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What I Learned Today as a Trans Sub Teaching in an LGBTQ School
Coming of age together as a transgender adult with LGBTQ high school students
I recently started substitute teaching in a New York City high school specifically designed for LGBTQ teenagers. The goal is to provide a supportive environment that other schools cannot. Here, the needs of the individual student come first.
More than a dozen teaching days in, and I have learned so much from the students. In addition to being typical teenagers, I am impressed by how casually they are LGBTQ students.
They simply are.
I have shared with some of them that I am transgender, and unlike adults I have told, my dramatic gender reveal is met with a smile and a shrug. It is part of our conversation, not the entire conversation.
Most of the students appreciate the unique nature of the school. Some don’t seem to register anything special about it. To them, it is still just school. There are one or two who don’t even know why they are there; they are not LGBTQ at all, but somehow the system swept them there.
From hoodies to face piercings, the students mirror a youth culture that I can’t entirely identify with. It doesn’t mean I don’t understand. It just means I need a new lens to see the person emerging underneath the raging hormones, to recognize their need to be who they are as they become who they want to be.
I recognize that these students are fortunate to live in New York City, where there is general public support for the LGBTQ community. Their threats are more localized with family and/or neighborhood aggressions, but in this city, they can find their own place, like this high school, to simply be themselves.
Sadly, smaller communities make it harder for LGBTQ teenagers to find their gender refuge, and now states are attacking them with bigoted anti-LGBTQ legislation aimed at their transgender medical needs and especially their basic civil rights. I can’t imagine the emotional hell they are living through.
I fear for them.
They need a community that supports them rather than attacking them. They need love, not hate. They need informed, intelligent adults, not bigoted, ignorant members of a mob intent on burning gender witches of any age.
It is tough enough to deal with all of this hate as an adult, but these are teenagers dealing with rejection of family and friends, a government outright attacking them, and religions damning them to hell, forget about their own self doubts and self hate.
They need hugs, not hate.
It is all so sad. I continue to hope that people will recover their common sense and their sense of common decency.
This high school is the way life should be for LGBTQ students. The students are safe, and they are happy. I am proud to be even a small part of this community and to feel the joy of spirit that is shared throughout the school.
It’s not perfect, but they make all of my efforts worthwhile. I can’t fix the world but I can at least help make one part of it better.
Emma Holiday
My writing has three specific goals:
1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts, so I write to find a way to process the most profound experiences in my life. I need to understand and to accept myself to move forward.
2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.
3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted, and treated as a normal person. We are.
Thank you for reading my work.
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