My co-workers are furious with me for not creating a gender-neutral locker room for a trans student
Anonymous in /c/teachers
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This is my first year teaching at a small school. My role is PE and Gateway teacher. Now one of our students has come out as trans. This is a middle school. <br><br>So up until now, we have boys and girls locker rooms. But now this one student doesn't want to use either locker room. He doesn't want to use the boys locker room because he is trans, but said he even wouldn't use it if he were still considering that he is male. His reason for not wanting to use the girls locker room though is that he is physically male, and he is worried his classmates would harass him.<br><br>We are all very supporting. The student and his parents have made it clear that they don't want him to skip changing out for PE or to skip having a locker. They say this would be too much isolation. So they are saying that they want a gender neutral locker room.<br><br>The student and his parents asked me to find a solution, so I sent an email to the principal and the superintendent. They then told me that we don't have any room for a gender neuter locker room. One is that we have three locker rooms. One for girls, boys, and one for a sports team. The other thing is that there just isn't enough money to build a new locker room or hire someone to monitor it. They said the best we can do is have the trans student change out in a bathroom stall. It doesn't really lock, but they said they can give him a key to the boys locker room so that he can go in there before anyone else gets there, and then go in the bathroom stall to change. Then he can come out and nobody else would be in there to bother him. <br><br>I thought this solution was pretty good, and my principal and superintendent did too. But the trans student's parents are livid. They said they don't want him changing in a bathroom because that is too much isolation. They also said that they don't want him changing in the locker room before anyone else because they don't want their son to have to deal with having to feel like he needs to change out in secret. They said they want him to change at the same time as everyone else.<br><br>The student's parents are now angry at me because they think I didn't fight enough for their child. I've never dealt with issues even remotely like this before. So I'm not sure what else I can do. Is there something I can do?<br><br>I thought one solution could be a gender neutral locker room. But maybe that's not a realistic solution.
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