In their senior year of high school, Evanston Township High School students Maisy Kobernik-Pollack and Nova Horrell found they had a shared problem with the school’s protocols around how to make transgender and gender-nonconforming students comfortable in the classroom.
In their view, there didn’t seem to be any.
Some teachers had students give their pronouns aloud at the beginning of their first class. Some didn’t ask at all. One teacher would open classes with “ladies and gentlemen and theys” after Kobernik-Pollack told her that they used they/them pronouns.
“That’s the issue, because each teacher does it differently, it’s so hard to decide if you feel safe sharing your identity,” Kobernik-Pollack said.
Even in a relatively progressive community like Evanston, transgender and gender-nonconforming students can find themselves left wanting when it comes to having their identities recognized and affirmed in school.
An anonymous survey of 148 students Kobernik-Pollack began compiling at the beginning of this school year showed that while a handful of the 25 respondents who identified as transgender, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming reported being satisfied with the status quo, most were ambivalent about the school’s current support, while several reported wholly negative experiences.
It wasn’t just an issue for students. Several teachers confided to Kobernik-Pollack and Horrell that when it came to pronouns in the classroom, they simply didn’t know what to do, nor had they received any training on how to affirm students’ identities without hitting any number of stumbling blocks.
“They can be as well-intentioned as possible, but they just don’t know the right thing to do,” Kobernik-Pollack said.
Evanston Township High School declined to make administrators available for comment on the students’ efforts, but Director of Communication Takumi Iseda issued a statement.
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“Student voice is embraced and encouraged at ETHS. We have taken a proactive approach to developing student-centered resources and we appreciate the opportunity to revisit the ways that ETHS supports transgender and gender-expansive students,” the statement reads. “ETHS will continue to work with our staff to review current practices and procedures that were initially developed with student feedback. We are committed to each student’s academic, social, and emotional success during the ongoing process of implementing school policies and guidelines.”
More and more young people identify with a gender identity outside the male-female binary. A 2018 University of Minnesota study analyzing the state’s annual survey of ninth and 11th graders found nearly 3% of participants identified as transgender or gender nonconforming.
School is a pivotal space for transgender and gender-nonconforming students to feel recognized and affirmed, according to Cec Hardacker, director of education for Howard Brown Health, which provides social services to the LGBTQ+ community.
A big part of that is recognizing and affirming students’ gender identity.
“Pronouns are paramount, it’s a part of who a person is,” Hardacker said. “And when you, when anyone, particularly a person in authority, can do something as simple as acknowledging their pronouns and using the right pronouns, it’s incredibly powerful.”
ETHS does take several steps to acknowledge students’ gender identities. Students who want to socially transition can fill out a the Student Advocacy form on the school’s website to change their name and pronouns on school records with parental approval. Students must still select male or female as a gender identity, though they can choose gender-neutral pronouns. According to the form, this is to comply with state law.
Students can also request access to several passcode-protected “gender secure access” restrooms located in the building as well as privacy stalls in locker rooms.
The school website also promises to create a “gender support plan,” overseen by associate principal for student services Taya Kinzie, that includes a communication plan to let staff and teachers know about the student’s transition.
Kinzie did not respond to requests for comment.
Horrell said that while the gender support plan is helpful — she had one after publicly transitioning in June — students who are requesting to transition on their official record are generally already out to their peers. Plus, Horrell says, the school doesn’t promote the Student Advocacy Form or the gender-neutral facilities very well.
The requirement for parental approval for minors also limits the use of the form. Students may come from households that don’t accept or are hostile to gender diversity, meaning they are unwilling or unable to fill out the form.
The end result is Evanston students often have to navigate coming out to their peers on their own, often on a class-by-class basis. Kobernik-Pollack would share their identity in some of their virtual classes last year, but not others. Horrell dealt with the same problem as a sophomore, after coming out to her friends but before she felt she could be out to everyone.
“I was constantly in this dilemma, personally, of do I lie, even though it sucks?” Horrell said. “Or do I out myself, even though I’m not completely comfortable doing it or I don’t feel completely safe?”
Having your gender identity negated or not affirmed can be deeply harmful, said Hardacker of Howard Brown.
The University of Minnesota study found that gender-nonconforming students were at a heightened risk for depression, self-harm, post-traumatic stress, eating disorders and suicidal ideation, with students with low gender conformity reporting the poorest health outcomes.
Bill Farmer, a biology teacher and co-sponsor of ETHS’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance, agrees that teachers and staff need more instruction when it comes to navigating students’ transitions.
Having run the alliance for 15 of his 19 years at the school, he’s seen an increasing number of students rejecting the gender binary, particularly in recent years. While the COVID-19 pandemic has put the school into “triage mode” for teacher training over the last two years, Farmer said its time for the school to catch up on gender inclusivity.
“We have to think about how we can do some all-school training to help people understand concepts like pronouns and even the basics of gender identity and sexual orientation,” Farmer said.
The challenge, Farmer said, is coming up with a system that accommodates students as much as possible while balancing parental rights and pragmatic concerns. For example, Farmer said, while there are only a handful of gender secure access bathrooms, there aren’t a lot of options to add more to a campus that’s over 100 years old in parts.
Then there’s the simple reality of keeping track of which of your 150 students is in the midst of socially transitioning on a day-to-day basis.
“The fluidity of students happens in real time through the course of a year, where a student tests out a new name, or new pronouns,” Farmer said. “And at ETHS, you’re likely to have 10 to 20 students who identify outside of the binary.”
Kobernik-Pollack and Horrell have taken it upon themselves to create that system.
In an open letter to administrators, the two proposed that at the beginning of each semester, students should privately inform teachers of their pronouns, perhaps through a Google Form, then be allowed to share their pronouns to the class if they so desire.
They also suggested the school put more effort into promoting resources for transgender and gender-nonconforming students like the Student Advocacy Form.
A total of 151 members of the ETHS community have signed the letter, including a handful of teachers, and Kobernik-Pollack and Horrell met with the school board this month, after first addressing the board at a Nov. 8 meeting. So far, they say, the board has been receptive to their message.
They’ve also received support from student groups like the Student Union, which helped promote the open letter and told Kobernik-Pollack and Horrell to take their concerns to the school board.
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“I think the survey and the open letter opened a lot of our eyes to what in the school affects transgender or gender-nonconforming students that cisgender students don’t really notice most of the time,” said ETHS junior and the school board’s student representative Barbara Tomaradze.
Tomaradze said the Student Union had changed its practices around pronouns since the letter had come out and expected other teachers would start to do the same.
Horrell, for her part, wasn’t quite ready to celebrate.
“We have a lot of work to be done,” Horell said. “I’m going to be happy when we cross the finish line.”
Joshua Irvine is a freelance reporter.