- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 2
- 6
-
Sparkle (3)
Being a victim of bigotry is never fun. Getting fired in a discriminatory fashion is never a good thing. I was fired from a teaching position at Neal Math and Science Academy in North Chicago due to my status as a trans woman, a clear case of bigoted discrimination. I felt humiliated. I felt like my value and skill as an educator was being called into question. I felt like less of a person.
But then I discovered something that tipped me from feeling hurt and humiliated to feeling intensely angry: I later found out that part of the reason the principal thought my presence might bring up “difficult questions” among students was because, within the last year, a student at Neal had committed suicide due to “gender and gender expression related teasing.”
I'm going to repeat that, because the irony is just sickening: the principal at Neal decided having a potentially trans teacher might bring up “difficult questions,” due in part to a student committing suicide over gender and gender expression related teasing.
How could that happen?
I teach theatre quite a lot. It's a large part of my income as a freelance artist, and I really love doing it; working with kids, seeing them grow into their own identities, and giving them a chance - sometimes the first chance they've ever been offered - to express themselves and really be heard. And I'm trans. That is, I was assigned male at birth, identify as a woman, and am living my life in line with that identity. Being trans is a big part of my art, but does not enter into my teaching theatre classes to youth - its as unrelated as my religion, my ethnicity, or whether I like cats or dogs more. And yet, I was fired for Neal for being trans, something I never brought up and had no bearing on my ability to teach seventh and eight graders about theatre and performance skills.
I teach most often with the Piven Theatre Workshop, an absolutely fabulous organization founded thirty-plus years ago by the parents of Jeremy Piven (of Entourage fame). I’ve taken classes there since I was about ten-years-old, and have been teaching with them – first as an assistant and now as a lead teacher – for almost eight years. Piven does most of its teaching at its facility in Evanston, Illinois, but is sometimes hired by outside organizations to do on-site workshops, usually at schools.
This is where the Neal Math and Science Academy comes in. They had a longstanding contract with the Boys and Girls Club of Lake County, where the BGCLC provided after school services. The BGCLC decided to hire Piven to provide an after school theatre program. Piven, in turn, hired me to teach the actual workshop. So I was hired by Piven, who was hired by BGCLC, who was hired by Neal.
Confused yet?
Neal is in North Chicago, a city closer to the Wisconsin border than it is to the actual City of Chicago. So, on Tuesday, September 28, I set out north from Actual Chicago to find North Chicago. It wasn’t a difficult ride – pretty much straight north – but it was a very different culture, way up North. North Chicago is closely tied with a US Naval training center, meaning a lot of the students are only there for a few years, before their parents move on to a different assignment. Much of the rest of the community is pretty low-income, something I wasn’t expecting from Lake County. I arrived at Neal around 2:45 for a 3:00 PM pre-class meeting with the BGCLC on-site supervisor, and was given a brief tour of the school.
Neal seemed like a perfectly nice school, trying to make due with budget issues, an always-shifting student population, and the usual difficulties any middle school faces.
The students I worked with were – like most of Neal – kids of color, and (unlike my primarily white, largely Jewish population at Piven) were not excellent listeners. But we had a good class, the kids seemed to have fun, and I felt like it would be a productive – if tiring – ten week workshop. I was slightly nervous about having to provide BGCLC information for a background check (since my old name would show up) but dismissed my fears as unrealistic. Likewise, one student during the class said something was “So gay!” but I said “that type of language” wasn’t allowed, and the issue was dropped. I
