Wisconsin Teachers Instructed to Hide Students’ Gender Identities from Parents By Ryan Mills
Teachers at a school district in Wisconsin are being instructed to hide their students’ changing gender identities from parents on the grounds that “parents are not entitled to know,” and that it is “knowledge that must be earned,” according to leaked training documents.
The instruction was part of several recent staff development sessions for teachers in the Eau Claire Area School District in central Wisconsin that focused on safe spaces, gender identity, microaggressions, and oppression. According to one of the trainers, parents who disagree with their kids about gender identity issues are guilty of a form of “abuse.” The trainers also encouraged the teachers to be activists: “to vote, to demonstrate, to protest.”
Critics of the training sessions called the instruction “blatant disregard for the parents and guardians of our community’s children,” and they said it sends the message that schools are in control of children, not parents and families.
The fight over teacher training in Eau Claire is the latest skirmish in the national debate over the role of schools in promoting activism, and teaching “woke” concepts about race, gender, and sex.
The training sessions were held in late February, hosted by diversity and multiculturalism staffers from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. The training was first reported by the conservative media group Empower Wisconsin, and by Parents Defending Education, a national nonprofit that fights classroom indoctrination and activists agendas in schools.
One of the slides in the training session reads, “Remember, parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned. Teachers are often straddling this complex situation. In ECASD, our priority is supporting the student.”
As part of the discussion on the topic, Chris Jorgenson, director of UW Eau Claire’s Gender & Sexuality Research Center, said that “teachers are often put in terrible positions caught between parents and their students. But much like we wouldn’t act as stand-ins for abuse in other circumstances, we cannot let parents’ rejection of their children guide teachers’ reactions and actions and advocacy for our students.”
In response to the instruction, three local school board candidates, Nicole Everson, Corey Cronrath, and Melissa Winter, issued a joint statement, saying they were “appalled” and “dismayed that current school district leadership would pressure teachers into breaking a social contract that we all know and understand – that parents and guardians hold primary responsibility for the welfare and care of their children.” They argued that the training communicated three “very dangerous messages” – that schools and not parents are in control of children, that district leaders are willing to pit teachers against parents, and that what goes on inside Eau Claire schools is “privileged information.” They called for district leaders to apologize to teachers “for placing them at odds with families and also to parents and guardians for breaking the trust and partnership that is critical for thriving students and a stellar school district.”
In a statement to Empower Wisconsin, superintendent Michael Johnson offered no such apology, and said the district “prides itself on being a school district that makes all students feel welcome and safe in our schools.”
The hosts of the safe spaces training told participants that they should expect to feel “cathartic discomfort” during the session, which included lessons on misgendering, sex orientation laws, deadnaming, and the evolution of “identity and language.” At one point, they discussed a so-called “Genderbread Person,” a drawing of a gingerbread man that demonstrates the differences between gender identity, gender expression, biological sex, and romantic and sexual attraction.
Dang Yang, director of multicultural affairs at UW Eau Claire, ended the safe spaces training by telling the teachers “intentionality and action are always hallmarks of what we always want to walk away with. … We also want to encourage you to go out there, to vote, to demonstrate, to protest, to listen, to intervene, and above all else, of course, to love. Love is love is love is love.”
During training on microaggressions, Eau Claire teachers were taught about the differences between microinsults, microinvalidations, and microassaults. Examples of microaggressions that the training noted include: the concept of color blindness, or that “America is a melting pot;” the “myth of meritocracy,” or the belief that “the most qualified person should get the job;” assuming any student’s gender; and “sexist/heterosexist language,” including “being forced to choose between male and female when completing basic forms.”
During a discussion of identity, the training video stated that “social transformation requires, among other things, a mobilization of identity.” During a training on oppression, the teachers were asked to take “The White Privilege Test,” to help them to consider the role white privilege has played in their lives. They also received a heterosexual privilege checklist.
In a letter to school board candidates posted by Parents Defending Education, an alleged former Eau Claire teacher wrote about walking out of the trainings and being “more ashamed to be a teacher than I ever have been in my many years in the profession.” The teacher, whose name was not released, reported being “shut down” after questioning a portion of the training.
“My breaking point this year was when I had a female student tell a guidance counselor that she now wanted to go by a boy’s name,” the teacher wrote. “There were THIRTY other staff members that were included on that email, and we were told to not tell the parents. Act like nothing happened if we needed to contact home. Could you imagine being a parent and finding out that thirty teachers are calling your girl a boy’s name and you knew nothing about it? I would be beside myself. That is a major decision for a 14 year old to make! For parents to not be a part of it is mind-blowing.”
Comments are closed.
