The Boulder Valley School District has taken its first baby steps toward including transgender children, but as long as its teachers are still able, as my children’s teachers are, to promise that they will not include any stories about transgender children in their classrooms, on the advice of their union president, then it still gets a failing grade.

My children, who are transgender and genderqueer, go to school every day in this town, to classrooms where their teachers refuse to acknowledge their stories, their history, their pride. What happens to people who grow up in these classrooms? They become employers who refuse to hire transgender people, because their stories seem strange and unfamiliar. They become teenagers who drop out, and struggle at the fringes of society, because they cannot get jobs and cannot find acceptance from their peers.

If you believe, as so many parents have told me, that my children will confuse your children about their gender identity, then you are placing cultural pressure on these teachers, who are afraid to do what teachers are trained to do.

So please, let your children’s teachers know that you want your children to learn about their transgender classmates, you want them to develop tolerance at an age when it comes naturally, before it’s too late, and the hardened fears of adults settle into place, keeping us from knowing each other. We’re all in this together,

Kai McKenzie

Boulder