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Dozens of Midwestern teachers met online this week and traded tips on helping trans students change gender at school without their parents’ knowledge, while criticizing a raft of new Republican laws on sex and identity.
DailyMail.com gained access to an online session hosted by the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP), which is funded by the Department of Education, attended by some 30 teachers from Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois and beyond.
In the four-hour workshop, they discussed helping trans students in the face of new laws in Republican-run states on gender, pronouns, names, parents’ rights, bathroom access, and sports teams.
Some teachers said they followed the rules, but others discussed being ‘subversive,’ how their personal ‘code of ethics’ trumped laws, and how to ‘hide’ a trans student’s new name and gender from their parents.
Some teachers said they followed the rules, but others discussed being ‘subversive,’ how their personal ‘code of ethics’ trumped laws, and how to ‘hide’ a trans student’s new name and gender from their parents.
Kimberly Martin (left), a Michigan educator, and Jennifer Haglund of Iowa, say they’ll go above and beyond to help trans students
The exposé comes amid growing tensions between traditional parents, who worry about newfangled gender ideas in schools, and some progressive teachers, who say they need to protect trans students from their own families.
Kicking off the workshop, Angel Nathan, the MAP specialist who hosted the session, said attendees would review the new laws in a bid to ‘remedy the marginalizing effects and disrupt problematic policies.’
In the discussion and role-play sessions that followed, the teachers, administrators, principals, and counselors spoke about trans students and their families in a way that would alarm many parents.
Kimberly Martin, the DEI coordinator for Royal Oak Schools, which serves 5,000 K-12 students in Michigan, spoke about helping trans students keep their gender change a secret.
‘We’re working with our record-keeping system so that certain screens can’t be seen by the parents … if there’s a nickname in there we’re trying to hide,’ Martin told the online gathering.
Jennifer Haglund, counselor for Ames Community Schools, which serves 5,000 K-12 Iowa students, complained about Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds in March signing a law that bars biological males from competing on female sports teams.
She bragged about her ‘own activism’ and of taking part in protest marches.
‘I know that I have my own right code of ethics, and that doesn’t always go along with the law,’ Haglund said.
Shea Martin, an Ohio-based trans educator, who writes a ‘socialist, feminist, and anti-racist’ blog called Radical Teacher, said she worked against ‘laws that prohibit or restrict trans advocacy.’
‘The stakes are very high for trans youth,’ Martin said.
‘I think that requires working subversively and quietly sometimes to make sure that trans kids have what they need.’
DailyMail.com gained access to a private workshop where Midwestern teachers shared tips on helping kids transition without telling their parents
School board meetings across the Midwest, like this one in North Dakota, have seen tense exchanges over trans students and parents’ rights
Martin did not describe any subversive acts, but, later spoke about teachers addressing ‘sexuality’ with elementary students, who are aged between five and 10.
When talking about men, women, playground crushes, love, and marriage with youngsters, teachers should be wary of treating ‘reinforced heterosexuality as the norm,’ Martin said.
Finally, Yesenia Jimenez-Captain, the director of educational services at Woodland School District, which serves some 4,600 K-8 students across four schools in Lake County, Illinois, slammed conservative teachers in a nearby district.
Parents and teachers across Illinois have in recent years been angered by Democrat-led efforts to put tampons and sanitary napkins in boys’ bathrooms, so that trans female-to-male students can access them.
Jimenez-Captain told her colleagues about a nearby school board meeting that ‘exploded in violence’ over the tampon controversy.
‘That became a big violent issue cause the individuals who were involved are also educators … which is sickening.’
At no point in the session did any teacher say parents might know what’s best for their own kids, nor question whether affirmation-on-demand was the only way to help a trans-identified student.
Teaching new wave gender ideology in schools and secretly affirming trans-identified students have become hot-button issues in America’s culture wars between liberals and conservatives.
Some traditional parents worry about activist teachers influencing kids with radical gender ideas, and even encouraging them to transition.
Tensions have led to lawsuits and violent school board meetings across the country.
Republican politicians in Red states have introduced more than 500 bills affecting LGBTQ people this year, with dozens already signed into law, says the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
Whether male-to-female trans student athletes can compete against schoolgirls has become a divisive issue in schools, like this one in California
Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir Gender Queer (bottom right) is among the books that parents have tried to ban from school libraries
The Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP) serves 11.2 million students in 7,025 school districts across 13 states
Parents are clashing with teachers across the US over whether transgender teenagers can transition in classrooms without their knowledge – and most cases are not always solved in the principals’ office, and often end up in court
They include laws requiring teachers to tell parents about a student’s new name or pronoun, whether trans students can use bathrooms that don’t correspond with their birth sex, or ban trans girls from participating in girls’ sports.
Conservative parents’ groups have sought to ban books from classrooms and school libraries, including Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir Gender Queer, about the author’s struggle with their own sexual and gender identity.
Schools are under pressure to assist trans students in this fractious political environment, where the ‘gender-affirming’ model touted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other bodies, is increasingly called into question.
MAP, which hosted the workshop, is part of the Great Lakes Equity Center. Funded by the federal government under Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it serves 11.2 million students in 7,025 school districts across 13 states.
In November, MAP announced that it had secured an $8.5 million funding arrangement with the Department of Education, and millions more elsewhere. The department did not immediately answer DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
MAP operates across Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. It covers states with pro-trans laws and others with a more cautious approach.
