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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We continue our week of call-ins for teachers now as the new school year dawns on how the culture wars are hanging over your classroom today. How do you respect difference and build community in your classroom when it comes to race, gender, or sexual orientation? 212-433-WNYC. How do you respect difference and build community in your classroom when it comes to race, gender, or sexual orientation? 212-433-9692.

As we've been doing all week, we hope to hear from teachers of students of all age groups. For example, how do you respect difference and build community in your classroom when it comes to race, gender, or sexual orientation when it comes to the youngest kids in pre-K, kindergarten, 1st or 2nd Grade? Do you have lessons where the kids talk about their families, their national origin ancestries, if they're descendants of American slaves or people who came on the Mayflower or anything else?

If Heather has two mommies, as the book title goes, at what age and in what ways does that come up? Is it in structured discussions where kids are asked or invited to talk about their families or is it more random and more spontaneous than that? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. How do you do it and how with the culture wars hanging over your heads? Florida's new law, for example, that's become known as Don't Say Gay, what's officially called The Parental Rights in Education law, explicitly prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in Grades K through 3.

Listeners, teachers of young students, is there anything you do in your K through 3 classrooms here in the tri-state area or anywhere else that would run afoul of that? How much do you have to struggle to avoid it? 212-433-WNYC. What about identifying yourself in any way in this respect? There was an NBC News story from June that I was reading this morning, when the Don't Say Gay law took effect that said, "Representatives of the Orange County Florida Classroom Teachers Association accused school officials of verbally warning educators not to wear rainbow articles of clothing and to remove pictures of their same sex spouses from their desks and LGBTQ Safe Space stickers from classroom doors."

Allegedly, at least, that even went to removing pictures of your spouse from your desk if it's same sex. Presumably, somebody could keep a picture of their other sex spouse if they wanted to in some other classroom, but that's in Florida. Teachers around here, do you disclose your gender or sexual orientation to your students in any way, a photo of your spouse or partner on your desk or verbally or any other way and how, for what grade or age group? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

It also might be really useful for our listeners who are other teachers, who are parents or anyone to hear how do you handle pronouns these days? When I was in middle school, I had an English teacher. There was only one, all the way along in my childhood education, but I had one English teacher in middle school who liked to call the students Mr. this and Ms. that. Mr. Lehrer, what aspects of the human character were represented by Piggy in Lord of the Flies? He would ask questions that way. Yes, we did read Lord of the Flies in that class, previewing some of the mob mentality and disregard for basic rules of decency we're living with today as adults, but I digress.

Do any of you teachers listening today like to address students that way? I know one of my producers had that experience too and wonders what that teacher would do now. What's the modern and respectful version if one even exists, or more generally, teachers of any age group, how do you deal with pronouns? On the one hand, as a sign of respect, do you share your own pronouns? I'm your teacher Brian Lehrer, he/him. Do you invite students to share theirs? Do you learn your students' gender identity so you can refer to non-binary students as they or them?

It comes up naturally in classroom conversation, right? The teacher might say, "Okay, class, Brian said Piggy represents thoughtfulness and intellectual independence. Do you agree with him?" There, I got tagged with a pronoun. Do you agree with him? The teacher could avoid it by just saying my name every single time or they could find out who wants to be referred to as he or she or they. What do you do and how are you respecting difference and building community in your classroom for any age group and are you getting any pressure from any parents or outside pressure groups? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Again, on race, do you deal with the structural racism and white supremacy that has been so integral in the history of our country? In the context of that, how do you build community if you have a racially diverse class? An alleged concern of the conservative movement in this respect is that white kids not be made to feel bad about themselves because of the structural white supremacy into which they were born. How do you respect these realities, but also respect all individuals and build community among the students in the room?

How do you build classroom culture and are you getting any culture warrior pressure from any camp? 212-433-WNYC, teachers, 212-433-9692, the floor is yours. How do you respect difference and build community in your classroom on race or gender or sexual orientation or any other way? 212-433-WNYC. [unintelligible 00:06:27] Kit in Bayville, you're on WNYC. Thanks so much for calling in. Hi, Kit.

Kit: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. As I told your screener, I'm starting my 30th year of teaching in September and things have changed.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Congratulations.

Kit: Thank you. I still love it. It's a great job. Things obviously, as you know, have changed drastically in 30 years. I have a gay daughter, which I am totally fine with, but what I have traditionally done, even when I first started teaching, was I would refer to my students as ladies and gentlemen. That actually works really well because if you identify as a man, but you have yet to transition, then that's okay and vice versa.

I do put a questionnaire out, an anonymous one, at the beginning of every year asking two things. The first one has been within the past five years, where I have said, "What pronoun would you like to be called?" I'm going to admit it, I screw that up sometimes, and when I do, I apologize. I say, "I'm so sorry. I meant to say sir." The kids are usually very good with it.

I also ask them what name they want to be called, because a lot of these kids that are transitioning, their birth name is not the name they want to be called. I had a student years ago who had a feminine name and was transitioning and has actually, at this point, successfully transitioned to be a male and wanted to be called by the male name. There were other teachers that had a problem with it, but I had no problem with it. If you want me to call you Mickey Mouse, I'll call you Mickey Mouse. Whatever makes you comfortable in my classroom. That's all I care about.

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting that teachers had a problem with just calling somebody by the name they had then adopted. What do you think that was about?

Kit: I think it was mostly older teachers who were very transphobic. My legal name is Katherine. Nobody calls me that unless they think that I owe them money or they're trying to sell me something. Everybody calls me Kit. I have always made a point, from a very young age, of making sure that people call me-- my own parents who named me, call me Kit. For some of the older teachers, who have since retired, thank God, I think it was just transphobia. I think it was just they couldn't handle the fact that--

Brian Lehrer: It just made them too awkward.

Kit: [crosstalk] I'm not a spring chicken.

Brian Lehrer: No. Well, 30 years in the classroom and it sounds like you're changing with the times and just expanding your own sensibilities, which is great. Kit, thank you so much. Good luck in year 30. Rebecca in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hi. Good morning or after-- morning. Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Still morning. Hello.

Rebecca: Good morning. Hi. I am entering my fourth year teaching middle school, which is really a time rife with a lot of growth and change. I also advise the GSA at my school and it is really interesting. A lot of the kids have the language around their pronouns and gender identity, but it's really the teachers that struggle with it more. We've had a lot of cases where a student comes to the building and it's like, "My name is this," it's a boy's name, and is using male pronouns but their parents don't know.

There's a lot of conversation with the staff about how do we make sure the kids, when they come into the building, feel recognized and comfortable and know that the teachers will meet them where they are. A lot of teachers say, "We need to tell the parents everything," but a lot of the time that's not safe for the kids. That's been my struggle this past year trying to make sure the queer kids are safe at school and making sure the teachers get their pronouns right and get their name right without feeling like, "Oh, how dare they try to change their name?"

Brian Lehrer: I think that part of the Florida law, I would have to look this up to get it exactly right, but I believe I've read that part of the Florida law does require teachers to inform parents about certain things having to do with their kids when it comes to gender identity. Have you gotten any direction from any principal or your school district, I don't know where exactly you teach, or the state about how to deal with that, when should you, when should you not tell the parents about this, how do you determine if it's safe, is it your place to determine if it's safe?

Rebecca: I was reading some of the city's directions on this, and it states that if a student comes to the school building and declares that they want to use a name and use a pronoun, everyone in the school community is required to stick to that, because when you out them at home, you can lead them to a dangerous situation or even if it's not dangerous, it might be really uncomfortable and it's the school's place to make them comfortable at school. We sometimes need to make a call to talk to the parent about what's going on only if the student has given us direct consent.

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting, Rebecca. Thank you so much, really appreciate it. Drew in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Drew.

Drew: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me. I'm loving this conversation that's going on. Just to build off what everybody is saying, just super important to be having these conversations. I think kids or young people can't handle it, but like Rebecca said, they know all these things are happening. They are aware of the language and the sooner we can get them talking about these things the better. I teach high school health and sexuality education at a public school in New York. It's super diverse. One of the first things we do is we do an identity project, which is based on a self-portrait by Shauna White.

It's basically talking about the parts of yourself that are visible to others, maybe that you wear glasses or that you're 6 feet tall, and then what are your identity markers that are not visible as well? Maybe I'm queer or trans or gay or Puerto Rican or something like that and drawing those and then hanging them around the room and letting kids explore and learn from each other, is a really powerful tool that I've used.

Brian Lehrer: What happens when there are kids who don't want to talk about their identities in some of those respects? Also, I'm curious if you find that it always builds community to do that or if it also builds a sense of, "Oh, I'm this and somebody else is other?"

Drew: Great question. The biggest thing is we never force students to disclose anything they feel uncomfortable with. I think of myself in high school, I would never have told people that I was gay. You'll put what you're comfortable with. You can be as surface level or as deep as you want. As for the division, we go around and we look at the differences and then we discuss things like what do you see, what differences? I think that builds more of a community rather than breaking it down. It makes it a special place to see how different we are.

Brian Lehrer: Drew, thank you so much for your call. 212-433-WNYC on how you build community and respect difference on race, gender, and sexual identity in your classroom. Steven in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Steven.

Steven: Good afternoon, Brian. I don't actually use pronouns, I just call kids by their names, but there are kids that will specifically tell me that they want to be called by a particular name. This summer, for example, I had a kid ask me to call him by his name Claude, or another one [unintelligible 00:14:44] and so on. I'm perfectly fine with that. I never make them feel uncomfortable about that and there's no resistance from me at all. Typically I teach government, AP government, those kinds of things.

We often talk about issues that are controversial. We just have the kids typically read various things, do some research, and then we will typically have a discussion, but I make it very clear during discussion that there should be-- we talk a certain way, we respect others and I really don't share my political opinion. I go out of my way just to ask questions about why they came to this conclusion or how do they know that kind of thing, but I don't want my classroom to be a place where the kids feel like they have to express a particular opinion or they can express another opinion. I want it to be like a marketplace of ideas, so to speak, where we can have intelligent discussions, that kind of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Especially in an AP government class, I would imagine. Do you feel like there is a political pressure movement that would make it harder for you to do everything you just described?

Steven: I can't say this enough. I am so lucky to be at a school where this is not an issue. When I hear about these things going on in Florida, or the culture was-- This doesn't exist. Where I'm at, my principal and people, they trust me to do things in a manner. As a matter of fact, I got observed this summer, it was just doing a lesson about the Miranda case and all that. It's all about getting them to understand particular concepts as far as I'm concerned, and they trust me to do that. I don't make my political views known. Kids have often asked me at the end of a whole semester, "What are you? Are you conservative are you liberal?"

I remember one kid after he graduated, we became friends on Facebook and he wrote me a long thing and he was very grateful for me doing things in this manner. He never felt pressured to think a certain way and it was more about just developing their critical thinking that kind--

Brian Lehrer: That's great, Steven, thank you very much. I hear you about the privilege of teaching in Brooklyn compared to some other places in the country right now. We have 30 seconds left in this segment. Valerie in Binghamton, you're going to get them, so you're going to have to do it in a soundbite, but hi.

Valerie: Hi. I'm a Latin teacher upstate, thanks for taking my call. With gender, that's a part of teaching many different world languages. I try to combine the linguistic standards of learning a new language and also using it to open up a conversation about how we want to be referred to, and also keeping in touch with other languages that have these binary genders and how LGBTQ folks are navigating that in their own countries and Language communities.

Brian Lehrer: So interesting to get to it through world languages, which yes, treat gender differently. Thank you for all your wonderful calls on how you respect difference and build community in your classrooms when it comes to race, gender, and sexual orientation. More calls for teachers tomorrow.

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