How are educators educated?

Lori Duron has a gender creative son. The lad is much more into girl things than boy things. That includes sparkly clothing. In her blog Duron told the story of how her son was bullied in an elementary school bathroom because his male classmates wanted to verify whether he had boy parts or girl parts.

With all the talk about Title IX and its protections for gender expression that led to Obama’s guidance, Duron surveyed educators and administrators in schools across the country asking such questions as: Does your state have laws in place protecting LGBT students? Half didn’t know. What guidance are your administrators providing for treating gender variant students (at least to make sure the school isn’t sued)? 61% said they are given nothing. Does your school make a distinction between general bullying and bullying of LGBT kids? 11% said there is no distinction, even though there are laws that say the two types of incidents should be treated differently. While earning your teaching degree did you learn about state and federal laws that protect LGBT students? Only 12% said yes.

A question for society as a whole: How should our educators be educated about how to treat our kids?

This is why gender non-conforming students feel unsafe in school. This is why some will drop out and others will commit suicide.