A big point missed here is no one was ever required to keep secrets. Please read AB1955. This is a common misconception fueled by culture wars. Teachers and schools have never been asked to keep secrets and the point was always that schools have protocols that have been followed for decades that ensured both the students and families were safe. This was always about LGBTQ fear and forcefully outing students and nothing more.
As a teacher to middle school students and a parent to a high schooler, you missed the mark on this one. Kids only confide in teachers if they need a safe adult and they don’t have one at home. I guarantee if a kid feels safe and trusts their parent, their parent would know before their teacher. My kid is in band and has had the same teacher for four years. He sees my kid in school and outside of school for marching band. If my kid went to him to talk about something he didn’t feel comfortable talking to me about, I’d be thankful that my kid had someone else to trust. I don’t know why people don’t trust teachers to do the right thing. While I know there are bad teachers who don’t deserve our trust (just like cops, doctors, journalists, influencers, presidents), most are good and most would do the right thing by our kids. By mandating that teachers need to tell parents, we are taking away a potentially safe adult for kids, the suicide rate will only increase among some of our most vulnerable students.
You centered everyone except Trans kids in this piece…a kid should live in complete hell bc parents “deserve to know.” got it. Maybe you and the judge see parenting differently then I do- I don’t deserve anything, I need to work hard to keep lines communication open with my kid. That’s on me.
As the parent of a queer kid, I wanted to chime in on this one. The thought process for the Christian nationalists is simple: They don’t hate queer kids, they “love” them. It’s not their bigotry, it’s the lord’s. ***eye roll*** They always outsource their bigotry. They’ve ran the same playbook forever. Nothing has changed, not even the talking points.
Students who present as one gender at home and another at school do so because it isn’t safe to be themselves at home.
A big point missed here is no one was ever required to keep secrets. Please read AB1955. This is a common misconception fueled by culture wars. Teachers and schools have never been asked to keep secrets and the point was always that schools have protocols that have been followed for decades that ensured both the students and families were safe. This was always about LGBTQ fear and forcefully outing students and nothing more.
As a teacher to middle school students and a parent to a high schooler, you missed the mark on this one. Kids only confide in teachers if they need a safe adult and they don’t have one at home. I guarantee if a kid feels safe and trusts their parent, their parent would know before their teacher. My kid is in band and has had the same teacher for four years. He sees my kid in school and outside of school for marching band. If my kid went to him to talk about something he didn’t feel comfortable talking to me about, I’d be thankful that my kid had someone else to trust. I don’t know why people don’t trust teachers to do the right thing. While I know there are bad teachers who don’t deserve our trust (just like cops, doctors, journalists, influencers, presidents), most are good and most would do the right thing by our kids. By mandating that teachers need to tell parents, we are taking away a potentially safe adult for kids, the suicide rate will only increase among some of our most vulnerable students.
You centered everyone except Trans kids in this piece…a kid should live in complete hell bc parents “deserve to know.” got it. Maybe you and the judge see parenting differently then I do- I don’t deserve anything, I need to work hard to keep lines communication open with my kid. That’s on me.
I'm trying my best here, Barbara.
Great to hear, thanks. Hope you will take my comment seriously as a journalist and, in fact, do better. These kids desperately need us to.
As the parent of a queer kid, I wanted to chime in on this one. The thought process for the Christian nationalists is simple: They don’t hate queer kids, they “love” them. It’s not their bigotry, it’s the lord’s. ***eye roll*** They always outsource their bigotry. They’ve ran the same playbook forever. Nothing has changed, not even the talking points.