How should schools handle transgender kids?
Increasingly, schools are having to wrestle with how to accommodate children who live as the opposite gender.
September 19, 2010|By Denise-Marie Balona, Orlando Sentinel
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-09-19/business/os-florida-transgender-students-0920120100904_1_transgender-people-gender-issues-gender-behaviors (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-09-19/business/os-florida-transgender-students-0920120100904_1_transgender-people-gender-issues-gender-behaviors)
When most little girls draw themselves, they draw pictures of young ladies, often in fancy dresses and high heels.
But one kid in Deltona has always depicted herself differently: As a boy in pants, standing outside a "boy's" school or picking flowers for his mom.
Today, this youngster wants to be called "he." And after years of battles over school clothes and haircuts and long meetings with a therapist, the third-grader's parents are letting her live as a boy.
QuoteIn Miami-Dade County, the school district changed its policies several years ago to accommodate transgender kids. Schools are encouraged to have unisex bathrooms and a trained Gender Safety Leader, who's charged with helping the kids make a smooth transition. Just weeks ago, the Hillsborough County School Board updated its anti-bullying policy to include transgender kids within the most protected groups.
Whenever I read of this sort of thing my faith in humanity is restored buy another step.
A school environment that is safe for transgender children will be even safer for cisgender children, I hope that parents will get this notion through their heads. Three children I knew in grade school a half century ago did not feel safe and learned to be bullies for that reason. Two were dead before they were 35, and the third is facing execution by lethal injection as soon as the state court system allows executions to resume.
This shows a beginning.
I guess they changed the link
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/os-florida-transgender-students-0920120100904,0,190798.story (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/os-florida-transgender-students-0920120100904,0,190798.story)
How should schools handle transgender kids?
Orlando Sentinel
By Denise-Marie Balona
20 September, 2010
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/os-florida-transgender-students-0920120100904,0,190798.story (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/os-florida-transgender-students-0920120100904,0,190798.story)
When most little girls draw themselves, they draw pictures of young ladies, often in fancy dresses and high heels.
But one kid in Deltona has always depicted herself differently: As a boy in pants, standing outside a "boy's" school or picking flowers for his mom.
Today, this youngster wants to be called "he." And after years of battles over school clothes and haircuts and long meetings with a therapist, the third-grader's parents are letting her live as a boy.
This child hasn't had a sex change and wasn't born a hermaphrodite.