All names have been changed from the original to protect the anonymity of the subjects
“Being trans is pretty much the reason I dropped out.”
As a general rule, schools try to make themselves good environments for learning. Most schools now try to accept students who are different from the norm for any reason. Many trangender kids in school say that for them, this is not the case.
Jane, a transgender girl, was in a community college, learning to practice a trade to support her musical career. She says she dropped out of her IT training classes because she could see the treatment she would get in the workplace based off of her experiences at school.
“Being trans is pretty much the reason I dropped out,” she said. “I was okay with the job. But the primary reason was that I could not stand the atmosphere around people who were just barely tolerating me.”
John, a transgender boy who dropped out of his high school, had a similar experience in the classroom.
“I was never in any fear of being physically attacked… I just wasn’t accepted,” he said. “There were teachers that refused to use my chosen name, and were mean about it… and made me very much want to skip.”
John was listed in all school records with his birth name, as well. He tried to get them changed, but said “my principal would not allow that to happen.” This may also have been a legal issue — schools in general aren’t allowed to use a name other than the birth name for their systems.
Jill, another student, is at East and experiences the same lack of acceptance.
“The thing is at East, no one is going to talk to you directly… they’ll stare, they’ll say things behind your back,” she said. “I’m always thinking, there’s this whole level of paranoia.”
Jill isn’t out to anyone but her friends and one teacher. Coming out can look different for different students, and these three have had different experiences. Jill hasn’t come out to many people, but when she did she says it went relatively well.
“They were really supportive about it but it was also really terrifying,” she said. She said coming out, for her, “was kind of a process… at the end of freshman year, I kind of was just like, ‘Hey, this is what I want to go by… It kind of took a while to sink in.”
Jane wasn’t fully out until community college, but John came out in high school like Jill. His friends figured it out before he was ready to come out to them, and they asked him.
“They’d figured it out on their own and asked me for confirmation. I was like, “Yeah, I’m a trans dude, you figured it out.’”
Jane took a more direct approach at the community college.
“I basically carefully went to the teachers, to each of them before the class started, I basically said to them, ‘Hey, use this name, use their pronouns.’”
She said no one took her seriously and that she was ignored. “One teacher… kind of made it an inside joke,” she said.
In some ways, the schools have tried to help. Jill has come out to one teacher that has helped her a lot.
“The theater department has been just wonderful… I came out to a teacher and that teacher was the theater head. They’re just all super nice,” she said.
John started the branch of the Queer-Straight Alliance at his school.
“Me and my friends and some teachers that were really cool decided. We talked to the teachers and made it happen,” he said.
“It made me feel more safe at school seeing all these people that I knew were accepting,” John said.
Jane, John, and Jill all have the same suggestion to improve the atmosphere at schools for trans kids. Jane said that many people seemed to act like “if I don’t really understand it, it doesn’t really matter all that much to me.”
People simply ignored her requests and dismissed her. John had a similar experience.
“It was more the random people that didn’t understand what was the stressful part,” he said.
John believes that the best thing to help transgender kids in school is “teaching other kids what it means to be transgender, and that it’s not some gross thing.”
“Give us better education toward these things,” Jill said. “During health class give us more time to focus on them and concretely tell people this is some of the experiences of being trans.”
