Ten courses in a Defense Department online training program for the 30,000 professionals working with children and youth in military families are now inaccessible and under review, including “Creating Gender Safe Spaces,” “Creating Culturally Responsive Programs,” “Supporting Language Diversity,” and more.
Courses Offline for Review
The Department of Defense Child Development Virtual Laboratory School (Virtual Lab School, or VLS) is a research-based online professional development system launched in 2009 to give child and youth professionals who work with military families an easy way to build their knowledge and skills. It was developed by a team of faculty and staff at The Ohio State University for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Family Policy/Children and Youth, and in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
To date, the VLS has facilitated over 1,500,000 certified clock hours of professional development for the “more than 30,000 child and youth professionals who serve over 200,000 military-connected children and families across 300 programs worldwide,” per its website. The VLS is also free and open to the public and is designed to support all people working in child and youth care, in addition to those serving military families.
Now, however, the VLS website informs us that 10 of its courses are “currently unavailable” and are being reviewed, “Under the direction of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Military Community and Family Policy: Office of Child and Youth Programs, and in collaboration with this office.” The courses are:
Foundational Courses Across all Tracks:
- Self & Cultural Understanding
- Cognitive Development
- Social & Emotional Development
- Family Engagement
Focused Topics Courses:
- Creating Culturally Responsive Programs
- Creating Gender Safe Spaces
- Supporting Language Diversity: Direct Care
- Supporting Language Diversity: Coaching
- Supporting Children with Challenging Behaviors
- Trauma Informed Care in Child Care Settings
A further note says that “We are coordinating with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Military Community and Family Policy to restore the Foundational Courses quickly”—but nothing is said about when or whether the focused topic courses will be restored.
It seems reasonable—extremely likely, even—to assume that this review was sparked by the recent executive orders against “Gender Ideology Extremism” in the federal government and “Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” which attempts to limit what it calls “Discriminatory equity ideology.” (Content warning for transphobia and racism if you click those links.)
A Closer Look at “Creating Gender Safe Spaces”
In 2018, I spoke with Dr. Sarah Lang, now principal investigator and director of the VLS as well as an assistant professor in the Department of Human Sciences at The Ohio State University. Lang led the creation of the optional “Creating Gender Safe Spaces” course that launched in 2018, aimed at childcare professionals working with children from birth through age 12. While that isn’t the only course now taken offline for review, its material is directly connected to what the first executive order bans. I’m therefore going to share much of my interview with Lang again below so you can get a sense of what may be lost.
Lang told me in 2018, “Part of the reason we developed this course was that people working in military childcare saw gender-expansive kids and reached out to us.” They would say, “I’m not sure what to do” and ask “What’s the best way to approach this?”
She added, “We want to be supportive of children and families with gender-expansive or LGBT members, and to arm staff with tools to navigate conversations with other families,” ones who might have questions or make unwitting remarks.
The course included six modules: Creating Safe Spaces: An Introduction for Program Staff (which includes terminology and different ways to think about gender identity); Understanding Development for Gender-Expansive and Transgender Children and Youth; Supporting Gender-Expansive Children Creates Safe Spaces for All; Diversity within Families; Creative Programs that Support All Children; and Supporting More Inclusive Programs From an Administrative Perspective.
Each module included extensive explanations of ideas and concepts, ways of taking action, sample scenarios and responses, practice activities, quiz questions, and more. They drew both from academic research and from well-respected programs for and about LGBTQ children and youth, like Gender Spectrum, GLSEN, HRC’s Welcoming Schools, and San Francisco State University’s Family Acceptance Project.
In numerous short videos throughout the modules, too, parents talked about experiences with their own gender-expansive children, while faculty in early childhood development discuss broader themes, like creating a classroom that supports all children, choosing thoughtful classroom materials, and how administrators can assist diversity and inclusion efforts. Lang emphasized, “One of the things that makes this course powerful is the families willing to open their lives and share stories with us.”
She saw the course as having a wider applicability, too. “It’s really about a way to think about everyone’s ability to be who they are,” she said. “It provides a new space to challenge ourselves and think about the boxes we sometimes put other people in, to help us reconceptualize things and think about the world differently.” She said that sometimes the military spouses staffing childcare and youth programs are young, only 18 or 19, and thus may not have had higher education opportunities that encourage them “to think about the world and other people’s experiences more broadly.”
Lang has a personal connection to the work as the surrogate for a two-dad family. “I’m interested in making LGBT individuals feel safe in whatever space they’re in,” she explained. She herself was raising two elementary-school kids, and one had a friend who is gender expansive. Creating the VLS course gave her and her child “good language” and information they could use, she said, and she was excited about offering it to others.
When I spoke with her in 2018, early feedback on the course had been positive. “It’s been very affirming that people have wanted it and are excited about it. It’s meeting a need,” she said. “It’s a beautiful use of our tax dollars.”
Now, the “Creating Gender Safe Spaces” course content, along with that of the other courses listed above, is inaccessible (although archived versions can be found at archive.org). I attempted to reach Dr. Lang this week about what is currently happening, but was unsuccessful.
The Landscape
In related news, Kelly Jensen of BookRiot reported this week that the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), which runs 161 schools for approximately 67,000 students in military families, is also undertaking review of its curricula and libraries in the wake of the executive orders, and that materials on Black history, transgender Americans, gender and sexuality, and other items “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology” are being targeted for removal. I strongly suspect that the review of the VLS materials will result in similar removals.
The DoDEA and the VLS changes, taken together, mean that in classrooms, childcare settings, and youth programs, educators and other professionals will have less research-backed information and fewer tools to serve the young people in their care. Children of military families will receive a severely limited and potentially harmful sense of themselves, their families, and the world around them. They deserve better.
Some military families are already protesting the DoD’s moves against diversity, equity, and inclusion. Military families at European Command headquarters in Germany booed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during his visit Tuesday, and chanted “DEI,” reported NBC News, noting “Protests by military families against a defense secretary are extremely rare.” Additionally, 55 middle school students at the on-base, DoDEA-run, Patch Middle School staged a walkout, reported Stars & Stripes.
During his first term, President Trump said in his 2019 proclamation of National Veterans and Military Families Month that it is “our duty” to provide military families “with the resources they need to thrive in our communities,” at home and overseas. As I see it, those resources must include ones about gender, culture, family structures, and the many other varied aspects of identity held by members of military families and by the range of people they may encounter during their often-frequent moves. The president is shirking his duty.
