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 Transgender Drop-out 
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This semester I took a part-time job to make a little extra money (and yes, that jealousy you feel right now is justified). One of my coworkers is still in high school (yes, it's that prestigious). Last night he was talking about a former student at Watauga that was a transgender student, which in this case meant a male who dressed as a female everyday (I’ll call him Chris to make it easy for me). Ok, no more paranthetical comments (I hope). Hearing my coworker’s description of this Chris and Chris’s behavior it became clear just how little most people know about various transgender situations. It also became clear how strange it is to a 15 year old high school student, and this guy was pretty understanding and accepting, but he was still utterly confused by the whole thing. Tolerance in this case seemed to translate more to avoidance. Unfortunately, a lot of the student body neither tolerated nor avoided Chris. The obvious end to this story is that Chris dropped out as soon as possible. Not the ending we as teachers would hope for.

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Matthew Pickard


Mon Apr 23, 2007 10:16 am
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I would agree that it is difficult to understand issues of sexuality that are contradictory to our own. Tolerance and understanding are different things. When he was talking about "Chris", did you happen to push him much on this topic? Did you share anything you have been talking about in class or encourage him to educate himself on this topic?
It is not surprising to me that the student dropped out, it correlates very well to the statistics we have been discussing. My hope is that the other negative outcomes, such as depression & suicide, did not follow. In counties like Watauga and Avery county, I imagine that these issues must be magnified, as I think there is a much lower tolerance for differences. I know that sounds very stereotypical, but in this area is seems that there is less tolerance of the deviation from the norm. Perhaps this is simply due to the smaller town atmosphere, where there are much smaller percentage odds of being exposed to diversity (in all areas, not just transgender individuals). Does anyone agree or disagree with this?

P.S. My spell-check does not recognize "transgender" as correctly spelled. Interesting...

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James.Meghan@gmail.com


Mon Apr 23, 2007 10:48 pm
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I agree with you Meghan. There is very little diversity at Watauga High. I was actually looking at the demographics of Watauga County a few nights ago. It is like 96% white, 2% African-American, 1% Asian, and 1% Hispanic. I can understand how it would be shocking to some people if they are never exposed to it. Like you said, it's just not the norm. I am fairly new to this whole transgender thing as well. We touched on it in a few psych courses but I do not fully understand. This does not mean that I disagree with it (like the guy in the video who said the boy was just confused), I just don't understand completely.

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William Byrne


Wed Apr 25, 2007 6:13 pm
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