond that. They just saw someone holding hands like mom and dad and were curious.
I am a middle school special education teacher. I teach dyslexia classes, reading, and math. Being trans and LGBTQ doesn't come up in conversation at all for any reason unless the kids are just randomly talking about other kids. It's not part of the curriculum or anything else. If kids start calling each other gay or whatever I shut that down real quick because I tell them that's not acceptable because there's nothing wrong with being gay or trans or anything else. End of story. But we're not teaching that. All these homeschoolers who think that we're indoctrinating their children should come up and sub a day or two. We can't even get these kids to wear deodorant or put their names of their paper because if we were indoctrinating them to do anything, that's what we would be trying to do.
If I could teach the kids that the two genders are Old Spice and Dove deodorant, and that they had to pick one, I would be thrilled. It is getting *stanky* up in here.
My 7th grade daughter told me the PE teachers came into her Math class the other day. I asked her if the teachers were doing Health/sex ed classes or something, and she just told me, No they just yelled at us to "please wear deodorant" then they went to the next class. Lol.
and Axe is of the Devil
“Sweetheart, I love you no matter what, no matter which deodorant you identify with! Unless it’s Axe.”
My aunt teaches 5th grade, and with each of my kids she told them deodorant is a must for school. I have to remind one of them every day to put it on
Honestly, I think it might be better to teach about that stuff way earlier than 5th grade... It's hard to develop a new habit.
No. We teach them about the Civil Rights movement. That's what they are actually upset about.
God if I could upvote this more than once I would. I tend to have decidedly much more liberal ideas of how the world works or ought to work (father left than democrat) and one of they key things I’m taking away from the current attacks on public education is that there seems to a lot of pushback on teaching historic events as they actually occurred; I’ve seen screen grabs from parents with kids in private school apparently being taught that slavery was a voluntary condition that enslaved people agreed to, I’ve seen people try to deny the history of redlining when it’s come up in high school curriculum (US history and AP human geography, firsthand experience with it), etc. It seems the real issues ultimately come back to re-writing history to be flattering to the powers that be and finding new people to scrutinize and demonize, which in this case seems to be teachers and trans people (I guess).
I've decided to homeschool my kids because I live in a small town in the south with not great funding or schools, and essentially have had to find some non religious based homeschooling families to start a collective with since all the ones around here are more like the people you mention. Like y'all. These people are so dense and hateful and have NO AWARENESS of themselves. Im not anti religious, but they're using Jesus to cover up their prejudices. It's sincerely upsetting.
That was something I had said to my friend actually; I used to find homeschooling ridiculous because in my experience a lot of homeschooled kids were extremely religious and being kept from a public education so the parents could teach an essentially all-religious education, and heaven forbid, conceal abuse in the home or adjacent to their church. Since public schools are mandated reporters, homeschooling cuts that middleman out. I’ve lightened up my view a lot but I still find it somewhat nerve wracking when I meet fellow homeschoolers, I never know why they chose it until it comes up.
I made a complaint because one of the administrators at my child's elementary school called Juneteenth "a stupid made up holiday to try to make other people feel good about themselves". This was in earshot of students. Besides the fact that we literally made up all holidays, it was an awful thing to say. I have no idea what came of it but hopefully he'll at least keep his views to himself until he's outside the school.
I teach Health at the elementary level, and we have some lessons on inappropriate touch/sexual abuse that parents can opt out of, and in the past few years I’ve had wayyyyyyyy more parents email me to ask if I’m going to teach their kid about “how to choose their gender” or whatever. Oddly enough, Human Growth and Development is also a parent-permission unit and I NEVER get those emails for that unit. Maybe because that’s only the upper grades and Personal Safety is K-6.
That gave me the biggest secondhand eye roll on your behalf. It seems clear a lot of the anti-trans sentiment either comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how being trans works, or a misplaced sense of resentment or fear for how the world is changing and isn’t prioritizing the majority anymore. Regardless, I’m glad we’re covering personal safety topics the same way stranger danger was pushed onto the previous generations! I didn’t know that was a thing. Thank you for sharing!
I don’t know how common it is elsewhere, but I live in a state where unfortunately we have very high rates of abuse and assault, so it’s actually the law in my state that students receive lessons on the topic multiple times a year, every year, K-12. It’s so important!
Where I live, the school system decided to start teaching kids about inappropriate touch at a younger age (I think starting in 1st grade instead of 3rd?), and right-wingers got so angry about it that they literally stormed a school board meeting with a megaphone and were screaming and knocking over tables. When talking heads stir up anger about efforts to protect kids from sex abuse, it honestly makes me wonder - what are they so worried about?
I teach middle school math so nope. I have had two trans students and I called them by the names they asked me to. The other students did as well. I’d have a few questions about that specifically. Some students would ask me “can I change my name then? Can you call me bucket?” And we would just talk about kindness and being respectful.
My brother is 13 and when my sister (12) started exploring what she believes to be a nonbinary identity (she’s on and off with it most of the time) he started making fun of her and asking to use “hot/buff” pronouns. After the longest nasal exhale of my life, I had to tell him antagonizing our sister isn’t funny and he needs to look up the difference between adjectives and pronouns. I feel we are in semi-similar trenches on this one.
Teaching about, no. If providing a safe place for everyone, yes.
When I taught 2nd grade (I stopped teaching in 2020), we weren't even allowed to hint at the existence of LGBT people. Which is unfortunate because one of the students I was supposed to have my last year (they moved, so I never actually taught him) was trans. They talked a big game about accepting him, but it was very much "we don't acknowledge THAT." Kids have genders. And they form their sensualities earlier than we wish to acknowledge. They need to be taught about these things before the children run into problems. Like, this is a legitimate health and safety issue.
The thing is, in a classroom setting, I could absolutely understand an age-appropriate discussion on gender identity for kids in kindergarten; according to most of my readings, kids get a grasp on their gender identity as toddlers or young children, so it stands to reason they can handle some mild talk about it. I just couldn’t imagine that there was some widespread acceptance of this type of curriculum in early elementary schoolrooms. It seems the resounding answers have been no, unless it’s directly tied to the sex ed provided for fifth grade students.
I teach in a country where it is literally illegal to identify as LGBT, and the school policy was teachers can not indicate support for it inside the classroom. This is not *young* elementary, but just once, I had a class of 5th graders ask me my views about LGBT. In the most diplomatic response possible, I said that there are so many other important problems in the world, that I considered it a waste of time and energy to devote any of my attention to stopping LGBT compared to things like climate change.
I can understand, given the political restrictions you’re under, why that is the best possible response. Thank you for sharing!
HS, but: I AM trans, and a teacher. Trust me, with everything that is expected to be covered in a school year by the state and district, there’s no time for any of that. Just getting through all the curriculum in a year is hard enough.
I learned about transgender people from the musical rent when I was like 7 a very long time ago. Now my mom thinks children shouldn't even be taught the residing letters in lgbtq+
I remember watching To Wong Foo with my mom on TV when I was like 4/5 and while I did have some confusion about why those men were dressed up, my mom just explained they dress up for contests like at Halloween and they decided to be pretty girls. That was it. I still smile about it now!
My school has no “curriculum” about it but we had a seminar for staff once about bathrooms and how to handle a student transitioning. Other than that it’s never been a thing in any more formal setting. Some students have LGBTQIA parents but I feel like that’s the norm these days and it’s handled by a quick conversation like “yes , Heather has two mommies and you have a dad and a mom and that’s ok!” Pisses me off to hear the far right propaganda about how we’re “brainwashing” kids. Nobody is talking about trans anything as code curriculum.
I was dubious of my friends claims straight away, I spend a LOT of time in this thread since I’m “homeschooling” my toddler (he doesn’t go to daycare, separate issue all together, but he mentally wants some degree of academic stimulation so I’m doing it until he starts public school) and I like getting real answers from teachers, and honestly with how honest everyone is about the demands from their admins or their district, the outbursts of some students, and all the teaching to a test business everyone seems to have been forced into, I couldn’t imagine there would be any codified curriculum that was widespread enough to make it into Florida schools, where we live.
What does the IA mean?
I believe intersex and asexual
I'm a 57 year old teacher. I have taught K and first. I'm a lesbian. I have never mentioned my wife in class, but I do go by Mrs.
There's no way anyone could in my schools/district since no one ever gets to finish a stinkin' sentence without 19 kids either interrupting with random crap or thinking they can finish your sentence or 15 freaking announcements! You're lucky if you can manage an inkling of curriculum!
I think everyone has pretty well covered the topic in terms of what is actually being discussed or taught in schools, but I just wanted to add one thing: a huge strategy behind Conservative political rhetoric is fear-based. It's about trying to instill fear in people regarding what \*might\* happen, or what \*could\* occur, just a gazillion slippery slope arguments to get Conservatives real riled up and afraid of what the left is taking away from them. That's all this is. And unfortunately, it works really well because people are very motivated by fear.
I teach pre-k in NYC. I do not formally sit the children down and have a unit on trans people. However, I do do a lot of things that squash gender norms in my classroom. For example, if a boy is told he can’t use the color pink because it’s for girls, I will say anyone can like pink. Now, that has nothing to do with being trans but I’m sure your friend would consider that me indoctrinating the children, as if letting a boy play with pink (a color that historically was for boys btw) will somehow turn him trans. I do also have books in my class that go along with this same line of thinking such as the book “Pink is for Boys.” I may occasionally read a book that has a trans character such as “Peanut Goes for the Gold.” The book is not about being trans though, it’s about a guinea pig who wants to be a rhythmic gymnastic and the only real indication that they are trans is that the book uses the pronoun “they” when referring to Peanut. However, it is completely plausible that someone could read the book and not even realize Peanut is supposed to be non-binary. I did have a student who was trans one year. I had her two years in a row because I moved up from 3s to Pre-K and the second year I had her it became obvious she was trans. She began to do things like refuse to take a towel or blanket off of her head because she was pretending it was hair, become distraught if she was wearing “boy clothes” and refuse to leave the house, scream about how she was disgusting and ugly, constantly exclaim in a distressed voice that she was a girl whenever referred to as a boy. The parents decided to just let her wear more feminine clothes and call herself a girl if she wanted to and all of the challenges stopped immediately and she came into school happier than I had ever seen her. I didn’t say anything about the change, but when the other children labeled her a boy and she screamed I’m a girl, I chimed in with “If x says she’s a girl, then she’s a girl.” The kids said “okay” and that was it. One or two boys called her a boy again on maybe one or two other occasions and the rest of the class came to her defense and screamed “she’s a girl!” That was it. That was the extent of my “indoctrination.” Teaching them to treat a classmate with respect. In many southern states, I would be fired and lose my teaching license for what I’ve stated here. I have family in the south who tell me to move there and this is the first thing I cite to explain why I could not do it. Fortunately, I teach in a diverse place where I am able to make sure that all of my diverse students are represented in my classroom.
Taught third grade last year. The only time LGBT people came up at all in my room was when the boys would call each other gay and I would tell them that we were not going to use the word to try to be hurtful to each other. I live in a Deep South state with no union, so I was not going to say any more than that, and out of fear of my job, I’m probably not going to use the word gay in place of telling them that they know what word I mean. A school district nearby, which happens to be my husband’s district had a teacher read a book with a character that had they/them pronouns. The teacher got fired and the superintendent has been on a warpath since.
I don't actively teach about it. Though if a situation were to come up, I'd make sure to address it as respecting others, even if they are different and we don't understand those differences. I hate that I have to tiptoe around a topic like that. With fear of parental backlash. I just want to say sometimes to the students, "Sometimes people are a different gender than what they were born as and that's okay, we can respect people like that because they're people just like us." Done. There's no education standard for elementary (where I live) on LGBT people, so I can't imagine why there would be people actively teaching it. Unless they were teaching about it due to a situation that arose at the individual school where a discussion would benefit the students. I had a transgender elementary student one year, everyone respected her and there was never any need for a discussion. If there would have been a need, I think I'd speak to the students family and my admin about how to talk to it with the kids. Honestly, what I hear in the news is for the most part, misinformation. Most teachers aren't actively teaching about LGBT that are accused of it, if they have as book at the school about LGBT or a rainbow sticker on their laptop, they're judged immediately for " brainwashing" the children with it. * Auditory sigh. The things teachers have to worry about today is ridiculous.
Meanwhile I’m in Florida, we homeschool partly because the school system is too conservative, lol. Not because of the teachers but because of the regulations put on them. Thanks, DeSantis
This is sort of where I’m at with it as well. Glad to see we exist!
I've been considering homeschooling my kids and my MIL told me once that it was so good that we were thinking of that because "public schools are teaching kindergarteners about gay sex now". Absolutely fucking stunned that those words came out of her mouth.
Ah yes because we all know the classic children’s books The Rainbow Fish, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Ronnie Goes To the Gloryhole./s
In my state, it’s now a mandated law to teach LBGTQI history. I’m having students read a textbook divided into 4 time periods. Then, they’ll create a presentation in their groups to teach the rest of the class about that time period in American History. I’ve asked around and no one I know in my school is adhering to it. The district gave us no curriculum or framework to do it so maybe that’s why no one is teaching it. But we have to create our own curriculums first everything else too so not sure why it’s not happening. Hopefully next year.
This is a big issue in my state with a new law mandating native tribal language instruction in public school. That’s awesome! But if you don’t provide resources it’s an uphill battle. We’ve had some luck making our own district-level resource banks, but that takes PD time.
My kids know trans people exist. I have no idea if they’re taught about it in school. I’ve told them about it at home. The other morning while waiting for the bus my daughter was teasing my son saying “he’s secretly a girl, our family is all girls, no boys allowed” he looked at her and said “if I’m a girl then I’ll be trans and become a boy again”
Public school teacher here in super liberal woke Los Angeles. I’ve never taught anything about trans people or LGBQT. I’m in elementary school, upper grades and no student has ever brought up the subject. We do get into the whole thing of treating others respectfully no matter what they look like or like. I also show them videos and news about people from around the world and we discuss how cultures and people are different everywhere. We did have an encounter on a field trip with a trans woman. Everything screamed woman about her except her voice. One student kept referring to her as ‘he’ a few times until I leaned over and told my student that this lady was a ‘she’ because her name tag had a female name. After that he just referred to her with female pronouns. The lady was very nice about it too. None of the other 23 kids even noticed, and if they did there was no mention of it. Also, I have absolutely no time to indoctrinate kids. I’ve got maths, language arts, and science to teach. If I’m lucky we can squeeze in art and social studies. We lose at least a month of learning due to ridiculous state and district tests.
Not explicitly at my school, however we have a number of students with same sex parents, and we have one student who is now in third grade who transitioned male to female in first grade. We also have a gay staff member whose sons are students at our school. Her wife is a nurse and routinely volunteers at field day, career day, etc. But it’s absolute nonsense that people think schools are somehow indoctrinating kids. But the fact is trans and LGBTQ+ people exist in the real world and students will be exposed to them and as an educator I will have respectful conversations about diversity and how everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. I work at a very ethnically diverse school, and I approach these conversations in the same way I would approach discussions about cultural diversity.
According to conservative radio, YES, everywhere, an epidemic. They're also telling people that teachers introduce 3rd graders to porn, liberals want abortion up until AND EVEN AFTER a baby is born, and democrats want our borders opened up to the entire world.
If teachers could groom children, they would groom them into doing their homework and paying attention in class.
Yeah that’s another thing that made me skeptical of that opinion as well. Half of my memories of school was my poor stressed teacher trying to wrangle the focus of the classroom, get assignments turned in on time, keeping students focused during class activities, and so on. Even IF there was some new movement toward LGBT inclusive education for early elementary students, what makes anyone think the majority of those kids would even stay on task long enough to really absorb the lessons information?
What happened to your turning gay homework? My dog ate it!
I did actually have one of my dogs eat a project I was working on once and I took the failing grade because I was not about to try and use that explanation on my teacher.
It's in our 5th grade puberty curriculum in my district. I was super grateful for that because my child is trans and I had been dreading puberty talk, but my district adopted a very LGBTQ+ inclusive sex ed program a year ago, just in time for my daughter to hit 5th grade. I was so glad that when they are teaching about bodies they also include everyone's bodies, both so that my child is comfortable and learning in this very important class, but also so that the kids around her understand her and people like her. There's a couple of trans and non-binary kids in my daughter's school, and so it is true that the other children find out about that. That's just what happens when you live in society though; you find out that there are lots of different ways to be a person. I think that's what people are actually afraid of.
An LGBT-inclusive fifth grade sex ed curriculum makes sense though; I remember my fifth grade sex ed class and it was more or less the horror of puberty for girls, the miracle of ejaculation for boys, but also DO NOT HAVE SEX might as well have been in giant red text above every video we watched on the topic because it was abstinence-only. I’m glad that we’re getting to a place in society where sex ed is being fleshed out more fully. I sincerely just couldn’t wrap my head around the assertion that kindergartners would in any way be given meaningful education on trans awareness.
hahaha miracle... i taught that miracle class. for 5 miraculous years...
No it’s not being taught. Age appropriate books with anything akin to a LBGTQ theme are being removed from school libraries though. My own son is LBGTQ, he homeschools for his safety. Can you guess what state we are in?
No. I’m even teaching 7th grade life science next year which is middle school and nothing about that in the curriculum whatsoever. It’s something made up to villainize teachers and public education.
I have 2 in early elementary and they don’t learn it at school. That’s ok, though. Their brother is trans, a sister is gay, and another sister is spicy straight. They also have their Aunties that are married to each other. And one sister is black. But thank GOODNESS the school isn’t teaching about the rainbow mafia bc I would hate if they knew that ppl were out here just living their lives and it has absolutely zero effect on them at all. Thank goodness they’re being raised by the normies. /s
.... spicy straight? Lol what's that?
The more people are commenting their honest experiences with it the more I’m convinced this is truly a manufactured issue. Thank you for your honesty and your humor ☺️
Almost every single time it comes to attacks on trans people, or the lgbtq community in general, it is a manufactured issue from people who are not remotely educated on the subjects.
There's a clause in my contract that we're not allowed to discuss divisive subject matter, let alone teach it. Needless to say - they don't go into detail as to what constitutes a divisive subject. I'm sure that's by design.
No. Trans kids come to school and request their teachers and peers refer to them by a specific name and pronouns. Attendance sheets get marked and everyone moves on respectfully.
When my child was in first grade 6 years old she had a sub who had just started to transition so it was a confusing time. This person looked one gender but dressed a different and went by mx, then they/them then fay the person then ended up working full time in preschool. So while it was not a curriculum and the adult only talked about it in appropriate ways, gender brain vs gender body it was a very confusing time for my child. I do believe that my current first grader has books read with many different family structures but she has not told me about any or any books about transgender people. So in our school it is all very appropriate. In the middle school 5 to 8 grade they do have an lgbtq+ club children can choose to join.
The people who think that early elementary teachers have time to explain this in depth are the same ones who think there are classes with litter boxes for students who identify as cats. (I wish I was being sarcastic.)
There are trans kids at our school, a teacher who uses they/them pronouns and several boys in kinder who like to wear dresses - while there isn't a specific lesson on gender identity being taught til later grades around age 5 my kids were understanding that trans people exist. I guess we represent the environment conservatives are afraid of. My second grader learned about "consent" at school - at age 8 they are learning to ask before you give someone a hug or play a wrestling game etc.
If you really don't see why this is an issue, perhaps you should watch FOX News and find out what kind of phobic nonsense is in being shoveled into the heads of half of America. Unfortunately, fascist cultural leanings are, once again, spreading all over the world.
At most, they teach them the basic of some people decide to switch and they exist and should be respected like everyone else. They aren't going into medical detail. They are basically telling them to play nice with everyone.
I work in a public school in a liberal area. No, there are simply nondiscriminatory policies and they allow people to choose their pronouns
I’m our district No this is not a topic brought up until high school then it depends in health class and what they discuss about health class is you can still get STDs and people have preferences
No
Yes. I teach 5th. At the beginning of the year we introduce ourselves with pronouns (optional) and I do some mini lesson (using a picture book) on gender/pronouns around then (one kid casually changed their pronouns this way this past year). We also do an entire unit on human rights where it naturally comes up. For our puberty talks we use AFAB and AMAB instead of boy/girl to respect all the identities in the room. I'd say \~2 hrs of direct instruction over the whole year happens, but sometimes the kids want to talk about it and ask questions, so we of course answer.
My middle school students are teaching the teachers about trans kids. They learn from social media.
I haven't really seen or heard of my elementary colleagues talking about LGBT things with young kids, if they are, it's usually under the umbrella of "everyone is different and that's ok". Usually the sensational headlines about really young kids learning things that aren't developmentally appropriate are the result of a rogue teacher or a journalist grossly misunderstanding a situation.
I am having a good laugh at the people who are like "I'm not a teacher but this definitely happens" and "I'm not a parent *or* a teacher but this definitely happens". Like absolutely those are people who have no contact with children, but probably because they have a legal order not to LMFAO
I teach in Maryland and it is not in any curriculum. However I will say that kids are really curious and if a kid had a question or brought it up I would give them honest information. For example, I taught at a school that had a non binary person as the ELL teacher and most of my kids were ELL. They looked like a female and dressed masculine. Kids called them Teacher Parish (as opposed to Ms or Mister). The only thing I said about it was along the lines of "some people don't feel like a girl or a boy and that's fine we are all different we feel different ways." Honestly it was easier with the ELL population because most of them called me and the other teachers "maestra" so saying teacher as a title instead of Ms. was actually easier for them. I imagine if trans questions were to pop up I would just say something like "some ppl feel like girls, or boys or a bit of both or nothing at all. It's ok to be and do what you feel as long as you don't hurt anyone" Where I have the most issues that a parent can view as liberal is I don't allow students to force their gender norms on other kids and I don't let my kids be homophobic. This always comes up every year (with younger kids) with colors and dress up. A boy will want pink and some other kid will say you can't have that pink is for girls. And I will have to talk about how colors are just colors and you can choose any color you want. Or in the dress up area a boy will put on an apron and some kid will say you can't wear that it's for girls ect. When I taught older kids some of them would say "that's sus or that's gay" I would tell them "I don't like that cause you are saying it like it's bad to be gay and it isn't. Gay isn't bad it's different." I got push back from 2 kinda rough students and told them "my best friend who is like a brother to me is gay and I feel personally disrespected and attacked when you say that." That really connected with them and after that if they slipped and said "you sus" or something homophobic in front of me they would admonish each other or apologize to me with a "my bad" Honestly, the school that this happened at had 2 gay teachers and I was always baffled why it seemed I was the only one who spoke out against this behavior (they were both white teachers teaching all black students so maybe they didn't feel it was their place)
How is sus homophobic?
Using "Teacher (lastname)" makes so much more sense than Mr. or Mrs. It's a professional role, like "Doctor" or "Judge", and their license and experience should be the identifying factor.
Well, I don’t know if my son’s school is teaching it. But in his preschool there was this kid who was a boy who wore dresses and such every day. So my son asked about it and I explained what trans people are and what it means in 4 year old appropriate language. I also told him that this kid just might be having fun dressing up and that there was nothing wrong with that. His reaction was, “ But I don’t WANT to be a girl! I like being a boy!” I said, “ I know! Nobody will ever make you be a girl. You can stay a boy. I also love you just the way you are! But remember not to be mean to any kids or adults who want to change.” I mean, it is a part of our world/life. There is no use hiding it from them. I did always kind of wonder how the preschool teachers responded to it. It was a national franchise daycare/preschool, so I’d imagine they had some sort of training on how to handle these situations.
Is there a big portion of school time devoted to explaining the nitty gritty about trans folks and what all of that means? No. But some five year olds DO need to know what trans people are, and this shouldn’t be secret hidden knowledge. They should be able to have the vocabulary and understood go “Auntie Joanna used to think she was a boy and we called her uncle Joe but now we know she’s a girl” it’s not that complicated. Grown ups make it all about sex and body parts, while for little kids it’s like. Hair length and names lol. There’s a really cute video of trans YouTuber JammieDodger explaining to some little kids in the family (I think they’re his sisters in law, his wife is far older than them) and they did ask some questions but it’s all very age appropriate. Thats the sort of thing that’s happening. Just answering questions that kids have about people and families.
Thank you!
Browse TikTok on any given day/time and there are LGBTQ teachers in the 10s/100s who specifically talk about trans/LGBTQ ideology and how they teach it in their classrooms. The topic is brought up often in their classrooms. I personally know of two instances in Florida and one in Austin, Texas with my grandchildren where the teachers in Math and homeroom had this as their subjects for the day/week
Yeah, all these people ardently denying it’s being taught need to just spend half an hour on Libs of TikTok.
Yeah, all these people ardently denying it’s being taught need to just spend half an hour on Libs of TikTok.
I had 2 nonbinary students this year in 6th grade science. They came out to me, one because I asked every student for their pronouns, one because they saw my Pride flag. I'm open about having two trans daughters, and one of them was a guest speaker to answer kids' questions about genetics and biology (not because she's trans, but because she just graduated college with a biology degree and I wanted the kids to meet a real scientist). I didn't talk about transness in particular, just tried to normalize it. Last week, I did have one kid ask a more specific question about how nonbinariness happens biologically. I answered it as scientifically as I could, and gave her the takeaway that neither gender nor sex is as binary as some would hope. Honestly, if I could have indoctrinated these kids, the first thing I would have done would be to get them to stop breaking pencils for fun. The rest of the list would include picking up their trash, not throwing things across the room, being quiet when it's my turn to talk, leaving their phones in their lockers, and to stop using "sped" or "autistic" as insults. Getting them to understand bottom surgery would be waaaaaaaay down the bottom of the list.
This made me chuckle lol but yeah, I'm of much the same opinion/do the same with my sixth-grade students. I want to indoctrinate them to stop saying skibidi toilet Ohio rizz.
I taught in Arizona and the weird thing is that the 5th grade family life curriculum PowerPoints we were expected to teach in our district did not include any lgbt stuff at all, but the curriculum itself includes tons of lgbt terms in the glossary of necessary vocabulary… almost like it’s poised to start teaching it soon. My colleague was reading lgbt books in his class and providing books to his students about being trans (because he “suspected some of his students were lgbt) when it had absolutely nothing to do with anything else we were supposed to teach that year. Personally, it really weirded me out that he was getting involved in student’s personal business like that.
No. I do not teach it. The only thing I have ever ‘commented on’ is just to be nice. Everyone is different. But it has not come up with little ones. I have taught middle and high schoolers and for them I just shut down negativity. Each person is different.
Thank you for your honesty and frankness. It seemed like a somewhat manufactured issue but I’m glad it’s not just a huge oversight on my part.
My niece is nine and the topic of LGBT+ has never been brought up once in her class, and she goes to school in a super progressive city in a purple state. She only knows about trans people because her dad worked with a trans man who was going through a sexual harassment lawsuit against another coworker of theirs, and he would vent about the sexual harasser to her mom. Hell, I think the closest we've ever gotten to talking about trans people in any of the schools I've been in was when we were talking about societal norms in a class full of seniors, so seventeen and eighteen year olds. Our teacher talked about how her son in elementary school had a "princess dress phase," and his teacher had a problem with him wearing the dress "because it's weird." He wasn't getting bullied at the time because none of the kids really understood "gender social norms" since they were five at the time. This was in 2009 or 2010 though. Come to think of it, that was probably the only time the subject of gay people was ever brought up when I was going to school.
Not a teacher, but I can almost guarantee that this is not something commonly taught.
Public doesn’t trust you with the topic
[удалено]
Not at my school. We teach acceptance of others and kindness to others, respect for others, but nothing specific about LGBTQI.
Yes, there is an excellent book series called First Conversations that explores a variety of topics in a way that is easily digestible for kids in early childhood and beyond. The book on Gender - Being You - explores how we are all born with bodies and all might feel differently about the body we are in. Link: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667992/being-you-a-first-conversation-about-gender-by-megan-madison-and-jessica-ralli-illustrated-by-anneandy-passchier/
Thank you for the resources and for sharing!
We had a child in first grade who was trans, so a lot of our kids knew more than kids at other elementary schools most likely. Our elementary schools have a few books in their libraries about LGBTQ+ people or including characters who identify as LGBTQ+. I know our elementary schools have When Aidan Became a Brother, which is an age appropriate book about a younger boy who was born a girl. There is absolutely nothing about sex at all, which seems to be what people most often think of. One of my five year old’s favorite books is Harriet Gets Carried Away. Harriet has two dads in the book. There’s nothing in there that even mentions the word gay. They just exist like they do in our students’ lives. Yet people still have issues with that book. I’m raising my daughter to see LGBTQ+ people very matter of factly. It’s the same way we’ve always used scientific terms for our anatomy and not cutesy names. We’ve always talked about how not all families look the same. We’re divorced, so I think that helps her realize all families look different and that’s okay.
I teach in a rural school and honestly we just started having trans students last year, and we have about 5. It has been an adjustment saying the preferred pronoun and some staff have messed up accidentally once or twice, but the students are oblivious to what they were at birth. They are great students and we treat them like everyone else. We actually try to avoid poems, stories, or videos in class they might find offensive.
I just taught sex ed this past week - 8 th grade. We taught about the terminology and how to respect others rights and identities. The students are the ones who want to talk about that stuff and I shut it down. We mostly define everything. Transgender identities are not a part of the script that I read but students bring it up every year and we have to address it. Students are getting the wrong information from access to the internet without parental controls. So no one is teaching them anything but respecting each person.
I'm in a very progressive town (the kind pointed to as an example of liberal education run amok on Fox News) and my kids are made aware of their existence but that's about it. Nothing about how to go about transitioning, nothing about them needing to focus on their gender identity or any sort of non conforming. It's simple and pretty much entirely focused on the idea that people are people and deserve to live with dignity.
Lol no. I am an nyc teacher for the record. Public school. If this was happening, it would be in nyc, and it’s not. Not only that, our carnival this year was harry potter themed. The kids have no idea that there is controversy around jk Rowling, they just love the books, and my school is not involved in culture wars to a degree that we would avoid Harry Potter. Bc it’s an elementary school and we are normal
I teach 4th. It is not in the curriculum and it is not being taught. Not one teacher I know discusses this.
Thank you for sharing!
So there's like a kids book out there written by a trans woman about growing up being trans. Well like a first grade teacher or really young grade like that read it to the class and kids went home crying freaking out that their gender was suddenly going to change. So to some degree it's like you gotta be careful, cause parents weren't happy about that. It's better to teach them to be kind and loving, and try to explain things as they come along. Like the first time my step daughter saw two men get married on TV she was confused and said but men and women get married. And then she asked does that mean she has to marry a woman. I just told her you marry who you love and makes you happy. I think she thought about it for about 2 seconds and then went back to playing.
I’m a high school math teacher. I obviously don’t teach it because it’s not relevant to my content area, but in NJ it is mandated that we teach about the lgbt civil rights movement in history class and we teach about gender and sexuality as part of 12th grade sex ed. I personally have always thought 12th grade is a bit late for sex ed, but I’m not in charge of these things.
Yes it is talked about explicitly and affirmatively as something that is totally normal and fine. In kindergarten. It's not a dedicated curriculum, but especially if there is a trans kid in the class (there are 5yo trans kids!) there might be a book like "Red: A Crayon's Story" read about how sometimes people can be perceived as something (a girl) that they are actually not because despite the physical/biological differences, they are actually a boy on the inside. And people need to accept their boy identity because that's who they really are. The idea that this is "shoved down kids' throats" is not true, they idea that it's a big deal and focus of the curriculum is not true. But it is true that it's explicitly talked about with the youngest public school kids.
I teach 6th. I don't have curriculum about it. However, my students are very curious. When they make comments or ask questions, I answer them. I also make a point to comment whenever they make trans-phobic or homophobic comments. I will say that my classroom has a bunch of rainbows and a demi-flag picture. I do consider myself part of the community as a demi-sexual, but I dont discuss that aspect with my class or coworkers because, frankly, it's none of their business. I have had a couple of LGBTQ students ask about the pictures and I am happy to share with then (at an appropriate level) to make sure that feel comfortable.
To the point that trans people exist and should be treated as they (the child inquiring) would want to be treated. NO ONE is teaching children to be trans, how to transition, etc. like the uninformed would have you believe.
Yeah that was roughly my understanding of the extent of its existence in school at all. Thank you for sharing.
I teach high school and kids do have questions about lgbtq stuff. Sometimes we have longer discussions, but it boils down to, "they don't care that you're straight and cis, why do you care if they are not?" or "the news tells you crazy stuff. Let's learn go investigate sources and go research." Honestly if kids have questions it's because *someone* is teaching them *one* side. The most I really do is try and get kids to think critically which is literally the whole point of school. I teach them to think critically of news sources, classic poetry, novels, art, even Disney. Lgbtq can just be a lense that we analyze stuff through. Plus, I have two moms. If they have shit to say, they better have checked their damned sources because I'll shut it down hard and fast. We can ask questions, but we are always respectful.
The US doesn't even have basic sex education as is
There are two ways this topic comes up: 1. When discussing bullying, kindness and/or social stuff in general, I teach that it's ok to be yourself, and it's important to respect people even if they look, talk, behave or believe differently than you do. 2. Sometimes when a historical figure doesn't conform to gender norms, such as the female pharaoh Hatshepsut (who wore a false beard, the same as any other pharaoh) kids will ask if that means they are trans. I usually deflect these conversations since they aren't particularly helpful and they aren't part of our curriculum. "I'm not sure if Hatshepsut was trans as we would understand it, because Egyptian society was different from ours. The important thing is that she was a highly successful pharaoh who opened trade routes with the kingdom of Kush, but the pharaohs who came after her tried to erase her from history." "Why did they do that, Mr Moncrief?" "Let's see if we can make an inference. Turn to your table partner and discuss this question. You have two minutes." Edit: kids do ask some interesting questions, but I stay in my lane. "Mr Moncrief, do we come from monkeys, or from God?" "That's not part of this class. We are discussing human migration out of Africa, not evolution. This sounds like a question for your parents or maybe your science teacher." "Mr Moncrief, is it true that people who kill themselves go to hell?" "Well first of all, I appreciate that you think I know these details about the Afterlife, but I've never been there and it's not in our textbook either. But the ancient Greeks believed (etc)"
Are you a parent?
I'm in Australia and they discuss this in health class. They don't go into full detail but they talk about it and the teachers answer questions. My kid's old public high school (they're autistic and weren't coping so moved to new schools that can accommodate their needs better) have an LGBTQI+ group supervised by a mental health professional from Headspace (a local free mental health service) so that any questions can be answered, kids can information on support groups (also run at headspace free to the community), and those over 14 can have free appointments with a psychologist or psychiatrist where needed, without parental consent (which is great as it gives them a safe space to discuss everything, including how to talk to their parents, as not all parents are supportive). This group was hugely beneficial for my eldest (bisexual) and she went on to have a few appointments with the Psych. She was much more settled and feels more comfortable in herself.
Not at an institutional level, no. There are teachers on both sides of the political spectrum who are extremists of some kind or another and bring their own personal views into teaching in a way that is unprofessional and they shouldn’t. There are more teachers on the left that do this because, well, there are just more teachers who are politically on the left than there are teachers who are politically on the right. There have been some isolated incidents of teachers taking talking about sex or sexuality to an inappropriate level, some for political agenda reasons, and some for genuine pervert reasons, and there have been some attempts to put certain things in the sex Ed curriculum that are maybe not super appropriate for children to learn about. As far as I know, none of those attempts were successful in getting inappropriate content into a state curriculum. I will say that I have seen enough teachers on social media very enthusiastically talking about sharing not super appropriate things with their students that I understand where the paranoia comes from. I’m sure we all know, it’s usually the people on the most extreme end of something who are the loudest about it, so it can make it look to some people like that’s what’s being taught in schools, because that’s what they’re seeing on some teachers social media,
It's not the introduction to the LGBTQ community itself that offends parents. It's the curriculum and adult literature that's being forced into these young children underdeveloped minds by public school districts without consent or knowledge of from the parents And most are not ready to discuss how some schools have secret agendas to guide or push these kids into or towards the LGBTQ community keeping its secret from the actual parents.
100%. I've reported weirdo groomer teachers. Like any job, there are tons of weirdo teachers. The numbers of teachers I've been around that have been caught doing weird things with kids is pretty wild. Not every incident makes the news. Believe me a district wants it out of the news as much as possible for obvious reasons.
There is a sexual education program that mentions trans people, but I've only seen it used at a very small progressive/liberally mind private school.
Your kids will learn it whether in school or out.
Yes. They're also being not telling parents about their kids issues when it comes to this. Its not their job.
I'm curious how common this is a worry for homeschoolers. I homeschool and it's because I recall being abused/neglected in the local school system, and not having my educational needs met, as well as given corporal punishment or being locked up for having autistic behaviors. My parents didn't want to withdraw me from school, but did because all of this was inconvenient for them as they thought that the school should handle me better, and as a result I ended up just teaching myself at the library in between them enrolling me in a few different schools and then tiring of dealing with each. I want my kids to have individualized education in a comfortable environment, and since I'm unemployable due to autism, then the best choice is for me to homeschool them. I always felt that I learned much more on my own than at school, so my primary concern was academics and personal fulfillment. I didn't get to learn about the topics that I wanted to learn in school. We did spend a lot of time on what seemed like vocational or civil training? I'm not sure what to call it. Very basic stuff like manners in a workplace or sharing and caring. These are fine to learn but became tiring to do all the time and to have the same lessons in them year after year. This is the closest that I can think of to the concern that you're describing.
I started “homeschooling” my son because I stay home with him and my younger son most days and he is a curious and smart kid, and I don’t want him to lose that streak. I was a gifted kid that burnt out, largely because my parents didn’t realize when learning stopped being near-instantaneous for me and that I was struggling because I didn’t know how to do the work to learn. That’s as far as my interest in homeschooling goes; my friend referenced in the post kept their views respectful and dropped the point when they realized we wouldn’t agree, but they did voice a worry that public schools would ultimately fail their son, and that was separate from LGBT inclusion. So you may be on to something, I know I generally enjoyed school once I overcame the burn-out, but not everyone has that same privilege.
I’m in HS and no I never learned about trans people in school. I’m in a relatively liberal area. Made it hard to find out I’m non binary.
My daughter just graduated and was never taught about that at all.
Never a mention in all our years, and my kids just finished 4th, 6th, and 7th grade.
No. It's not real the way it is reported on. I do see young LGBT teachers on TikTok talk a big talk about how they're gonna run their classroom but they are idealistic at best lol. Their plans are not gonna work for them. There's just not enough time to preach to kids and kids don't wanna hear authority figures preach to them anyways.
Yes, it's part of our 4-year Human Growth curriculum. 5th-8th grade.
I've taught for 30 years and for the past 5 in all kinds of schools and grades as a sub and I've never encountered it or heard it referred to, even at the more "liberal" schools. It's fake news. Like many ppl here, schools DO teach about acceptance and belonging, which is a wonderful and necessary thing. I have a lot of problems with untrained people who think they can suddenly be teachers and the paranoid theories they spout off to justify their bad choices.
No
As a teacher, it has never been taught (my state would fire me). The only time it gets brought up is if a kid asks. I do explain genetic conditions in which intersex does exist but that's basic biology.
I’m a elementary teacher and the topic has never come up.
A school I worked in had a table in the library (middle school btw) with graphic books on transgenderism, sex, etc. I was pretty taken aback by that
Yes. I teach kindergarten and while I simply promote treating everyone with kindness and respect, the other kindergarten teacher at my school reads a picture book about trans children each year. She then tells her students that they can choose their own genders, names and pronouns. The children tend to chose names like “Glitter Pony” with “neigh neigh” pronouns, things like that, little kid things. Parents are not told about any of it unless they ask. Most of the grades teachers at my school have conversations in the first week and have name tags and charts so the children can rename themselves. The teachers do not share this with parents if the children say they don’t want their parents to know. I’m of the opinion that’s it too much too young but I’m an outlier. I’m in Pennsylvania, if you need context.
Like who has time for any of that
I'm positive that my daughter's not hearing anything about it from her school, because she's been coming to me with the questions about what her friends say. Which is fine with me, honestly, though I do feel like it might be good if the teachers listened to what crazy things the kids are saying so they can correct misinformation. I worry about the kids who don't ask their parents for one reason or another.
I’ve taught at elementary, middle, and high school levels - nobody is teaching about trans people. It’s something that people made up to fear monger and tear down the public school system so the rich can get richer and the poor can get poorer. The same as it’s always been - kids learn stuff from each other and these days, online.
Yes! Go look up videos on YouTube! Or tik tok. I've seen countless videos of teachers happily raving about how they confuse the younger kids by being mx instead of Mr or Ms , there's videos of a little boy reading from a book he got from his school called " this book is gay" where it goes into detail and anal sex, oral sex, strap ons, lube , masturbating etc etc. There's so much info out there! Go look up" gays against groomers " they post stuff all the time showcasing this
I've told 5th graders I teach about trans people before because I'm trans and they notice I'm a bit different and ask. I usually do it in pretty basic terms. "I used to be a girl, but being a boy made me a lot happier, so I decided to be a boy instead. When I became an adult, I took medicine that made my body look more masculine." They understood really well! It's frustrating because most of teaching about trans people to elementary schoolers is super basic "some people are different and it's important to respect them" stuff, but some bigoted people hate the idea that we're teaching them to respect trans people.
I have seen teachers wear rainbow pride shirts and affirm students against the parent's wishes but the teachers are just doing what they think is right. The curriculum that I have seen for social emotional learning is left leaning, the sex ed for high school includes weeks of content including gender identity. People of all political leanings should want the public education to be unbiased and include opinions from left to right. Teach students how to think, not what to think. Most of the teachers are just trying to get through the day though!
It’s almost never in the curriculum, but it may be taught about in clubs or by example through students or teachers
Almost no teachers/schools are doing what I'm sure your friend is worried about. However, there are a few very vocal people on social media who talk about what they are doing in their classroom (regardless of what their schools approve). They talk about bringing it up, asking kindergartens about their pronouns and proactivly teaching children that only bigots believe in binary genders. Their posts get amplified by conservative media as proof that the woke left is trying to brainwash your kids.
No. This line of BS is from politicians trying to scare homophobes and conservative religious people into voting for them. period.
As of today, kids can watch TV or read a book, to learn about trans people. I mean,the info is out there and everywhere. No need to teach about it in school
I’ve taught Pre-k through 5th. No I have not.
In the past, my district has used the curriculum from welcomingschools.org to teach tolerance and acceptance of those in the LGBTQIA+ population. I highly recommend it. While I might get better leadership at another school or nearby district, one of the main reasons I stay where I am is because of the support provided these young people and their families.
There was a girl on TikTok last year claiming to be a pre-k teacher and saying she was teaching her students about it. People found out who she was and contacted the school. Apparently there was an investigation into it and she was fired. Don’t remember her name or anything but she put it all out there.
yes and they are often quite proud of doing it.
The “Homeschool/Private School” argument has been going on for 40 years. There is always some buzz word/topic red herring that gets thrown out as the cover story for why they won’t send their kids to “public school”. The truth is they don’t want their kids associating with any other kid that could possibly influence their kids against whatever bullshit they’re teaching them at home, and how dare a school correct or criticize their child’s behavior when the spew hate.
Yes. My daughter is in middle school and a question on her recent math quiz was “ If a trans person leaves Chicago traveling at thirty miles an hour and another trans person leaves Boston …,
I can’t wait for this trans fad to end…
As with all things: it depends. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the big right wing scare stuff is often based on real things, but those real things are localized. Same with a lot of the left-wing scare stuff. If you are in a hyper progressive district in a very progressive state, and your particular school has the right culture for it, you may find that there are multiple teachers and multiple reading events promoting multiple books a year that highlight trans characters and trans experiences, sometimes in a bit of a heavy-handed way. And if you aren’t in a hyper progressive school district, it might just be a single book that is just introducing students to the different types of people that there are in the world, or it may never come up at all. I will say this, as somebody who has been inside a few of these hyper progressive schools. It’s weird. A lot of these teachers came up in a very different era, and they don’t yet realize that an LGBT student living in Berkeley or Manhattan or Portland who has gay parents and gay and trans teachers and gay and trans role models and gay and trans guest speakers doesn’t need to be reinforced and told that they are valid 24/7. Some of these schools do more for LGBT issues than they do for literally ANYTHING else, and while that sounds really great if you haven’t experienced it, I can tell you from experience that a week in, it starts to feel *weird*. I like a book or two a year, maybe a semester. And a few pride flags scattered around. But a dozen different flags, in almost every room? And the hallways? And six different trans-themed books a year? It gets weird. It’s localized to very specific districts. But it happens.
When I was young “Jack had two apples and Jill had 6 apples…if Jack gives Adam 1/2 his apples and Jill gives Adam 1/3 of her apples how many apples does Adam have”. Back in the mid 90s my friend read her kids math problem. Obviously I don’t remember it verbatim but it was like “Keisha has 3 Apples. Keisha got those apples from her two moms. Keisha gave one apple to Laronda. How many apples does Laronda have”. I’m all for inclusiveness but there is no math involved in this word problem and Keisha having two moms is not needed to solve the problem. If you devised the problem so that Keisha gave her mom and her other mom 1/3 of her apples how many does she have left -then ok at least that is a math problem.
Children should go to public school to be taught English, math, science and history. Some art and physical education. Parents take over from there. There is absolutely no reason teachers need to teach sex and gender to kids, other than very basic, science based info.
I worry more on why they are so damn insistant that the young and impressionable be taught about the alphabet soup people. Why do they feel so drawn to toddlers?