Week 3 assignment #2 - Education Law on Diversity in the news

Tagline: Facing outcry, Department of Education again delays statewide gender diversity regulation

Article URL: https://www.rgj.com/story/news/education/2018/03/30/facing-outcry-department-education-again-delays-statewide-gender-diversity-regulation/475213002/ 

                         The Nevada department of education is trying to adopt broad anti-bullying regulation aimed at protecting the state’s gender-diverse pupils.  The regulations include requiring additional gender diversity training for school administrators and recognizing students by their chosen names and pronouns.The proposed regulation is designed to serve as guidance and a bare minimum of requirements that districts must follow. The proposed regulation stems from the passage of Senate Bill 225, signed into law at the end of the 2016-17 legislative session. The anti-bullying bill requires Nevada school districts statewide to enact policies that protect gender-diverse students.Department of education officials stressed that the regulation does not criminalize speech such as not referring to a student by their chosen pronoun. But Canavero said the repeated intentional mis-gendering of a student could fall under the state’s anti-bullying law. Many fears centered on the use of restrooms by gender-diverse students, though the regulation has zero mention of restroom or locker room use.

                 Gender identification and gender diverse students have become a hot topic. It is an extremely complex issue. We are used to scientific and binary gender associations. If you have male sex organs then you were a man and you identify as such, and female the same. While gender dysphoria is not a new concept, it has gained a lot of notoriety as of late as people have questioned their pronouns and whether they want to be referred to as a binary gender altogether, also referred to as Genderqueer. 

                 Like everything else this issue has been politicized. Which is a shame. As teachers and schools we need to do all that we can to assure a place where every student feels welcome and accepted. At the same time how to accommodate for a change in fundamental human identification is extraordinarily complex. But we must start, and we as teachers must, as a bare minimum, understand the issues, understand the perspective of the students and talk in a way which the students feel that we can relate with them, that we can empathize with their struggles and that we are always there for them to help facilitate their learning and growth!