M. Night Shyamalan and the Achievement Gap

On Monday, April 28 I attended the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Askwith forum with M. Night Shyamalan.  Although more well known for his writing, directing, and producing films, Shyamalan recently wrote a book about education reform and addressing the achievement gap: I Got Schooled: The Unlikely Story of How a Moonlighting Movie Maker Learned the Five Keys to Closing America's Education Gap.

Shyamalan spoke about his data-driven approach to closing the achievement gap in America, specifically the five tenets that he discovered during a two-year research project.

Shyamalan's presentation and following Q and A can be found here:

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news-impact/2014/04/m-night-shyamalan-i-got-schooled/

Shyamala also recently participated in a Harvard EdCast which can be found here:

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news-impact/2014/04/harvard-edcast-m-night-shyamalans-school-sense/

Huffington Post Live: Film Director Takes on US Education Gap:

http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/film-director-takes-on-us-education-gap/522756c1fe34446a2f000085

NPR book review:

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221409659/filmmaker-turns-to-education-reform-gets-schooled

M Night Shyamalan Foundation:

http://www.mnsfoundation.org/schooled

-Megan Haddadi

DML Conference Days 2 and 3: Scaling Connected Learning

“Connected learning” is a term used to describe interest-driven, peer-supported, academic learning. It’s based on three design principles: 1) shared purpose, 2) production centered activities, and 3) openly networked institutions and individuals. Day two of the DML conference focused on both creating opportunities for connected learning among students from non dominant backgrounds (ethnic minorities, students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, historically marginalized groups, etc.) and developing methods to study the effectiveness of connected learning environments across settings (classrooms, after school programs, summer programs, outreach programs, etc.).

As I discussed in my last post, the role of technology in connected learning is both ubiquitous and somewhat invisible. Social media and internet affinity groups make it possible to connect learners who share a common interest or goal, and even to connect students with adult professionals who can serve as information resources as well as mentors. 

The production-centeredness of connected learning environments means that groups are not just sharing ideas, but actively working to create artifacts that can serve a common interest: curating materials, conducting experiments, producing media, remixing, designing, etc. Again, the focus in this process is not on the technology itself, but on the product; technology merely serves as a tool for mediating that process.

Linking individuals and institutions across industries, popular cultures, interest communities, etc., is the third principle of connected learning. The idea of making these connections is essentially to pool knowledges and ideas that serve a public interest, and share resources across openly-networked platforms.

There is a commonly recognized need to make these opportunities possible for learners who come from backgrounds and environments where access to technology and knowledgeable peers is not readily available, and this was the focus of the second and third days of the DML conference. The most intriguing talk I attended was the plenary session on approaches to spreading and scaling the principles of connected learning into schools and beyond. Cynthia Coburn presented her framework for spreading and scaling connected learning in various educational organizations, and covered everything from professional development to funding to infrastructure development. Dr. Coburn discussed at a practical level some of the difficulty researcher-practitioners have in introducing change in schools - think of a one-to-one program or curriculum overhaul. Skepticism and discomfort among faculty and administrators can be a huge deterrent to the effectiveness of such large-scale initiatives.

In her framework, Dr. Coburn discussed four types of scale: adoption, replication, adaptation, and reinvention - similar to Ruben Puentadura’s SAMR model of technology integration (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition). It’s easy to think of these examples of scale as four hierarchical positions, with reinvention as the most transformative or valued outcome, but Dr. Coburn did not present them as such. I think this is important to note, as the subtext of her presentation was not to sell her framework, or extoll some virtue of schools reinventing themselves, but rather of understanding how schools can build the capacity for change, and what types of change may be necessary for realizing more relevant learning opportunities for students. Adoption, for instance, represents a very significant form of change, in that it can mean adopting new teaching practices (such as those that center on connected learning). Schools may not need to reinvent themselves to be able to enact more student-centered pedagogies, but they may need to adopt certain practices that foster student-centered learning, and that scale student-centered learning among faculty. A key component of this is participation among members of the learning community - students, teachers, administrators, parents, etc. But this leaves a big question open for us all to consider: how do we establish common goals to work towards, and how to we foster a greater level of participation towards those goals? 

Nicholas Wilson
Academic Technology and Digital Media Specialist (Upper School)

Thoughts from DML 2014, Day 1

 Today was the first day of the three-day Digital Media and Learning Conference (http://dml2014.dmlhub.net). This year's theme is "Connecting Practices," which, really, implies a range of ideas, from connecting education research to teaching practices, to connecting students with real-world cultural and professional "practices." Term "practice" itself has been appropriated by a variety of domains, but in education circles, predominantly refers to ways of performing or doing the tasks that most recognizably identify what it means to be a member of a community - a community of teachers, of carpenters, of knitters, of gamers, etc. So in a nutshell, the idea of "connecting practices" is to inform how we structure learning opportunities for our students, by providing them with access to activities (and mentors) in ways that make learning relevant and meaningful. 

Not surprisingly, as a conference on "digital media and learning," there is a pretty large emphasis on technology throughout the sessions, but it is certainly not a conference about technology, or even technology integration. Rather, the overwhelming emphasis (at least after one day) is placed on teaching and learning. Technology's role seemed somewhat secondary in all of the sessions I attended today - and rightly so. 

In the first session I attended, a presentation/discussion on "Equity, Diversity, and Discourses of Change in Participatory Culture," four presenters described various aspects of online communities that demonstrated varying degrees of inclusion and exclusion, sexism and indifference to gender, and mobilized political action. In all four of these presentations, technology was the medium through with communication and social engagement took place, but in a very large way, the affordances of technology were made somewhat invisible by the profound examples of cultural participation that each of the presenters discussed. One example mentioned was the Ravelympics controversy of 2012. Rather than describe all the details of what happened in this post, you can read about it here. In what amounted to one of the fastest, most widespread online social movements witnessed since the Arab Spring, this group mobilized itself into action and gained international notoriety for pressuring the U.S. Olympic Committee into apologizing for its demeaning portrayal of crafting communities. Definitely an interesting read.

Though it was not the point of the discussion, technology (internet-based forums and social media tools) certainly enabled a grand display of social action in this case. The takeaway for us as educators is to understand how technology can be used as a tool to thereby connect our students to real-world events, and to equip them with ways of talking about and analyzing deep issues like hegemony, sexism, and cultural participation. 

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Nicholas Wilson
Academic Technology and Digital Media Specialist (Upper School)

I Don't Know Why I'm Defending David Weinberger

 

I don’t know why I’m defending David Weinberger. I’ve never met him. I’ve never read any of his publications. I have, however, seen him speak publicly, twice: once this past November at the EdTechTeacher iPad Summit, and again this past week at the Learning in Commons Conference. He was a keynote speaker at both events. As such, I’ve only seen Dr. Weinberger speak to relatively large audiences, which is ironic in that, in both situations, his central message seemed antithetical to many of my colleagues’ reasons for attending either conference in the first place. At least I think it seemed antithetical to them.

Dr. David Weinberger is a Senior Researcher at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and is Co-Director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. His latest book (which again, I have not read), is entitled “Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room.” Here’s the blurb:

We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We’d nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There’s more knowledge than ever, of course, but it’s different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything. (Amazon.com)

Personally, this is my meat and potatoes. But I’m not a classroom teacher. Nor am I a librarian. Although I do dabble in both environments quite a lot. The EdTechTeacher iPad Summit and the Learning in Commons Conference were overwhelmingly attended, respectively, by members of each group (or so it seemed to me). So when Dr. Weinberger started to describe how books (remember, this was directed towards an audience of school teachers and librarians) were representative forms of the exclusory, inaccessible, elitist, old world model of education, folks began to shift around in their seats.

Now, I don’t think Dr. Weinberger is wrong here. Books are sort of the hallmarks of a paradigm of education that has systematically privileged certain classes of individuals, while marginalizing others. And really, we’re not just talking people here. Books are notoriously (at least in the past) totems of “knowledge” written by old white men, who have not only used the power of their privilege to promote classist, racist, and ethnocentric ideals, but to marginalize the cultures and ways of knowing of peoples deemed somehow less worthy of access to the Ivory Tower (think: eugenics, or anything Howard Zinn has written against). So books, at least in terms of being vast archives of “knowledge”, may have a somewhat controversial place in history.

Again, we’re in a room of teachers and librarians.

Books are also “static,” as Dr. Weinberger calls them. Their physical construction makes books difficult to edit and update, and it is difficult to merge them with other funds of knowledge than might by complementary. Books are also perhaps one of the most beautiful, glorious inventions humans have ever created, and the benefits research has suggested books have on psychological, cognitive, and childhood development are difficult to ignore. 

But let’s ignore that for now, because all of that is somewhat beside the point. 

In fact, the way I see it, Dr. Weinberger was not in any way foretelling the obsolescence of books, rather, he was criticizing the approach to learning that books have come to represent. His argument went something like this: we are in an unprecedented era in human history for the access to information and the construction of new knowledge, largely thanks to the Internet. But in addition to simply delivering information, new tools have made it possible to share information openly, and to bring information together that would otherwise live disparate, isolated lives, perhaps tucked away on the shelves of libraries thousands of miles apart from each other. And I believe it is here that Dr. Weinberger has it right. At least somewhat.

The open education and creative commons movements have no doubt created a place for people (especially scholars) to share and collaborate in the creation of knowledge in ways that were previously impossible. Many now have access to rich artifacts and resources that can help further our understanding of historic events, of scientific phenomena, and of human sociology. And sites like StackOverflow the Digital Public Library of America have opened their databases for developers to come and create new ways of accessing that information. The point of all of this goes back to the idea of knowledge construction – building new forms of knowledge that help us understand the world around us.

Depending on whom you ask, this contrasts starkly with the traditional concept of knowledge acquisition – the very concept upon which much of our public education system (and even higher education) was founded, and indeed, much of what "counts" as learning is still predicated. Lost in this greater debate are two cultural artifacts that have been co-opted to represent a picture of these conflicting ideas: books and the Internet.

Dr. Weinberger would have been hard pressed to find a more stinging metaphor to relate to an auditorium of school teachers and librarians. And for sure, there is still an ongoing crisis of digital education inequity happening across many communities in our country. But ultimately, I believe the point that Dr. Weinberger was attempting to drive home was that, because of the Internet, our society is now better endowed with resources that would help serve to democratize learning and education. What is holding that process back is not books themselves, but our collective idea of what counts as knowledge. 

As a learning tool, the Internet is poised to help us deconstruct that collective idea, and reconstruct a new concept of what is important to learn (e.g., content versus process), and how that learning can be achieved. Books are an essential part of school-based learning, but if we choose to accept Dr. Weinberger's argument, we may open ourselves to potentially more innovative and disruptive ways of teaching and learning.

Nicholas Wilson

Academic Technology and Digital Media Specialist (Upper School)

EdTechTeacher iPad Summit 2013 Redux

This year's EdTechTeacher iPad Summit has now come and gone, and like last year, it was a great mix of high-level discussion on the role of technology in education, and hands-on workshops involving a wide range of iOS apps for an even larger range of purposes. 

For anyone unfamiliar with the organization, EdTechTeacher grew out of a small summer workshop series about ten years ago, that centered on using internet technologies to teach History. The workshop series continued to grow, incorporating a wider swath of subject areas and teaching tools, and expanding to become a full-time venture. The group now works closely with a number of schools across the country on the development of sustainable technology integration strategies, which include a mix of face-to-face training sessions, and "blended" format professional development that span the course of the school year. In addition to serving essentially as a educational technology consultant group, EdTechTeacher have continued to organize workshops and conferences, most recently with a heavy focus on the iPad. The iPad Summit series began last year, and received so much acclaim, that the conference now pulls over a thousand attendees from a number of countries, and comprises three days of workshops and presentations geared towards everyone from district administrators to technology integration specialists to teachers, pre-K through higher education. That's a huge mix, especially as we in education tend to focus with laser-like precision on our own content areas and age groups.

Such high accolades, along with the exponential rise in the number of schools going one-to-one with iPads in over the past couple of years, bodes for a heavily corporate, technology-hyping, constant-sales-pitch of a conference, yet the event is somehow wonderfully little of those. In fact, one of my favorite aspects of this conference is the lack of any of such "corporatism" (despite the huge number of vendors and sponsor advertisements lining the meeting halls at the Hynes Convention Center). EdTechTeacher seems to do a great job of recruiting well-known, heavy-thinking skeptics to deliver each morning's keynote address, who just as often dispel the myths of "technology determinism" as they do laud the importance of technology in connecting students with meaningful curricula . This year's keynote presenters were David Weinberger of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and Ruben Puentadura, board member of the New Media Consortium (best known for their annual "Horizon Report", which forecasts new technologies and their potential influence on education and learning) and father of the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition) model of instructional technology integration. 

Both keynote presentations drove home the notion that, while iPads and the Internet have the potential to expanding learning opportunities into areas unforeseen even just a few years ago, that potential will not be realized unless teaching practices, and indeed in many cases, systems of education do not change to allow for more flexible, autonomous, student-centered learning to take place. Dr. Weinberger, for instance, spoke of the importance of "networking" resources - connecting students to collaborative communities that function to generate new knowledge on topics ranging from computer science (e.g., StackOverflow and GitHub) to social science (Wikipedia) to science and mathematics (arxiv.org). His point centered on the idea that the internet has created new media for constructing knowledge, which is no longer confined to the canons of academia, such as print-based text (papers and books), or esoteric, exclusionary communities (peer-reviewed journals). While these new media simultaneous create opportunities for "messy" knowledge, they arguably democratize how knowledge is constructed, shared, and accessed. Dr. Puentadura's presentation the following morning expanded upon this idea, offering a number of examples of the affordances of technology to extend students' action possibilities into new areas of production, assessment, and expression.

Throughout the conference, attendees tweeted, blogged, shared notes and ideas, and even asked follow-up questions to each other and presenters, creating a rich back channel of communication and collaboration. For a great synopsis of the Keynote addresses (as well as several of the concurrent sessions), check out Jen Carey's blog http://indianajen.com.

November 14th Keynote, Dr. David Weinberger, Ph. D.

November 15th Keynote, Dr. Ruben Puentadura, Ph. D.

Nicholas Wilson
Academic Technology and Digital Media Specialist (Upper School)

Buckingham Browne & Nichols School
80 Gerry's Landing Road
Cambridge, MA 02138

Gender Non-conformity in Children and Adolescents

Hi Everyone,

I attended a really interesting conference on Saturday about gender non-conformity in kids. It was geared more towards doctors and psychologists than teachers, but I still felt I took a lot of important information away from the day. Below are my notes and a few handouts I picked up there. There will be a similar conference for educators this spring - I'll let everyone know when they announce the date. I would highly recommend the spring conference.

Caitlin

Attachments: 

• Terminology defined 
• Health Imperatives - Putting into place the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Guidance for Massachusetts Public Schools: Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity
• Resources for youth
• OutHealth School Safety Assessment Tool

Irwin Krueger, LCSW of Connecticut author of "Helping your Transgender Teen: a Guide for Parents"

What has changed since 2004 when he started working in this area - major change in the pace of transition steps. More sympathetic media portrayal. Increased acceptance. Access to information via the web. Kids come in very well informed. Teens can feel increased pressure to start medical transition earlier. They can feel hurt if they are not able to progress with medical transition as quickly as they would like, because they are aware of kids who are progressing more quickly. Can feel like parents are holding them back. Parents are more well informed and sometimes more accepting. Professionals recognizing that transition during puberty in parallel with peers is best. Increased availability of insurance coverage. Laws and educational policies to protect trans kids. 

Educators/clinicians: Keep an open mind - kids won't always present as gender non-conforming. Listen to them. Be empathetic. Think about something important about you that you know some people won't approve of, how hard it was to be true to that. Handle any discomfort that you have with colleagues, etc. but don't let it affect the relationship with the child.

Intersex is not the same thing as trans - very small number of individuals with ambiguous genitalia at birth or external and internal genitalia that are incongruous. 

Transgender- people whose gender identity is discordant with biological sex. Cisgender- having a gender identity congruent with biological sex. Genderqueer now used by many teens and young adults to express not fitting into usual binary gender identity in some distinct way.

Best Practices for Clinicians 

Help trans youth sort out their identity.

• Sense of self (how do they feel and for how long)
• Sense of group affiliation (what group do they feel like they belong with)
• How do they feel about their body especially gendered parts of the body? (not usually an issue until puberty)
• How do they feel about how others see them? Happy when "mistaken" for gender they are, not sex they were assigned at birth. Feel dismissed when parents or other adults correct.
• Who have they talked to? How have they tried to express who they are?
• What are their hopes and expectations for the future?

Help parents understand and support their child. 

• Feels as though for youth under 21, hope to engage the family at some point.
• Parents concerned with child's safety. Sometimes react with disbelief. 
• Parents want to know if it is real? Often little discussion between child and parent. Often need separate conversations with parents and kid to see where everyone is. In their understanding of the issues at hand. 
• Sometimes parents worry if it is s reaction to trauma or loss. Talk to the kids and understand their reactions to those traumas or losses. Often the kids think the connection is ridiculous. Elements of being trans were there earlier and parents need to look at that timeline. 
• Worried about the child's future. Not the case, at least in New England. Parents need to know trans adults who are living successful and fulfilling lives. There are challenges, but need to see that distress of not transitioning is worse than those challenges. 
• Parents need to deal with their own shame and grief. This is not for the child to solve. Parents need to deal with these feelings with their supports. Parents need to be absolve of guilt about making their child trans, but should see how they may have hurt their kid though shaming them for gender non-conformity. Offer them opportunity to make up for it with support. 

Help them to be as authentic as possible. Doesn't need to be fully passing at first, but need to show that support and respect.

• Name and pronouns
• Clothing and grooming (can sometimes be tried out in different safe settings before being universal)
• Group affiliation and bathroom use
• Attention to safety 
• Change school rosters - can be tricky but required to affirm gender at school but not in communication with parents if parents are resistant (legal requirement for public schools)
• Legal name change
• License or state ID change

How do you balance parents' need to talk about issues with child's need for privacy? Separate meetings and no sharing of information shared during separate meetings. Mostly sharing info about trans teens in general with parents. 

How do you advocate for the kids who do not have the parental and family support? Try to offer that support through school. Social workers, school mental health professionals. DCF can be supportive. Reassure them of options for once they are 18. 

What about starting a kid at a new school with a new gender? Sometime coming out as trans decreases harassment, when there is a group of friends to support and transition is clear. Going stealth dangerous because of connections online, etc. People might find out. Dating can be an issue. When do you disclose? Are you at risk of violence when you disclose?

Hormones 101 with Dr. Dan Shumer

Hormones: chemicals made by cells that affect other cells in the body

Trans people have the wrong organs, thus they are making the wrong hormones and changing their bodies in the wrong ways for their gender

Genetic sex established at fertilization. First six weeks of development organs undifferentiated. After six weeks sex determination happens and the testes and ovaries are defined and making testosterone or estrogen in different amounts. Female sort of the default, more testosterone and anti-Müllerian change to make structures. How do these hormones in fetal life affect things like the brain and gender identity formation? During childhood (pre-puberty) there are no sex hormones to worry about so focus can be on psychological and social issues and transition. 

Puberty: gonads make hormones in huge quantities. Kisspeptin in hypothalamus, GnRH released by cells in hypothalamus, affects the pituitary which then stimulates the gonads. Testosterone increases muscle, bone mass, vocal cords, shape of skeleton, larger hands and feet, decreased body fat percentage, facial and body hair. Slower fusion of growth plates increases height. Estrogen, increased fat in hips and breast development, menstruation. 

DSM V defines Gender Dysphoria as marked incongruence between assigned and perceived gender. Distress as a result.

Percocious puberty and delayed puberty already studied and treated. Gender Dysphoria can be treated as precocious puberty of the unwanted gender and delayed puberty of the desired gender. Amsterdam Study - Block undesired puberty entirely and then at 16 initiate the desired puberty. Never exposed to unwanted hormones, go through desired puberty only a little later, increase passability, prevent dysphoria. GnRH in a steady dose instead of natural pulses actually prevents puberty. Leuprolide suppresses. Runs 30,000$ a year if not covered. Histrelin implant in inner arm. Replace annually. Type approved for precocious puberty is called Supprelin (20,000$) plus surgery cost. Vantas for prostate cancer (4,000$) works (off label) and cheaper due to increased competition in prostate cancer market. Cross sex hormones more straightforward when puberty has been suppressed. Testosterone or estrogen, subcutaneous and oral respectively. Higher dosages required if puberty hasn't been suppressed, which increases chances of side effects, for example, blood clots with estrogen. 

How does transgender identity and sexual orientation develop? Hormonal, learned, genetic?

Probably not one right answer. 

Brain organization theory. Exposure to gonadal hormones prenatally permanently alter brain organization including behavior, sexual orientation, etc. Studies in rats do show brain changes and behavior changes resulting from exposure to different levels of hormones. Can't do these studies in humans. Can look at humans exposed to different levels of hormones for other reasons. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia, in infant girls causes masculinization of genitalia. Altered play behaviors and increased preference for boys as playmates. Increased chance that they will not be exclusively heterosexual. Correlation between severity of case and homosexual identification. Doss not seem to correlate with transgender identity. 

Transgender at 11: Jazz (Barbara Walters interviews )

Available on YouTube. 

Psychological Evaluation

Intake. Ask about legal and preferred name, ask about sex and preferred gender. Ask about pronouns. Make no assumptions. Have resources available. 

Assessment: 

Goals are to determine the degree of gender dysphoria and cross gender identification. 

Talk to parents about how to support the child. Deal with parental grief and loss. 

Help the child explore their identity. 

Help the family make decisions about various transitions. 

Provide a record to support future medical interventions. 

1. Strong and persistent cross gender identification
2. No major underlying and untreated psychiatric disorders 
3. Family support

Puberty blockers: easier transition, buys time, less psychologically distressing.

Complex cases: suicidal ideation or attempts, self-harming behavior, psychotic, homicidal ideation, anxiety, depression, eating disorders. Must be stable within reasons. Difficult because some of the issues they have are a result of the dysphoria. Transition can be helpful but can also be destabilizing. Tricky balance. Mood shift as a result of hormones can happen, but often calming. Late onset can be complex. Asperger spectrum can complicate, is this a way to try to fit in? Need to figure that out. Another challenge is parents who aren't on board or want to wait. Parents who disagree. Parental anxiety. Parental trouble with gender fluidity, need to know. Parents annoyed by time and cost of process. Cultural and religious issues. Not conflating sexual orientation and gender identity.  WPATH can help. 

Issues to consider: do young people who want hormone treatments get it if they are genderqueer? What about young children who are very concrete who may later in life identify more as fluid? See these as one of the differentiations that psychologists can help them make. 

Medical Q and A Session

What if there is lack of persistence or ambivalence? Blockers or just psychotherapy? Case dependent. Breast development? Self harming behavior? Therapy is a must, make that a condition of blockers. 

Hormones don't change who these kids are. Studies with kids who are not trans but can't make their own hormones have shown that. 

Legal Protections for Transgender Youth with GLAD

Yellow booklets with info about legal issues for trans people available with Caitlin or Daisy.

Successfully litigated a case where a trans girl was told she had to wear boys clothing to school. Maine Supreme Court hearing a case about a fifth grade girl who was told she couldn't use the girls restroom. Schools and judges have a hard time understanding what it means to be trans. Think of a trans girl as somehow less than a girl. A key argument they have to make is that these girls are girls and boys are boys, not somehow less than. 

Antidiscrimition - in MA only public schools prohibited from discrimination on the basis or gender identity. Language of the law is important. Public school law MGLC 76 section 5: no person shall be discriminated against in obtaining privileges and advantages in courses of study on account of race, religion...gender identity. Covers sports and extra curricular activities. Covers bathroom use.  Consistent and uniform assertion or evidence that gender identity is sincerely held, and not asserted for an improper purpose. This is the no flinch moment. Then you just need to deal with the social discomfort. Student must be allowed to use whichever restroom they feel most comfortable in and IF THEY NEED a separate bathroom they must be given access to that as well (but can't be forced). Public accommodations are not covered. Can argue that it is sex discrimination when there is a gap in the TG law. Discrimination is based on sex stereotypes. Discrimination because someone is changing their sex is sex discrimination. Used as protection. Department of Justice can use title IX to go after public schools in states with TG law gaps. Letter from a provider to a school outlining what kids need. Refer to medical and mental health standards and use clear and unequivocal language. Make it about the student and be clear about the harm to the student when needs aren't met. Sports in MA kids must be allowed to join teams and extracurricular activities consistent with gender identity. Harassment actually difficult to litigate, but threat of litigation is a useful tool. 

Interfacing with Schools GLBT Youth Support Project of Health Imperatives

Make a plan with the student re: what, who and when

Records changed to preferred name. Don't need name to be changed legally to change school records.

Parents involved if child is under 14. Is it safe for parents to know? If not, what do we say to parents?

Family Acceptance Project

As part of initial meeting plan for future check-ins

There should be no threshold that students need to meet to be treated as they wish to be treated. 

No threshold for identity to be valid. 

Use the gender checkbox only when necessary and if necessary have an other or blank to fill in. 

Gender neutral bathrooms available but should not be the only option. Stories of some kids avoiding using the bathroom at school altogether when it doesn't feel safe. (There is an iPhone app for all gender neutral bathrooms in public places.) Cisgender kids discomfort with trans kids can't be cited as a reason to deny trans kids rights. Do we really need things like graduation robes to be gendered? Should not have two dress codes for boys and girls. Even for events like prom. Have trainings and professional development! Missy Sturtevant msturtevant@healthimperatives.org or jmperrotti@aol.com

Schools want to make these changes and need to know that the law backs them up. Connect with aglys and pflag as resources. 

Can make all bathrooms one in at a time. Don't need to talk about any particular student to other students parents. About anything. Welcoming schools has lessons about teaching gender. 

Visiting Brookwood School

Last week Demetri and I drove up to visit Brookwood School. Doug Foederman, school's Technology Director, shared some examples of  teachers experimenting with the flipped classroom concepts.  Teachers use Camtasia-screencasting software to create instructional videos and post lessons for nightly homework to the school's Vimeo account.  Here are the links to their 8th grade math and science videos

Brookwood has also redesigned an old PC lab into an Idea Lab. With an idea paint covering the walls, a colorful rug with a pinwheel design and a movable walls with castors it works as a new collaborative and creative space for any classroom projects.

Svetlana

MS ATS