My Story Part 53 – Teacher

I never really thought about teaching before I came out, but as I travel around the state talking about the anti-discrimination legislation, I have grown to like talking to groups. I think one of the things that I would like to do when I graduate is teach diversity. Hopefully, we will pass the bill in 2011 and that should create a market to give workshops on diversity training to businesses.

Last semester for an Independent Studies class, I created a curriculum for a fifteen-week course for “Working with Gender Variant Clients” that I hope I can teach to social work students. I think will fill a gap in education that I hear from trans-people. They complain that many caseworkers do not understand what a trans-person goes through when they transition. If I could teach that class for one semester a year, it will go a long way towards creating an understanding of the trans-community. I was a guest lecturer for a class and it gave me a positive feeling as if I was really helping the students to learn something that they never knew before. I also think that it would be good to have a trans-person teach the class.

I just submitted a workshop proposal to teach a workshop at the Connecticut chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) annual conference in the spring. The workshop will be a shorten version of the class. It will at least be a start to get my foot in the door teaching.

So how did it all start? In the e-list for the support group, Connecticut Outreach Society, there was an email asking for a volunteer to go and speak to a class at the University of Hartford. Back then, I was always looking for ways that I could go out as Diana and I thought that this was a good opportunity. I could do something positive and be Diana for a while. I enjoyed talking to the class and I wanted to do it again, it made me feel like I was bringing about a change in attitude about trans-people. For the outreach, we told our story and then answered questions. Sometimes we get a lot of questions and the class is really interactive, other times, it’s a dud. The worst class that I spoke to was a sports medicine class with all jocks, they didn’t ask one question and sat there with their arms folded and their legs wide open… the type male dominance pose.

Then once with Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition, I was asked to teach a workshop for a state agency instead of just doing an outreach. I really enjoyed that, I actually taught the workshop and afterward I realized that I had a knack for teaching. Since then, I have taught other workshops and as I mentioned above, I was a guest lecturer for a college class and it felt so good standing up there and talking to all the students.

I firmly believe that change is brought about by educations. It can be as simple as telling our stories or as involved as teaching a class.