Transgender Educators - by Michele Dow

About the Book

This book is a call to action for justice for a marginalized community: transgender educators. The author argues that despite the increased visibility and pockets of acceptance of transgender people in general, transgender educators face job loss, loss of family members, pover...

Book Synopsis

This book is a call to action for justice for a marginalized community: transgender educators. The author argues that despite the increased visibility and pockets of acceptance of transgender people in general, transgender educators face job loss, loss of family members, poverty, and isolation by their school communities.

Review Quotes

Dow (Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) has written a compelling book about the impact of injustice and discrimination on transgender educators. She emphasizes their marginalization and the need for gender identity and expression to be included within the social justice lens in education systems. Writing as a transgender educator, the author relates personally to the lack of support trans educators receive in the system, and draws on intersectionality as a key component to describe the many layers of difficulty and prejudice they experience within educational institutions. Dow recounts teachers and school leaders who have transitioned while working and the types of challenges they have encountered, focusing on white participants in K-12 settings. The study explores these workplace problems and aims to suggest ways that transgender educators can come out successfully, offering insight into the process of transitioning within a work environment. Overall this volume will be a valuable resource for those interested in gender, education, sociology, psychology, and queer studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Michele Dow takes us on a journey to understand the workplace experiences of transgender educators. Against a backdrop of historical, legal, and socio-political discrimination, Dow shares personal stories from more than 30 transgender educators. Collectively, their voices reveal the ongoing injustices that transgender educators experience and the fortitude required to stay true to oneself and to the profession. Dow's work provides equity-oriented readers with the motivation and know-how to build more supportive educational environments for transgender educators.

The experiences of trans people can vary widely based on so many factors, including location and access to resources. This is no different for trans educators as gender identity and expression have not yet been included across the United States in employment protection policies. In this book, Michele Dow describes some of the challenges that trans educators encounter on the way to becoming their true selves. She provides us with an insight into this often invisible population through her study of seven trans educators. Anyone interested in school contexts and social justice should read this book.

About the Author

Michele Dow is adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.