This isn't necessarily a Reading Curriculum post in regards to education but a post in regards to what parents and students have the right to know about their teachers.
A teacher in California who was a woman last spring came back to the school year as a man and was being addressed as "Mister". While this story is quite strange it does address the "right to know" issue between administrators and parents. I was just wondering if anyone had any legitimate thoughts or if anyone thinks that the school district in California should have handled it differently.
http://www.kcra.com/cnn-news/17714619/detail.html
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2 comments:
Wow, what an interesting post! That is such a difficult thing to handle because, as the article states, the school district can not legally disclose personal information about it's employees. Therefore there would be no way to notify parents unless the teacher himself wanted to disclose the information. The only thing I can think of that may have helped ease the transition would be for the school to have an assembly early in the year for all students that teaches tolerance. This assembly of course could not even mention transgender issues, but could just focus on teaching elementary students to treat all people equally no matter what they look like, where they live, how they talk etc. Hopefully this would help the students realize that though their teacher may be a little different he still deserves respect and consideration as a human being. This program should be announced to parents with advice on how to teach tolerance at home. Then when their children come home and want to talk about the teacher's issues parents will be better able to address their questions. Of course there will still be parents that are outraged and want to pull their children out of the class. Hopefully with some education in tolerance for students and parents most of the school and community will be able to respect the teacher as a quality educator no matter what changes took place.
Interesting story. Both sides have relevant points. The school's hands are tied due to HR laws and they correctly did not disclose any info. However, as a parent, especially of an elementary level child, you would want to be able to talk to them about this so you could teach them about diversity and tolerance. I think the best step from here is to have parents handle the situation at home. Unfortunately, some parents pulled their students from music class which to me, is sending the wrong message. Just because the teacher switched genders does not make him/her a bad teacher or person. These parents are skirting the issue but in reality their kids are going to learn what happened to Mr./Mrs. because the kids whose parents did talk with them are definitely going to tell their friends, and so on and so on. Opening the lines of communication with children AND being tolerant of others is the correct way to handle the situation.
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