The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 235 Transcript
Jennifer Gonzalez, Host
GONZALEZ: According to recent studies, the number of people who identify as nonbinary or transgender has risen steadily in recent years. Your opinion on this is likely to fall into one of several camps: Maybe you see this as a reflection of society’s growing acceptance of gender fluidity. Maybe you see it as a bandwagon young people are jumping on just to be like their peers. Maybe you believe gender fluidity has always been a part of human existence and that those statistics only exist because we are just now getting around to naming and measuring it. Maybe you’re not sure what to make of it.
Regardless of where your understanding of gender fluidity lies, what you probably have in common with your fellow educators is that you want all of your students to feel safe, accepted, and loved while they are under your care. You know that if this doesn’t happen, they won’t be able to learn and grow. And for students whose gender identity lies outside what has traditionally been considered mainstream, creating that safety and acceptance isn’t just a simple matter of being nice to them. There are some very specific do’s and don’ts that, once we learn them, can make a huge difference in how these kids experience school.
In today’s episode, we’re going to review some of those do’s and don’ts. My guest is Dave Edwards, an educator who works to teach these principles through his website, Gender Inclusive Schools, and his brand-new book of the same name. As the parent of a transgender daughter who has experienced discrimination, Dave’s mission is a personal one. Through his trainings, his resources, and now his book, he helps educators learn how to proactively create safe learning environments for LGBTQ+ young people. In our conversation, we cover topics like names and pronouns, social transitioning, sports and activities, and access to facilities, like bathrooms, to name just a few.
One of my biggest takeaways from reading Dave’s book is that even those of us who consider ourselves to be strong supporters of gender-expansive kids can cause harm by doing things with the best of intentions. So I encourage everyone to listen — whether you’re uncertain and even uncomfortable about this topic, or you think you already have a good handle on how to be supportive. There’s still plenty to learn.
Before we get started, I’d like to thank The Wired Classroom for sponsoring this episode. Are you curious about tech integration but unsure where to start? The Wired Classroom — a free, monthly newsletter brought to you by Edutopia — is your new go-to guide for all things edtech. Whether you have questions about the latest tools, ethical AI use, or using technology to help craft better lesson plans, assessments, and more, The Wired Classroom is your ultimate resource. Packed with expert insights, innovative strategies, and practical tips tailored to your unique role as an educator, it’s designed to enhance your teaching *and* help drive deeper engagement. Recent issues have covered topics like “7 AI Tools That Help Teachers Work More Efficiently” and “Helping Students Use AI Creatively Without the Temptation of Cheating.” To join Edutopia’s community of educators already leveraging tech to transform their classrooms, head to cultofpedagogy.com/wired to supercharge your pedagogy.
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Now here’s my conversation with Dave Edwards about how we can build gender-inclusive schools.
GONZALEZ: Hey, Dave.
EDWARDS: Hello.
GONZALEZ: Welcome. I’m really glad to have you on. We are going to be talking about gender-inclusive schools today. Before we get into it, if you could just give my listeners a little bit about who you are and what kind of led you to writing this book.
EDWARDS: Awesome, yeah. So thanks, Jenn. I’m really excited to be on with you today. So my name’s Dave. My pronouns are he, him, and his. I’m a queer person and career educator. So I’ve held most jobs in public schools. So as I was getting ready to write this book, I’ve been really drawing on all of my experiences, both as an educator and then also as a parent too.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: So I got started as a paraprofessional in an autism program in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I’m from. Since then I’ve been a special education teacher, a special education coordinator, a dean of students, assistant head of school. Made the jump to higher education in 2015 where I was in charge of the teacher licensure program in emotional behavior disorders at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. So I have advanced degrees in educational psychology and special education. I’ve loved helping students and schools work with exceptional learners for a really long time. I made kind of a pivot to work in the LGBTQ+ inclusion space as a result of the discrimination that my oldest child experienced. So my oldest kid, Hildie, is 14 now, which is kind of outrageous. She’s headed to high school tomorrow, actually. We sought some very basic supports for her as a transgender girl in her kindergarten classroom. We were met with a lot of pushback and controversy that I don’t think we could have anticipated. We made some really simple requests to read a children’s book or to educate other students about her identity and, you know, the school community, you know, it’s pretty common now for school board meetings to turn into the kind of circus events.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Back in 2015, this was kind of one of the first. So hundreds of people were coming to school board events, groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, where you might know, like, Project 2025 held an anti-trans propaganda event in the school gymnasium. So things just got really, really out of hand really quickly. And we ended up having to pull her from that school and filed a human rights charge with the City of St. Paul because of the discrimination she experienced.
GONZALEZ: Wow.
EDWARDS: So a lot of the work I do is a result of kind of really wanting other school communities to be able to avoid some of the nonsense that my family went through.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: And so in 2020 I started doing Gender Inclusive Schools full time. We provide professional development and full-staff training and consulting for school communities on how to keep LGBTQ+ students safe and how to respond to incidents when they occur in a way that’s going to manage expectations.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: So that’s kind of my background. I do about, I think this last school year I was in 75 different school communities and over 75 in-person learning sessions. And that work took place across 18 different states. So there are a lot of schools I think right now responding to the people who show up at their doors and saying, “If someone exists, we get to talk about who they are, and we’re going to do that in a way that’s unapologetic and in a way that follows best practice recommendations.
GONZALEZ: Great. Can you share the URL so that, we’ll do it at the beginning and the end of this episode so people can find your site.
EDWARDS: Yeah. So if you go to www.genderinclusiveschools.org you’ll find me. We’re also very active on social media on Facebook and Instagram as well as Gender Inclusive Schools.
GONZALEZ: Yes. I have been loving your Instagram feed lately. Some of the stuff that you all put up there is just, it’s fantastic, so thank you for that.
EDWARDS: For sure.
GONZALEZ: Before we move to the next question, I noticed that you use the word “queer” to describe your identity. And I’m guessing that some people in my audience are used to that and have heard that plenty in these kinds of spaces. And other people might think, oh gosh, we’re not supposed to be saying that. That’s a slur. So would you, can you share a little bit more about the history of that word and what it means to you?
EDWARDS: Yeah. So when I do my sessions, we talk sometimes about how all words are made up, like every word we use at some point is a social construction of some kind. So the word “queer” has a pretty long history as being used to describe something that was different or maybe kind of like a less desirable feature like 200 years ago. It’s also been used in a celebratory way in LGBT communities for about a similar amount of time. So it’s a kind of a word that’s been used in different ways by different people. I use the word queer as like a signifier of being not straight and not cisgender.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: So it’s kind of like a way now of most people when they’re reclaiming it are using that word as just kind of to say, no, I’m not part of those, those communities. I’m part of this community over here.
GONZALEZ: Got it.
EDWARDS: That being said, because it’s such a complicated word, there are older people in the LGBT community who will never use that word because when it was used for them, it was associated with violence or harm. So that word was used before they were attacked. And I think, you know, language is unbelievably personable, or not personable but personal.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: And when we use, use a word, we can’t expect other people to use a word that’s going to cause them harm. So there are older people that I know where that’s like not a word that we use when we’re sharing space together because of their history. But in kind of academic circles, queer is also being used as kind of a standard to describe culture and literature and society.
GONZALEZ: Okay. Would you, is it fair to say that it’s kind of an umbrella term at this point?
EDWARDS: Yeah, absolutely.
GONZALEZ: For a member of the community in general?
EDWARDS: Yeah. It’s usually used in place of LGBTQ+.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: Especially with young people now.
GONZALEZ: Got it, got it. Thank you. Okay, so your book, which is called “Gender-Inclusive Schools: How to Affirm and Support Gender-Expansive Students.” What your book does is answers the question, what do gender-expansive students need from their school communities to thrive? So let’s just start with that term. What does gender-expansive mean in your book?
EDWARDS: Gender-expansive means having a gender expression, gender identity, or lived experiences that are different than the binary societal expectations for one sex assigned at birth. So kind of when a baby is born, the doctor or midwife says they’re a boy, girl, or intersex. And when folks have different gender expressions or identities that are different than those societal-held expectations of what a boy should do or what a girl should do, we’re using that umbrella term again — that “gender-expansive” — to describe those people. Some of the words that that’s replacing as language again continues to evolve, words like gender non-conforming or gender-diverse, are kind of going out of vogue a little bit and gender expansive is where, where folks are landing at this time. That could change in four or five years, but right now that’s kind of the word we’re using, gender expansive to describe those kids who don’t fit neatly into those boxes.
GONZALEZ: Great. Okay. So there’s so much in your book, and we’re not going to be able to get to everything, but let’s just start with the two guiding principles that everything else sort of is built from. Tell me what those are and how they serve as a useful umbrella over all the decisions a school makes to support gender-expansive students.
EDWARDS: Yeah. So when I was writing the book, I was looking for some through-lines that would tie the different chapters of content together. And then also some things that just continually come up when I do this work in person with schools, for the faculty sessions or the small group consultations, as they’re setting up policies, or describing, like, implementation guidance for the schools. And so I did arrive at two, I think, really great guiding principles that do come up a lot. And the first one we have is that we’re going to support happy and healthy kids. And what I mean by that is all the practices in the book are associated with positive outcomes for gender-expansive kids. So doing these sets of things is associated with them being happy and healthy. And I think that’s a wonderful kind of counterpoint to the way sometimes transgender and nonbinary and gender-expansive students are supported in schools. Because there is so much legal kind of nonsense going around, different laws being passed that are guiding their access to things like facilities or using their name and pronouns. And I think when school communities only focus on their legal responsibilities, everybody loses. And I know as the parent of a trans kid, like, I don’t want my child’s teachers to, like, support her in the way that they should because it’s required by law. Like, I want them to support her because they care about her and she’s an important person that’s a member of the school community. So that support, happy and healthy kids guidelines, you know, that really comes from each chapter, looking at the different content and saying, like, well how is this related to positive outcomes? If it’s not, we shouldn’t be doing it, and if we are, it needs to be the best thing possible because we really care about these kids.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. I really liked that part where you sort of explained the difference between doing something with the goal of happiness, you know, and health of the child versus we have to do this, we have to comply with this law. That’s a completely different mindset.
EDWARDS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. And I can see it guiding way different behaviors.
EDWARDS: Yeah. And when I work with schools too, it’s like the district when they select a new reading initiative, like they’re not running it by legal the same way they are the LGBTQ+ presentations. Or they’re not saying there’s a, well, in some cases, maybe they are but like they aren’t saying, “This is the way we teach math because it’s required by state law and we’re going to get sued if we don’t.” But then when they’re looking at those same, like, these are just daily practices —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: — that support real students and real student needs. Somehow when it’s an LGBTQ+ topic it becomes a legal matter, and I think everybody loses as that happens.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. So that’s the first principle: Support happy and healthy kids. And then what was the other guiding principle?
EDWARDS: Yeah. The second guiding principle is protect privacy and confidentiality. So all information related to a student’s sexual orientation and gender identity should be treated like private medical data. And I think as we kind of go through each chapter and the content, there is an element of privacy and confidentiality that’s present across every single chapter. So when a student changes their name and pronouns, who should be informed? Who has a right to that information? When they’re accessing facilities, is that something that can just be shared without their permission or do students have agency over controlling information that describes who they are? So I think that privacy and confidentiality piece is so important. And most of the breaches of confidentiality at school look like educators trying to be helpful. So they say, “Oh, you’ve told me this information about who you are. I’m going to tell my colleagues so that they can be kind and respectful too.”
GONZALEZ: Yes.
EDWARDS: When the reality is you need to be constantly checking and allowing students to have agency over that information and saying things like, “I was thinking I could talk to this teacher, and then they would know your pronouns already.” Or whatever it might be. But giving students the opportunity to say, “Yeah, that’s a great idea,” or like, “No, that’s okay. I would rather handle that myself.”
GONZALEZ: Right. I could see myself making that mistake too, just being enthusiastic and trying to be supportive. There was a few times in reading your book where I sort of saw myself being a well-meaning, and I thought, “Oh. That, I’m glad I’m reading this.” So I think this book is good also for people who see themselves as very active, enthusiastic allies, not necessarily people who even need to learn more. They will still learn a lot of important stuff in this.
EDWARDS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Well, and I think, especially, like, inclusion work for communities that you’re not a part of sometimes isn’t intuitive.
GONZALEZ: Yes. Yeah.
EDWARDS: So it’s like, what you think would be a really good or helpful thing might have all these other unintended consequences that you haven’t thought through.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
EDWARDS: And with, you know, privacy and confidentiality, it’s like, once something happens, it’s kind of done. Once someone has that information when they weren’t supposed to, you can’t really put it back. So that’s why it’s so important to be proactive.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. You’ve also got this feature about responding to challenging questions in the review and reflection in each chapter.
EDWARDS: Yeah. So with each chapter there’s a content focus, and then there’s a kind of check-in for our guiding principles about supporting happy and healthy kids and respecting privacy and confidentiality. The other feature that’s in there that I think is really awesome is the responding to challenging questions piece. And that comes, again, directly from my work with schools. So a lot of times, schools will call me and say, you know, this parent just called, and they said this thing. What should I have said? I said this instead. Or like, I got flustered and I wasn’t sure what to say, so now I said this thing. And one thing we keep coming back to in the book is that school communities are safest when they’re predictable and where all the adults say the exact same things. So if someone expresses a comment that, you know, has some bias or some discrimination in it, how do we know that all the adults in the building are going to respond in exactly the same way? Because when they don’t, then, like, a parent or caregiver may ask like four different staff members until they get the response that they want. Or someone might say something on accident that doesn’t reflect the values of the school community or what your policies are. So it’s incredibly important for educators to think about and practice before a situation occurs so they can really say what they mean, mean what they say, and most importantly protect those gender-expansive kids.
GONZALEZ: Yes, yes. And I really liked your point about kind of standardizing the response across the board, that that, I think that helps, especially teachers that are kind of wading into this as unfamiliar territory and aren’t, they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing and just sort of having that script and having a practice is really going to probably give a lot of those teachers some more security that they can handle it.
EDWARDS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Well, and even being able to run, you know, run through, in my trainings we do, we role play. Someone just said this thing. What are the first two to three sentences you’d use to respond?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: And then when we all get on the same page, it also gives them permission to use that response, and it provides an opportunity for administrators to explicitly say, no, you get to say this. Like, no, we have your back. You’re going to be supported. We’re all saying this at once, so you don’t have to feel like you’re going out on a limb or like you’re stepping too far. This is what our shared values are as a school community, and this is how we enforce them.
GONZALEZ: Yes. And you’ve, you’ve got at the beginning sort of some, like, blanket statements that kind of, you know, can be used in almost any situation or customized. So maybe as we start to get into some of these sections, we can, you know, list off a couple of those.
EDWARDS: Yeah, that’d be great.
GONZALEZ: But there, there really is, I mean I would really urge everybody listening to get a copy of this book, because we can’t go over everything. So we’re going to kind of just hit on some of the major, like, areas of consideration that educators might have when it comes to supporting these students. So let’s just sort of go through some of these sections and have you share, maybe, like your most important recommendations. That way if somebody listening never ends up reading this book, they’ll still have like really key practices that they can start to apply —
EDWARDS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: — right away. So the first section let’s talk about is names and pronouns. What, what are some things that you recommend teachers and educators do around that?
EDWARDS: Yeah. So I think educational best practice is to use the language that people ask you to use to describe who they are. And this applies to gender-expansive, transgender, and nonbinary students too. So when someone asks you, I know when I introduce myself as like Dave, like, “My name’s Dave. My pronouns are he, him, his.” I’ve never had someone say, like, “Let me see your birth certificate.” Or like go into like this big thing about determining if I could actually use that language. And so best practice and what I recommend for schools is that like their policies just say, “Here at our school we use the name and pronouns our students ask us to use, no questions.” And I think by lowering the temperature on names and pronouns, we really accomplish this like, well let’s, to get name and pronouns out of the way so our students can focus on learning. We don’t want to be spending all of our time really focusing or trying to navigate concerns like this. Let’s have policies that are proactive so we can keep all of these concerns as small as possible in a way that doesn’t impact learning. So the name and pronouns chapter, we have lots of wonderful resources. I’m super proud of the reproducible forms that are present in this chapter too. There’s an opportunity, you know, when a student changes their name or pronoun and you might have known that student for three, four years. It’s kind of reasonable that mistakes are going to happen in that moment of transition. We say for educators, it’s a reasonable expectation for you to get better at a student’s name and pronouns over the course of the school year. So we offer some tools in the book to make that possible. One of the ones I’m really proud of and I think are really functional and I’ve seen educators using them already is we have a form — educators social story practice form for name and pronouns. You’re able to kind of list the student’s new name and then all the different versions of their pronouns, and then there’s a social story where you plug those in so you can begin practicing in conversation to fluently using a student’s pronouns, especially if you’re new to maybe using singular they or nonbinary pronouns. This is a great opportunity to practice away from a student. We want to do that practicing kind of outside of a position where it might cause harm so that when we are interacting with that person in the classroom, we kind of reduce the number of mistakes that we’re making.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. And that, that, I thought that was just, it’s probably one of the main things I hear from families even of, you know, people that are transitioning that “I can’t get it,” “It feels weird, it sounds weird in my mouth,” “I can’t get it right.” And that is the recommendation that I have heard a few times too is just practice it, rehearse it. You know, you’re trying to train yourself to use different language until it doesn’t feel so unusual and foreign in your mouth, so yeah.
EDWARDS: Yeah. Yeah. And like, I encourage folks to give, you know, give themselves grace. Like, it is normal to learn new things. I also think name and pronouns are such an amazing opportunity to, like, tell your students, “Oh, I can’t do this right now. I went on my own, and I practiced, and I got better and changed who I am because I care so much about you.” And like, what a cool thing to be able to demonstrate. Like, I couldn’t do this before. I can now because you’re so important.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: And also now that I’ve done this, I can treat lots more people with kindness and respect so what a cool thing for students to be a part of.
GONZALEZ: Right. Yeah. So what about this scenario, because I hear about this scenario too where, and I hear this mostly from sort of parents rights groups. Of just, you know, I don’t like the idea of my kid’s teachers calling them something that I haven’t even given permission yet for, for that to happen, and you all are going against my wishes. What is a response to that?
EDWARDS: Yeah. I think there’s a, a kind of an odd expectation that takes place where parents and caregivers expect educators to be an extension of their parenting and their privately held beliefs. You know, our public schools are places of public accommodation. And whatever privately held beliefs we have aren’t always going to be represented and featured in a place that is, you know, free of a dominant religion or a dominant, like, value system. So I think it’s a little bit odd. I think a lot of times we need to, again, lower the temperature on names and pronouns. So there’s no evidence to suggest that you can encourage or discourage anyone’s gender identity or sexual orientation. So the actions schools are taking are not making more people confused about their identity. We aren’t creating more trans people than there were before because we’re actually honoring who people are as their authentic selves. So I think that kind of usually lowers the temperature again a little bit too, realizing that no adults can have that influence over anyone. I would say it’s developmentally normal for students to kind of try on different language to see how it fits, and I think the most logical place for that to occur is at school. And if, you know, as educators we’re making that space for students to explore who they are, I think it’s super unreasonable to think that they’re going to call home immediately, and then kind of out students or have that conversation. When I work with teachers, I say, like, if you saw, you know, a high school student holding the hand with someone of a different gender at school, you wouldn’t call home and say, “Hey, did you know that your child was straight? I just wanted to call and make sure that was okay with you.” Or if they used he/him pronouns, binary pronouns, you wouldn’t call home the same way either. So those moments where we treat someone differently just because they’re in a protected class of person, that’s like at the core of discrimination. And we’re not, as educators, especially in public school settings, going to, going to follow that.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. One of the, one of the things that you mention in the book that, again, this is a little bit more leaning toward the happiness piece of it that I thought was such a nice shift, and I’m just going to read this to you because you’re sort of talking about what should be a celebratory thing. You’re talking about kids shifting names and shifting pronouns, and this is the quote from Page 32. “If you’re a teacher, your classroom may be the first place a student uses a gender-affirming name that they will use for the rest of their lives. It might be read out loud at the most important milestone events in their education and career. It might be used on their marriage license or at their children’s birth certificates. It is a privilege to bear witness to this moment and to support your students as they explore their authentic selves.” I loved that because it, it elevates this experience of being a teacher of a child who is exploring their gender and elevating it to such an important special moment, because it is at school that is often the testing ground for these things. And so to be a participant and a witness to that should be a very special thing. So I’m, and there’s quotes kind of like that all throughout the book, and I just want to like highlight a couple of those because they’re just —
EDWARDS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: — it’s a very different approach than just “do it because you have to.”
EDWARDS: Yeah. And you know, I loved being a teacher. I loved watching my students achieve different milestones or be able to do things that they couldn’t do before because of what we were doing in the classroom. My first job as a teacher was as a special education teacher in Chicago Public Schools, and I had third and fourth graders who were learning to read for the first time. And like, what an awesome thing to be there at that moment where that child, like, couldn’t do this before and then we worked really hard together, sometimes in groups, sometimes individually. But now they could do this thing and whatever they do in their life, I was there when you first learned how to read.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: And I think that’s an incredibly special thing. And in a very similar way, for our educators who are supporting gender-expansive students, it’s like, you get to be there when they are figuring out who they are. And these kids are going to go on and do amazing, wonderful things, but you were there in that moment, and you can know that you were unbelievably supportive and affirming and it maybe, maybe even gave them the courage to be their authentic self. And that’s really special, and I think, you know, all the doom and gloom around name and pronouns erases some of that joy and that discovery.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
EDWARDS: And like, if you’ve seen, you know, we talk about social transitions in the book too. If you’ve watched a kid after they’ve gotten a new set of clothes and are going by a new name or pronoun, it’s pretty magical and wonderful to watch them bounce away in their step or be more confident in who they are in all aspects of their life.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Like, that’s a really wonderful, joyful thing.
GONZALEZ: You know, and that, that also just, within the whole world of teaching and how exhausted and overworked all teachers are, to remind us of how special our job is to be there and present for so many of these important milestones I think is just, you know, really fantastic. One other quote that I, that is from kind of this same topic, has to do with the rehearsal of the names and learning to get better at the names and pronouns. And you just said quite simply, model what you want your students to do when they encounter situations that require new learning. We’re asking our kids all the time to stretch and grow and fail and stumble and try new things. And that’s such a good reminder that we can be demonstrating those same approaches when we have to try and get better at something.
EDWARDS: Absolutely. And we talk about it in the book too, when you make a mistake with someone’s name and pronouns, starting with, “Thank you so much for correcting me,” saying the correct name and pronoun, and then moving on quickly.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
EDWARDS: And by saying, “Thank you for correcting me, you’re demonstrating that you want people to continue doing it until things are correct, and then things are right.”
GONZALEZ: Yes.
EDWARDS: Instead of being defensive, instead of making it about you and saying, “Well I’m just, you know, I come from a different generation.”
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Or “This is all new to me.” Because when we do that, sometimes it makes it seem like someone’s existence is a burden, and that’s not what we want. We want that, like, that moment of like, I get to do this inclusion work. I get to support you. That’s one of the best parts of my job. And I think for most teachers it really is too. It’s like, I, sometimes in my sessions, an educator will be like, “Well what if a student changes their name again” or like this thing. And I’m like, that’s not, so that’s probably going to be maybe five minutes out of your day.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: You do so many more complicated things with your assessments and your lesson planning and like all the other factors that are going on in your classroom. Name and pronouns are like the smallest piece that can have such a wonderful impact on making your students feel safe.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. So that’s names and pronouns. The second thing we’re going to hit on is social transitions, and we’re going to get to medical transitions next. So let’s differentiate those two. What exactly is social transitioning to you?
EDWARDS: Yeah. So when we use the term “social transition” in a school context, we’re talking about the steps someone may or may not take to bring their outward expression of their gender and their identity into congruence with who they are and who they know themselves to be. So for students, this looks like maybe changing names and pronouns, maybe not. It looks like changing your gender expression, so the way you might express your gender through things like hair or clothing or your mannerisms. It may mean accessing different facilities, so going in a different binary restroom if those are the choice available. Or participating in clubs and different sports, things like that, in a way that matches your gender identity. So all of those steps are kind of in that social transition process.
GONZALEZ: Okay. And it’s going to be different for every kid? And it could change from month to month or year to year?
EDWARDS: Absolutely. And I think that hopefully comes through in the book too is that there’s no prescriptive set of steps someone has to take to socially transition. There’s no one correct way to be a gender-expansive person or like a criteria that’s involved. We’re really just allowing people and students especially to be their authentic selves and use the language and experience the world in a way that makes them feel seen and affirmed.
GONZALEZ: So what would be some of your key recommendations for teachers in terms of supporting kids through social transitions?
EDWARDS: Yeah. I think there are a lot of considerations for social transitions. I think number one should be, like, following a student’s lead and their parents and caregivers if they’re involved in the process too.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: So we shouldn’t take any steps to support gender-expansive kids at school unless we’ve checked to make sure that that’s what that student wants or what, that’s what their parents and caregivers would like to. So we’re always going to let them kind of guide that process for social transitions. I think at the core of a social transition and the considerations for educators. Educators are especially figuring out the practical steps that are necessary for all the other members of the school community to be respectful. So if someone uses a new name and pronoun, how are you going to tell students? How are you going to tell or are you going to tell different educators in the building? What’s the best way that communicates that information that also honors the student’s wishes? So there are some kids who will just want a simple announcement, like saying something like this is this student. These are their, this is their name, these are their pronouns. One of the ways we show respect at our school is by using the name and pronouns our friends ask us to use. We’re all going to use this language moving forward.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: I’ve worked with middle school students who want to do a PowerPoint, like they want to tell their story and show baby pictures and talk about what gender means as a social construct, just really educate all of their friends and peers.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: That, that’s awesome. And if that’s what your students would like, if that makes them feel more comfortable, then great. But in no way should a student be required to educate the people in their school community in order to be safe.
GONZALEZ: Okay, yeah.
EDWARDS: So it’s like, you know, we can do that work kind of on the back end. We can offer options but then we’re always going to be following the student’s lead.
GONZALEZ: So another thing that you say in the book is that school staff should never accelerate, delay, encourage, or discourage a student in sharing information about their gender with classmates. And I could see this is one of those other places where I saw potentially something I would end up doing. If a student confided in me and I would think, “Oh, I’m going to make sure that everybody knows,” and that, that may not be something. So is there sort of like a checklist or something that you can kind of go through with the student themselves so that you can say, what about this? What should I do here? Is this okay? And to kind of get their, their input.
EDWARDS: Yeah. And I think having a gender support meeting is sometimes helpful. I know when I work with parents of gender-expansive kids it can be really helpful for them to sit down with a couple people at school, some trusted adults that work with their student.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: To really walk through those different items, like which facility is the student going to access?
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: How are you going to tell a student’s peers? Are you going to tell these people over here?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: What’s involved and what would be best? So I think yeah, that, that process is always, like, coming back and forth and checking.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: I think with social transitions too, there’s kind of this realization for gender-expansive kids that occasionally you do give up a little bit of your privacy in order to be treated correctly. So I worked with a kindergarten nonbinary student who used they/them pronouns, and they were walking through the halls every day of school, and they kept getting misgendered by random adults, other teachers, or other students in the lunch line. But they didn’t want to tell anyone that their pronouns were they and them. So there was this moment of like, oh well, you kind of have to tell people in order for them to treat you correctly.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Which seems like common sense to us, but I think it’s also like a really great life skill for students to start kind of navigating. Like, oh, I need to take control a little bit. This is me, and I’m important.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: But I do have to communicate or talk to other people to make sure that I get what I need. And that’s true with social transitions too. It’s like, we can do this, and this is the result. It’s like sometimes even changing, like, name and pronouns in school information systems, being able to look at a student and say, you know, if I change this, it’s going to go to Google Classroom. It’s going to impact your email. It’s going to impact, like, when you’re on, like if we do distance learning, it’s going to be displayed in the corner by your profile picture.
GONZALEZ: Right.
EDWARDS: Or your, your video screen. So giving lots of options is best practice, and then kind of helping students navigate and fully understand the implications of the decisions that they make.
GONZALEZ: Okay, okay. Next topic, medical transitions. And this is, I think, usually where we find the real panic starts to come from the parents groups in terms of what they believe is happening, what teachers are encouraging in schools. That we’re sending them off to surgery on their lunch break and —
EDWARDS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: So how, how are you recommending that schools approach this topic?
EDWARDS: Yeah. So medical transitions are completely outside of a school district’s responsibility or an educator’s responsibility. And in the book, I actually, you know, this is the only chapter of the book that I asked a medical provider to come provide some content. Because the message that I want to communicate more than anything else is that medical transitions aren’t the business of school staff in any way at all. So I know with my own child, you know, Hildie, right when she transitioned in kindergarten, I would say in the next year we had four or five different people ask us if Hildie had had “the surgery” with quotation marks.
GONZALEZ: Wow.
EDWARDS: So I think there’s so much misinformation — that’s very deliberate, by the way. But it’s misinformation that’s meant to kind of whip up hysteria about the care that’s provided to trans kids or gender-expansive kids. Almost always, school staff have no role to play in, in a student’s medical transition, beyond just being affirming and supportive the same way you would with any other student’s medical needs or concerns.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: We don’t, like, spend a lot of time in the book talking about teacher practices because there aren’t like that many. I think for your listeners’ kind of understanding, kind of the progression of gender-expansive care can be helpful for your own informational purposes, but there isn’t really, again, a time where that’s going to come up at school. So for young kids, you know, kids pre-puberty, the only intervention that they might experience is, is receiving puberty blockers of some, some form. And this really just hits pause on puberty and gives kids more time to think about who they are and what they would like for their own future. Puberty blockers are used for lots of cisgender kids, probably more often for cisgender kids who are entering puberty too soon, and there are a lot of medical reasons that we don’t want a child in first, second grade to be starting puberty. So they’ve been used for, you know, 20, 30 years for those circumstances. Everything about puberty blockers is reversible as well. So I think that’s another kind of lower-the-temperature moment to say, like, “No, long-term things are not happening.”
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Also, talk in the book a lot about the value of expertise. And it’s amazing kind of the armchair opinions or like the casual “I did the research” type of opinion that come up regarding the medical care of trans youth. If you’re not personally impacted, like I really encourage everyone to not have a strong opinion about the, the health care that trans kids receive beyond knowing that we don’t want anyone else making decisions for our own families and our own children.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: A lot of the laws that are going on around the country I think come back to, like, who is the government to come in and get between, like, the conversations I have with my wife and my child and my child’s care team, with their doctor and social worker and clinical psychologist.
GONZALEZ: Right.
EDWARDS: I don’t want anybody, nobody else’s opinion really matters in this moment. I’m going to trust the folks who do this for their job, who have seen hundreds and thousands of trans kids and are really focused on doing what’s best for her over someone who just says, like, kind of random things and kind of flies in and has this very strong opinion that’s going to stop my child from accessing the, the care that her doctors recommend.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. Next up is facilities access. So this is, I guess, bathrooms, locker rooms, places that tend to be gender binary, basically.
EDWARDS: Yeah. And facilities access is one of the most commonly, like, kind of, most common questions that folks reach out with. I would say name and pronouns, and facilities access, and then sports and activities, which I’m sure we’ll get to in a second.
GONZALEZ: Yep.
EDWARDS: Are like, they’re like the highflier needs of support. And I would say that they’re, like, people are commonly reaching out with questions on these topics, not because it’s coming up a lot in school, but because of the outside influences and hysteria that’s usually whipped up —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: — regarding the supports for gender-expansive kids. So it is undeniable and every major medical and psychological association would recommend that trans kids and gender-expansive kids access the facilities that match their gender identity. We live in the United States where many states have laws specifically prohibiting best practice.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: So it’s very, you know, it’s kind of a cultural moment where educators know what’s best for kids but then they’re sometimes prohibited from following those recommendations by either their school district policies or by state law. If we think that’s confusing as adults, it’s also really confusing for kids too, to be messaged like values of inclusion and respect as being universal, but then navigating circumstances that make that impossible. So if that’s possible, making sure that students have access to the facilities that match their gender identity. Along with that, a best practice is that any student at school should have access to an increased privacy facility regardless of their gender identity. So any student that would like increased privacy should be able to have increased privacy at school. It shouldn’t be a condition of enrollment that you need to show your body to someone else to benefit from the free and appropriate public education. We’re, you know, in 2024. There are wonderful single stall restroom designs that cost about the same as regular, traditional binary restrooms. It’s really just a matter of doing that work and making that a possibility for your school community.
GONZALEZ: And so, right, so this would be sort of like what a lot of us teachers had as, where it’s a faculty bathroom, it’s just, you open the door, there’s the bathroom, you close it and that’s all. The whole room is to yourself.
EDWARDS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: And a lot of them will have like a bank of those kind of floor to ceiling stalls, and then a common area to wash hands. It’s very similar to how most elementary schools are structured where they come out of the bathroom to wash hands in the hallway. What ends up happening is accessible facilities for gender-expansive kids, usually increased accessibility for folks with disabilities, for folks that have other needs that require, you know, increased privacy in the bathroom. So by taking care of one population, you’re usually helping out some other folks too.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. And then, so okay, so then let’s move to the sports and activities because that’s also a super hot-button issue. What are your recommendations when it comes to those things?
EDWARDS: Yeah. So I always say, like, best practice and then kind of working in the circumstance where you are. So best practice is that gender-expansive kids will participate on the sports team that matches their gender identity and that is best for their personal safety and Security. That’s not possible in many states, but that doesn’t really change what the best practice is. You know, I think there’s so much misinformation on this topic as well about people participating in sports just to, it’s usually, you know, people complaining about what they perceive as men’s and women’s sports or taking away opportunities from women.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: The reality is that like trans kids are not participating in this way in pre-K to 12th grade schools.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: I mean, there was a bill in Utah banning participation for trans girls in sports. The authors of the bill were asked if they could come up with one trans student that was participating in sports in the state of Utah at the time and they couldn’t. So it’s, again, I think this hypothetical problem that we want to debate and talk about —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: — at this expense of the humanity of the real people that are involved.
GONZALEZ: Right.
EDWARDS: I think for all of these too, like facilities access and name and pronouns, when we have a debate about someone’s human rights and their presence, it’s incredibly harmful. So like I know we’ve had to turn off the news like in the car listening to NPR or like hearing coverage of different bills that are introduced or what certain people in power have said about trans folks. And like it’s incredibly harmful, and even in states where trans kids are protected, they’re still, they’re not immune from this discourse or they’re not immune from hearing what politicians have said or the way they’re dehumanized or talked about only in regards to their sex assigned at birth and not the person that they are every single day.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. So in the rest of the book, you do get into sort of some policy stuff, assessment.
EDWARDS: Yeah, I love, kind of in the first, first part of the book, we have kind of a school climate assessment. We have the gender-inclusive practices assessment —
GONZALEZ: Right.
EDWARDS: — is what it’s called.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: And those, that assessment just really had some indicators that are present in the content in the rest of the book. But thinking about your own school community —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: — and whether or not, like, you have these different protections or what are your policies or what are your visible displays of inclusion?
GONZALEZ: Right.
EDWARDS: Or how are your values communicated to students? And sometimes starting with that assessment can really surface the different experiences educators have. You might have one educator who’s like, “Well I know what I do in my classroom, and we do all of these things.” But someone down the hall might be doing and teaching in a very different way. So that assessment can be a really good starting point. I don’t think I said this yet, but I love this book as a kind of really logical PLC text to focus week after week with a group of educators because there are those reflection components after each chapter, and it really just surfaces all of the kind of, again, like hot-button, like most important features of a school community in regards to gender-expansive students and then allows everyone to share their own experiences and then arrive at a shared understanding of how to move forward together.
GONZALEZ: So I know, I feel like I know my audience pretty well, and I think most of the people listening are listening with, with good intention and wanting to learn how to be better. But I also think there are probably some listening who are listening out of concern, that they don’t like this as a trend. They don’t like where we’re going as a society, and they feel that as, as teachers, as schools, if we are supporting this, that we’re contributing to something that is ultimately going to harm kids because there is that narrative that this is a harmful thing. So the book has plenty of statements that teachers can make to community members, but what would you say to teachers that are listening to this who deep in their hearts have that as a concern?
EDWARDS: I come back that kind of statement again that there is nothing we can do as adults to influence, either encourage or discourage, a student’s gender identity. And if we kind of arrive back at that place of like, well, I’m not changing anything. I am just supporting students for who they are. That kind of idea that we’re somehow contributing or encouraging or like furthering this trend doesn’t really hold up to that scrutiny. I also think it’s important, sometimes we’re tempted to be like, oh, our young people these days. They’re coming up with all these new genders. Like, they’re all on TikTok and like Instagram Reels and like this is all made up.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: And so new. And we never had this when I was growing up. There’s a wonderful resource map from PBS called gender-expansive cultures over time.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
EDWARDS: And it shows throughout all recorded history on nearly every continent there have been societies and cultures that have respected and revered third, fourth, fifth gender options. So I think kind of arriving back at this idea that, like, no, this isn’t something new. Gender-expansive people have always existed. What’s happening now is that kids and students are finding the language to accurately describe who they are, and they have the safe environments that are necessary for them to express those identities. So there isn’t an increase of trans kids. That’s not happening at all. And I think also with this too we, we get stuck in this kind of narrative of tragedy related to trans kids. You know, there are so many really scary and very real negative mental health outcomes for trans youth that are absolutely a problem and need to be addressed. But we also know that those outcomes are a result of the discrimination they experience, not an inherent need or deficiency on their part.
GONZALEZ: Right.
EDWARDS: So, like, we get kind of focused on this tragedy narrative. We’re missing all of the trans joy narratives that I think if you know a trans kid, if you’re involved in the queer and LGBTQ+ communities you see these in real time, but those aren’t usually communicated. There are trans youth who are doing amazing things. I obviously think my own child is pretty special and amazing, and she does do wonderful things. But there are so many kids who are just living their lives, and they’re going to college, they’re starting families. People miss that there are transgender adults who have families, have multiple children, have lasting partnerships with, with their own, like, intimate partners and family members. You know, there are trans folks who are celebrating 40 years of being married. Like, it’s not something new, but it is something that often gets lost. And again, that makes sense because, you know, we’re at this moment where we’re trying to take, you know, our government is trying to take the rights away from so many people in so many different contexts. So that gets the focus, but the day-to-day, like, family with a trans kid who are eating dinner and doing homework help and arguing; I know in my family about, like, the makeup that you’re allowed to go out of the house wearing. Or, like, if you’ve done your homework or if you’ve told me the truth about your homework. Like, all of those conversations, the very mundane, the very normal things that happen with families with gender-expansive kids.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: Those get lost, I think, too often.
GONZALEZ: So before I ask, I’ve got one more final question, but let’s just remind people of the best place where they can go online to learn more from you.
EDWARDS: Yeah, so genderinclusiveschools.org is probably the best way to get in contact with me specifically, either about my book or about the really wonderful professional development services that we offer. I think for a more daily kind of fun interaction, social media is great. Our Facebook page has about 115,000 followers and reaches nearly 3 million people every month. So we have a very active group of people that are very passionate about supporting gender-expansive kids and all LGBTQ+ students. So Facebook and Instagram are another really wonderful place. I think if you’re wanting to get an idea of what my professional development services are like, reading the book is a great, great place to start. I think, I’m really proud of the book sounding like me and sounding like the advice that we, and conversations that we have with teachers all the time.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. It’s a fantastic book. So here’s how I would like to wrap this up. One of the quotes that you have early in the book, it really resonated with me, and this is what it says. “You don’t have to fully understand someone’s identity to not harm them.” So I would just love to hear a little bit more from you on that idea.
EDWARDS: This final thought comes up in every session that we do, and I think it’s a great kind of starting spot and place to get to for educators, this idea that you don’t have to be an expert on gender identity or LGBTQ+ people in order to not cause your students harm during the school day. So we can quickly, all of us together who work in schools, we can rise to a fluency and ability level where we’re not saying the wrong things or we’re not making mistakes that are hurting our students and hurting our gender-expansive students. I will say though this “not causing them harm” is a starting point, right? If you ask most teachers, like, was it a success today because you didn’t harm students? Like, no. Like, I can do more, I can do better. Like, we really want to get to a place where we’re affirming and celebrating our students and who they are for everything they are in their identity. It’s kind of that idea that, like, well, I can come up quickly to more of an actually neutral place, and then I continue learning and growing so I can look at my students and say, “I see you for everything that you are and your entire identity, and I’m so glad you’re here.” And I think getting to that point is really what we want. But for students or educators engaging in new learning, it’s like, no, you can get to a spot where you can use a student’s pronouns. I will say even for educators who don’t agree or might have privately held beliefs that they would say are in conflict with some of their students’ identities —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
EDWARDS: — you can also get to a spot where you can continue doing your job and caring about your students and not causing them harm even if you haven’t changed what you’re thinking and feeling. So it’s like a very functional way of looking at school communities and saying, “Well, we all can get behind this. These are the practices that are associated with not hurting people. That’s the bare minimum, but we can all do it, and I think that’s sometimes really empowering for educators.”
GONZALEZ: Dave Edwards, thank you so much. Thank you for all the work that you did that led up to this, for writing this book, for the training you do, and I hope that this helps reach a lot more teachers out there, a lot more schools so that we can celebrate these kids and keep them happy and healthy.
EDWARDS: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Like I said before, I’m very passionate about helping educators get what they need, again, to move from that place of not causing harm to celebrating students, and I think that’s most, most of why a lot of us became teachers. We want to see students grow. We want to see students prepared to participate in the world after they leave school too, and all of these inclusive principles are part of kind of setting that background knowledge and preparing them for the future.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. Thanks so much.
EDWARDS: Thank you.
For a full transcript of this episode and links to Dave’s book, visit cultofpedagogy.com, click Podcast, and choose episode 235. To get a bimonthly email from me about my newest blog posts, podcast episodes, courses and products, sign up for my mailing list at cultofpedagogy.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day.