Gender Inclusivity: Where Science and Ethics Intersect

We speak with high school science teachers and trans men, Sam Long and Lewis Maday-Travis, who have developed resources and trainings to help biology teachers develop gender-inclusive curricula. Science tells us that sexual and gender diversity is both normal and positive. *Overview and transcript below. [ss_player] References To know more about Lewis and Sam's projects, please go to sam-long.weebly.com, fishyteaching.com and transeducators.com. Overview 00:00:54 Introductions 00:56-03:19 Experiences as LGBTQ high school students 03:20-06:15 As teachers, coming out as trans men to colleagues and students 06:16-11:13 Key elements of a gender-inclusive biology curriculum 11:14-16:26 Working to help make other teachers’ instruction more accurate and inclusive 16:27-19:38 How teachers respond to trans students’ lied experience 19:39-21:42 Relevance of Dewey’s ethical framework 21:43-29:21 Success stories in demarginalizing students 29:22-30:51 How teachers can develop this work 30:52 Outro Transcription of the episode Jon M: 00:15 Hi, I'm Jon Moscow. Amy H-L: 00:17 And I'm Amy Halpern-Laff. Welcome to Ethical Schools, where we discuss strategies for creating inclusive and equitable schools and youth programs and help students to develop commitment and capacity to build ethical institutions. Jon M: 00:30 Our guests today are Sam Long and Lewis Maday-Travis. Sam and Lewis are both high school science teachers, Sam in Denver and Lewis in Seattle. Both are trans men. Since the start of this year, the two have been creating resources and providing training to help teachers develop accurate and inclusive biology curriculum. Welcome Sam and Lewis. Sam L: 00:53 Thank you. Lewis M-T: 00:54 Thank you. Amy H-L: 00:56 So what were your own experiences as trans high school students? Sam L: 01:01 Well, I could start on that one. My experience as a high school student was that I was starting to transition while I was in high school and not pertaining to science class, but in general most of the adults around me didn't know what to do. It wasn't something they had heard of. It wasn't something they had had any training or experience in. And what that led to was some kind of poor decisions on their part and trying to figure out, well, uh, where should I use the restroom? How should I participate in overnight trips? And so that was only 10 years ago, but now we're starting to see policies crop up and model policies be made available online for helping school districts to include trans students in kind of a standardized way or at least to have a guideline to follow in accommodating students. And then in the science classroom I learned nothing about it in health class they learned nothing about sexuality and gender identity. And one of my goals as a science teacher is to make sure that our students that are coming out now and identifying as LGBTQ see themselves represented in some way at school. Jon M: 02:23 Lewis, did you want to add to that in terms of your experience? Lewis M-T: 02:27 Absolutely. So my experiences were slightly different. For one, I didn't come out as trans or I didn't actually realize that I was trans until after leaving high school. And so most of my experiences around inclusion in high school were around identifying as queer. And I actually went to a high school where I was very well supported as a queer and gender nonconforming young person. And I think that the teachers that I had who really supported me have really been a model for me as a teacher about what inclusion and really knowing your students and really accepting them can look li...