Crossdressers-Haven.com

It's a truly heartwarming link.

Thank you!!!
IMHO....that should be "required" reading for ALL early grade teachers and ALL New parents!!!
Thanks.....Andrea

Thanks for sharing Donna, that was delightful.

I had wondered if this might have been written by a TG activist posing as a teacher, but this teacher is part of an organization called Rethinking schools. She is an activist for social justice. I will say that she writes about this subject with a lot of insight. Someone can have good intentions, and still not be able to write like that.

Oddly enough, I came to the opposite conclusion when I read it. I thought the author was someone who was trying really hard to get it right by other-gendered children but was doing it from an outsider's perspective. I tried to see how she would have responded to someone who was as conflicted as a child as I was and felt she would have been lost. Like she seemed to rely on the child having a clear identity which she then respected (indeed went to quite great lengths to see others respect).

Very encouraging, lessons that are learnt early tend to stay learnt - however it is not difficult for a parent to undo any good done at school, and of course for the school to undermine any good a parent may do. But a very good start for these kids.

The importance of this sort of thing is not how the child with gender confusion may be dealt with by the teacher as much as the lessons of toleration being taught to the others. In the UK in schools it has been taught for a while now that it is OK to be of a different race, and more recently a different sexuality, racism and homophobia are now generally frowned upon by my daughters generation, maybe we are next

Anthony Simon wrote:

Like she seemed to rely on the child having a clear identity which she then respected (indeed went to quite great lengths to see others respect)

That part of it was one thing that made me cautious, in reading it. I saw the child's 'clear identity' as being a carefully constructed story. By doing this, the author could then go in and show how they 'solved' the problem in all the right ways. It seemed like a well-intentioned set-up, but still, a set-up. Like they wanted to get across some TG propaganda, and this was a good way to do it.

I think that Melissa's for real, but I have no way of really knowing that. You're sensing a similar 'disconnect' in her story--that she seems to know how to solve this specific problem, but would she be able to apply this same expertise to the big picture of your gender ID, or mine?

Anthony Simon wrote: I tried to see how she would have responded to someone who was as conflicted as a child as I was and felt she would have been lost.

I have mixed feelings about something like this. It may not be propaganda at all; I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt here. And I've been tempted to 'dress things up' in order to make a point I really wanted to make. I'm sure I gave into that temptation at times, too.

People can feel that the message (in this case, TG identity at a young age) is so important that it doesn't matter how they present it, just so that it gets out there. Both sides of the political spectrum do this, so it's not finger-pointing to look at it.

Perhaps Melissa got some advice from a transitioned person on how she could present this story. In that case, another person didn't write it, but they gave the writer 'inside information,' and that comes through.

Well, I googled her and came up with (Or anyway google says) a few thousand responses. The top one is the Huffington Post, who have also published her article. The associated biog says:

Melissa Bollow Tempel is married and has two daughters. She is licensed in bilingual elementary education and has a masters in Cultural Foundations of Education. Melissa has been teaching for 11 years and currently works in a public school in Milwaukee, Wis. Melissa also works as a volunteer editor and writer for Rethinking Schools magazine and is on the steering committee for the Educators' Network for Social Justice. In addition to spending time with family and friends, she enjoys cooking, knitting, and Crossfit workouts.

It reads to me like she's working within the system to achieve her social justice, rethinking schools and cultural foundation ends. But, in a certain sense she's also, doubtless working the system - I mean she's gone and produced an article which has caught "the liberal imagination" enough for the Huffington Post to publish it.

I get a sense there's an awful lot of agenda - or to put it another way, theory - in what she's done with the kid. But I don't think that's wrong. It sounds like it worked in this case - and she's got a good story out of it. I do agree with Anita about the sense of disconnect - but to me it's got to do with a kind of theory based approach vs a more intuitive one (which is what you would have needed with someone like me). I mean theory-based approaches can be pretty inflexible.

I may be wrong but I sense that as most of you are identifying with Allie, you are thinking very much in terms of how nurturing this approach is to her, my thoughts are rather with the acceptance message that is being introduced to all the other kids. I feel that there can be no such thing as a one size fits all answer to how to deal with kids with gender identity problems, but there may be a good answer in how to prepare others to accept those of us who for one reason or another are different.

Paula G wrote:The importance of this sort of thing is not how the child with gender confusion may be dealt with by the teacher as much as the lessons of toleration being taught to the others.

I think that may well be where the author is coming from - the creation of a more tolerant, fairer etc society. But equally the child is what it's all about - whether it be this issue of gender or another.

Now if we could just get that teacher to teach the many adults out there that just don't have any idea and those adults that are so not understanding (like grandma).

The teacher is right about not needing to teach the why's and how's and that just teaching to accept it all. All the mechanics about how a person came to be -- color, culture, sex, gender, religion, etc. -- all that nurture vs nature -- is just too much to bring into the equation -- you are who you are -- when all you are trying to do is get people to accept other people.

Now with all that said, it helps to know a person's background so you can better interact with them and stay within their comfort zones.

yay teacher! Good job!