The other day I was reading the news online and came across a story about a teacher in Virginia who had been fired over refusing to refer to a 9th grade transgender student as male. The fired teacher stated in his hearing that his religious beliefs prevented him from referring to the student as a boy and that he was at risk of losing his job for having views held by “most of the world for most of human history”. I am not at all familiar with the laws on the matter in that area and therefore cannot voice an opinion on the termination itself, but the case as a whole and this statement particularly brought up many questions to my mind about the state of education today.

I believe that most teachers would agree with me in saying that when we walk into a classroom, we need to put our student’s needs before our own. Obviously, our individual personalities and beliefs make us the teachers that we are, but is it OK to make a student feel bad because their personality and beliefs do not align with our own? I am 100% sure that the answer to this question is NO! We need to remember that children in school are much of the time there against their will. Our job as teachers is to change this feeling and to make them want to be there. Even more than that, our job as teachers is to make our students feel wanted!

This is especially important for children who feel as if they are different. This feeling of being different can be due to a learning difficulty, physical appearance, a speech impediment, ambiguous gender/sexual identity or millions of other reasons. These children have to overcome so many obstacles in their day to day lives even before the first bell has rung. If our classes are making them feel hopeless, disrespected and inadequate, we are committing a crime, even if we aren’t breaking any laws. We all have to do as much as we can to identify these children and to empower them. Sometimes all that is needed is to show an interest in them or to give them a compliment in class.

The Highest Result of Education is Tolerance Helen Keller

As for the fired teacher’s statement that he was at risk of losing his job for having views held by “most of the world for most of human history”, I barely know where to start. Recent scientific discoveries show that homo-sapiens have been around for over 300,000 years. The first complex civilization is considered to be the Sumerians in Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago. “Most of the world for most of human history” has believed complete and utter nonsense!

Most of the world for most of human history believed that homosexuality was punishable by death. Most of the world for most of human history believed that women were not equal to men. Most of the (western) world for most of human history believed that people who were not white were genetically inferior. Most of the world for most of human history believed that their way was the right way and that everyone else should either convert or die. There are certain countries and cultures in the world today that still believe these things! You get my drift, right? Most of the world for most of human history were idiots.

This case reminded me how complex our students are. Even students who have high grades and active social lives can have “hidden baggage”. We can never know what is hiding under the surface of what these students are showing, unless we try to take a deeper look. In order to do our job, we need to be aware not only of our students’ academic life and difficulties but also of the rest of the aspects of their lives. Not every teacher will be able to help every student with these issues, but if we start to treat our students as fellow humans rather than as students or as children, we are off to a good start.

I want to finish by saying that from what I have read about the case, the teacher in question has many admirable traits. One report that I read stated that this teacher also coached the soccer team and even drove the school bus. Many parents and students arrived to the hearing showing support for him and an online petition demanding he be re-instated has gotten hundreds of signatures. Should he have been fired? I don’t know. What I do know is that despite all his years of teaching, he still has a lot to learn.

Rafie