Five books out this year offer invaluable resources for educators and others seeking to support transgender and gender nonconforming students and make schools places where children of all gender identities may learn and flourish.
This piece was originally published as my Mombian newspaper column, so I had to keep the reviews short to fit my allotted word count. Click the titles or images for fuller reviews of each volume!
Gender-Inclusive Schools: How to Affirm and Support Gender-Expansive Students, by David Edwards (Free Spirit Publishing), is a practical guide full of tips and advice to help answer and take action on the question: “What do gender-expansive students need from their school communities to thrive?” While the book is aimed primarily at educators, it will also be useful for any adults in a school community, including parents.
Edwards draws on his own experience with discrimination against his transgender daughter, the hundreds of trainings and consultations he’s given, and the work of many students, educators, parents, advocates, and researchers. He covers topics including social transitions, facilities access, sports and activities, daily gender-inclusive practices and policies, and more. Every chapter ends with helpful suggestions for responding to challenging questions and comments, questions for review and reflection, and a “check-in” on how the chapter aligns with the two guiding principles: “Support happy and healthy kids” and “Protect privacy and confidentiality.” Edwards packs a lot into a little over 100 pages; this streamlined guide has a lot to offer.
Nevertheless, he admits that this “is not a comprehensive textbook” on creating gender-expansive spaces. More thorough is The Advocate Educator’s Handbook: Creating Schools Where Transgender and Non-Binary Students Thrive, by Vanessa Ford and Rebecca Kling (Jossey-Bass). Ford is a nationally recognized advocate for trans and nonbinary youth, former public-school classroom teacher, and mother of a transgender child; Kling is a trans woman and co-owner of the social impact consulting firm Better World Collaborative.
Their action-oriented guide is organized around a framework of four core principles: Educate, Affirm, Include, and Disrupt. It includes strategies and insights not only from Ford and Kling’s personal and professional experiences, but also from the varied group of 52 teachers, researchers, advocates, parents, and trans and nonbinary students whom they interviewed. Each chapter is full of ideas, examples, and encouragement, as well as questions for self-reflection and for applying the learnings to specific real-world challenges. The authors also look closely at the intersection of students’ trans or nonbinary identities with other aspects of identity. No matter where readers are in their journeys to make things better for trans and nonbinary students, this will be an indispensable guide.
Transgender Justice in Schools, edited by Linda Christensen and Ty Marshall (Rethinking Schools), brings together essays and reflections by transgender educators and students (and a few allies), on ways that schools can work towards a vision where everyone, including transgender students, are able to thrive. The many authors draw on their own experiences as queer people and (mostly) as classroom teachers to show why such work is needed; to offer examples of their own work teaching trans-inclusive curricula; and to show how they have fought for the right to teach in LGBTQ-inclusive ways. One chapter, too, showcases the voices of trans students sharing ways their teachers and schools have supported them and the changes they would still like to see.
Each essay is full of real-world examples and practical advice—on curricula, inclusive practices, policy challenges, and more. Being an anthology with a plethora of voices, the overall book is not as systematic as the two volumes above, but will be a useful complement to them, particularly for classroom teachers.
American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era, by Nico Lang (Abrams), is not aimed specifically at educators, but feels like a crucial book for anyone engaging with young people today.
In all the debates about transgender youth, the voices of the youth themselves are often missing. Award-winning journalist Lang therefore spent a year traveling the country and spending hours with eight trans youth and their families, gaining insight into the lives and dreams behind the political rhetoric. This resulting volume gives us a powerful and personal look at these young people and those who support them.
Lang weaves compelling and in-depth portraits of each teen’s life, sharing everyday details as well as broader reflections from the youth and their families. They explain that “Rather than putting forward a grand unified theory of transgender teendom or exploiting these stories to advance a polemical argument, I attempt to avoid flattening the complexity of their experiences.” Instead, they focus on “the small moments that illuminate a life” and “the rich detail of human experience” in order to “allow transgender kids to express everything they’ve never been given the chance to say.” It’s a powerful approach.
The one overarching assertion Lang does make, however, is that “Transgender kids want the same things that all other kids want, and that begins with the ability to make their own decisions and choices, to find their way through trial and error, to feel validated and seen for who they are and what they desire.” Parents, advocates, educators, policy makers, health care providers, and others should be less likely to doubt that after reading this vital volume.
Also worth a look is the recently updated second edition of Supporting Transgender Students: Understanding Gender Identity and Reshaping School Culture, by Alex Myers (University of New Orleans Press). Myers, now an award-winning author, teacher, consultant, and speaker, was the first out transgender student at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University. The book feels particularly useful for educators in independent/private schools.
