Midwestern teachers exchange tips about ‘subversive and quiet’ transitioning kids without telling parents

Dozens of Midwestern teachers gathered online this week and exchanged tips on helping trans students switch genders in school without their parents knowing, while criticizing a raft of new Republican laws on sex and identity.

DailyMail.com accessed an online session hosted by the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP), which is funded by the Department of Education, attended by some 30 teachers from Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois and beyond.

In the four-hour workshop, they discussed helping trans students face new laws in Republican-led states on gender, pronouns, names, parental rights, restroom access, and sports teams.

Some teachers said they followed the rules, but others discussed being “subversive,” how their personal “code of ethics” broke the law, and how they could “hide” a trans student’s new name and gender from their parents.

The revelation comes amid growing tensions between traditional parents, who are concerned about newfangled gender ideas in schools, and some progressive teachers, who say they must protect trans students from their own families.

At the start of the workshop, Angel Nathan, the MAP specialist who hosted the session, said attendees would review the new laws to “fix the marginalizing effects and disrupt problematic policies.”

In the discussion and role-playing sessions that followed, the teachers, principals, principals, and counselors talked about trans students and their families in a way that would alarm many parents.

Kimberly Martin, the DEI coordinator at Royal Oak Schools, which serves 5,000 K-12 students in Michigan, spoke about helping trans students keep their gender transition a secret.

“We’re working with our filing system so that certain screens can’t be seen by the parents…if there’s a nickname on it, we try to hide it,” Martin told the online meeting.

Jennifer Haglund, counselor for Ames Community Schools, which serves 5,000 K-12 students in Iowa, lamented Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signing a law in March banning biological males from competing on female sports teams.

She boasted about her “own activism” and participation in protest marches.

“I know I have my own code of ethics, and it doesn’t always go along with the law,” Haglund said.

Shea Martin, an Ohio-based trans educator, who writes a “socialist, feminist, and anti-racist” blogging called Radical Teacher, said she opposed “laws that prohibit or restrict advocacy for transgender people.”

“There’s a lot at stake for trans youth,” Martin said.

“I think that means sometimes you have to work subversively and quietly to make sure trans kids get what they need.”

Martin did not describe subversive acts, but later spoke of teachers engaging in “sexuality” with elementary school students, who are between the ages of five and ten.

When it comes to men, women, playground crushes, youth love and marriage, teachers should be wary of treating “enhanced heterosexuality as the norm,” Martin said.

Finally, Yesenia Jimenez-Captain, the director of educational services at Woodland School District, which serves some 4,600 K-8 students at four schools in Lake County, Illinois, criticized conservative teachers in a nearby district.

Parents and teachers across Illinois have become angry in recent years over Democrat-led efforts to put tampons and pads in boys’ bathrooms so that trans female-to-male students can access them.

Jimenez-Captain told her colleagues about a nearby school board meeting that “exploded into violence” over the tampon controversy.

“That became a big violent problem because the individuals involved are also educators… which is sickening.”

At no point in the session did a teacher say that parents could know what is best for their own children, nor did they question whether confirmation on demand was the only way to help a trans-identified student.

Teaching a new wave of gender ideology in schools and secretly affirming trans-identified students have become hot-button issues in America’s culture wars between liberals and conservatives.

Some traditional parents are concerned about activist teachers influencing children with radical gender ideas and even encouraging them to switch.

Tensions have led to lawsuits and violent school board meetings across the country.

Republican politicians in Red states have introduced more than 500 bills affecting LGBTQ people this year, dozens of which have already been signed, says the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group.

They include laws that require teachers to tell parents about a student’s new name or pronoun, whether trans students are allowed to use restrooms that do not match their birth gender, or prohibit trans girls from participating in girls’ sports.

Conservative parent groups have tried to ban books from classrooms and school libraries, including Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir Gender Queer, about the author’s struggles with their own sexual and gender identity.

Schools are under pressure to help trans students in this volatile political environment, where the “gender-affirming” model touted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other agencies is increasingly questioned.

MAP, which organized the workshop, is part of the Great Lakes Equity Center. Funded by the federal government under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it serves 11.2 million students in 7,025 school districts in 13 states.

In November, MAP announced it had signed an $8.5 million funding deal with the Department of Education, and millions more elsewhere. The department did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.

MAP operates in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. It covers states with pro-trans laws and others with a more conservative approach.