In my twentiesI found myself at a crossroads. Despite my academic achievements and teaching career, I struggled with a profound sense of erasure. The world around me lacked the language and structure to acknowledge my existence fully. This absence of recognition led me to a dark place, where I attempted to end my life twice.
Surviving that experience ignited a fire within me. I became determined to ensure that no student should ever feel as alone as I did. My journey as an educator began with a simple conviction: schools should be places of healing and possibilitynot erasure.
From Survival to Advocacy
In 2005I became the first openly trans academic in teacher education. Over the years, I have witnessed the struggles and triumphs of trans students in classrooms across the United States. I saw moments of brilliance and celebrationbut also moments of panic and fear. Students often had to calculate the risk before speaking their own names.
Witnessing these experiences was no longer enough. I decided to intervene structurally. Schools are not neutral spaces, and educators are not neutral actors. Our choices shape whether students remain visible and valued.
Resistance in the Face of Anti-Trans Legislation
Across the United States, anti-trans legislation has expanded dramatically, regulating names, pronouns, curriculum, athletics, bathrooms, healthcare, and public life. These laws extend beyond policy into the daily conditions of existence, shaping what can be said, who can be recognized, and how trans young people move through schools and communities.
As a researcher, I have studied these policies and their impact on education. However, what I have found most consistently is not simply evidence of harm but evidence of resistance.
Utah’s Battle for Inclusive Education
In Utah, under HB 374 and HB 29a high school English teacher found a narrow opening in state law that allowed Gender Queer to remain in her classroom under administrative supervision. Every lesson had to be documented, and every discussion tied explicitly to state standards. Most teachers removed the text, but she did not. Instead, she transformed literary analysis into a defense of reading itself.
Students examined memoir, symbolism, rhetoric, and censorship while documenting every objective and state standard. They questioned who gets to decide what is harmful, what counts as neutral, and why certain stories become dangerous. Eventually, the scrutiny intensified, and the teacher lost her position. However, her students refused to let the record end there. They organized a public read-in, archived lesson plans, and documented what had actually occurred in the classroom. One parent later wrote that the book had helped their child survive suicidal thoughts.
Montana, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas: Stories of Defiance
Across the country, refusal takes different forms. In Montana, a fourth-grade teacher continues to center a student’s affirmed name throughout mathematics lessons despite HB 400. In Alabama, a social studies teacher invites students to examine civic participation, belonging, and power through historical inquiry rather than political slogans. In Georgia, a coach organizes runners according to stride rhythm, endurance, and cooperative pacing rather than gender categories in response to SB 1. In Texas, a college professor asks future teachers how social-emotional learning, literacy, and relationship-building might still create affirming classrooms within legal constraints.
The Cost of Refusal
But refusal carries a cost. Some teachers are reprimanded, watched, reassigned, dismissed, or pushed out. Some leave because the cost of staying becomes unbearable. Yet we need educators in these spaces. We cannot surrender entire states, districts, and communities to policies of erasure. We need stronger protections for educators willing to remain and stronger systems of support for the students who depend on them.
That work begins with understanding the law. De jure is what is written. De facto is how it is lived. The distance between the two is where refusal operates. Laws contain ambiguity and openings. If we do not read them, we cannot find those openings. If we cannot find them, we surrender the classroom before we begin.
No educator can do this work alone. Teachers need librarians, counselors, healthcare providers, families, legal advocates, faith leaders, journalists, unions, community organizations, and administrators willing to stand beside them. Protecting students is not the work of a single profession. It is the work of communities willing to defend one another.
Protest matters. It builds visibility. It signals collective refusal. But protest alone does not change what happens inside a classroom on a Tuesday morning. Educators operate in that space. Refusal is a sustained practice. It is the decision, repeated daily, to ensure that students remain.
Today, I teach because I know what happens when young people cannot imagine a future. Refusal begins by helping them believe and know they have one.
