Like I’ve stated in my previous thread this is a follow-up to, I’ve thankfully left my church synod and school system and am at a pretty good college. But that just makes me even more pissed off that these kinds of people exist, since I KNOW that there’s more to life than what I went through and that life CAN be better. It motivates me to fight against it, to make a better life for both myself and others.
My worry is what has been tried in a couple of states will be a federal mandate that I cannot support students in their gender identity or pronouns or name usage. Like if Jimmy comes in one day wearing makeup and using the name of Jane, some states would have me report that to parents and force me to continue to address the student as Jimmy and he/him/his. My job is to teach the student and I don’t care if you are Jimmy, Jane or StarCruzer400 and identify as an Imperial Star Destroyer. Just do your work and if you want me to call you Jane and she/her/hers that fine.
That’s the professional me. The personal me recognizes that
Gender is a spectrum
Adolescents need space to discover who they are
School for many students is the only safe space they have.
Teachers are under no obligation to participate in Christian Sharia law.
Not yet, anyway.
If it comes to that for you, perhaps you could switch to using last names for all your students? All so that it isn’t obvious why you’re doing it. And no need to attach “Mr.” or “Ms.” to the names.
I don’t remember having a choice what the teacher called me.
I have a horrible first name. I’m called by my middle nickname.
Teachers never took suggestions.
I had a coach for a math class. He called everyone in the class “Ladies”.
We had the ones who used Miss and Mr. Surname.
But when referring to students pronouns are easier like, check her work. Plus in some proposed state laws (Idaho iirc) I have to report to parents ANY evidence of non-birth-assigned-gender-changing so if I don’t use pronouns but other student do or they want to use a “non gender appropriate” name in class like call me John not Jane.
Ah, then you’re stuck. Not good.
I’ve heard about these laws. I can understand (note, not agree with) schools not participating in a student’s reassignment efforts, but I cannot understand forcing a teacher to get in the middle of it.
And anyway, how would they prove you knew what was going on? That is, what’s really going to happen if you DON’T report and just ignore it?
Some student who’s pissed at the teacher notices the teacher addressing that creepy trans kid by the “wrong” name, or not correcting the name change, and tells his parents. The outraged parents report it to the school principal.
They punish the teacher for not cooperating in persecuting the trans kid to encourage fear in other teachers and intimidate them into joining in. Don’t know for sure if some odd kid is trans? Doesn’t matter, persecute them just to be safe and demonstrate loyalty to the regime. Ideally (from their viewpoint) all the kids who don’t fit in will be driven to suicide or killed by their peers.
Why were Zippos contraband at your school? Were disposable butane lighters like Bics also prohibited, or just the visible fluid kind?
I’m pretty sure that all lighters were prohibited at my school. The only reason to have lighters is to smoke which the school would want to crack down on, or vandalism which the school would really want to crack down on.
Dust. Sandals. Something about shaking.
That was always available to you.
This may or may not be useful to you; I’m just throwing it out there as something I periodically find myself being forced to keep in mind: Remember that you’re sharing the planet with people who are wrong.
Only if you “notice” it.
As long as you remember that some of them have their share, and think that you are selfish in not giving them yours, also.
Just curious when that was. I graduated in 1991, just outside Boston, and we still had a smoking area outside. We weren’t allowed to use it during/between classes, but before and after school hours and during lunch we could smoke there.
I assume it’s some fancy new use of the word. Clearly it wouldn’t be a slur for white people, since the OP made it very clear that they don’t want to use slurs out of a fear of hurting other people.