Speaker 1: My name is Skylar Baylor, and I'm the first openly transgender athlete to compete on a Division I men's team. Key things that an education system or administrators in an educational facility can do for trans folks specifically, first of all, is having a policy that includes gender identity in their nondiscrimination group. So making sure that it's not just gender, but gender identity. And then along with that, gender expression, so that no trans kids or gender nonconforming kids are being bullied for how they identify or for how they express their gender. Besides that, it needs to be enforced. So there are a lot of places where policy happens, but it's not enforced. And then lastly, infrastructure changes. So having gender neutral bathrooms, I think, is absolutely key to making gender nonconforming folks and trans folks feel more comfortable, because that allows them a space where they don't have to battle through having any sort of bullying in a bathroom that might occur that teachers may not be able to control as well. For teachers, for administrators, for principals, it's not enough not to just engage in the negative behavior. So to not say bad things, to not be bigoted, to not use slurs, that's not enough to just not do that. You also have to call other people out when they do that. Teachers don't often do that, and because of that, hatred is taught through their silence. Their behaviors, the behaviors within the classrooms, are affirmed, are allowed, are condoned by the teacher's silence. And I've been in so many classrooms, and with specifically coaches, that did that. They didn't say anything when somebody else, a teammate, said something negative, or even when another teacher said something that was bigoted or whatever. And that allowed the behavior. It created this culture. It fed, it cultivated the culture. And I think that that's crucial. I think calling people out, not allowing that bullying in the classroom is absolutely crucial because that allows for that culture to shift. And it tells that kid, I'm going to take care of you. Educators can best support LGBTQ students by educating themselves about LGBTQ experiences. That means listening to stories, that means reading stories, that means reading books, all those kinds of things about LGBTQ stories. It also just means practicing an openness to newness, because I think a lot of times folks just shut off from learning new things about new identities, like it's not relevant in my classroom, and that's false. It is relevant even if you don't have LGBTQ kids in your classroom. A really easy way to show just any kind of support of LGBTQ students is have a sticker on your door that has one of, there's like a little safe space sticker that has a rainbow in it, or says safe space. I know for me that whenever I see those anywhere, I'm like, oh, this person has thought about LGBTQ folks, and I'm like, that much safer. That doesn't mean that I think that they understand everything about what it means to be trans, but it does mean that there's a potential that person has thought about it. The reality is a dead kid can't learn, and that's a very intense, that's a very depressing way of putting it, but trans kids have a 41% rate of suicide. That means one in every two, pretty much, trans kids attempt suicide or complete suicide. That number actually plummets when a kid has at least one supportive parent. When the kid can actually transition, and there was a study on younger kids, when that kid transitions to that age and has a social transition and has accepting parents, they actually experience rates of depression identical to cisgender youth. That means you can mitigate almost all the negative mental health effects that dysphoria, so discomfort because you're trans, has on you by just accepting that kid. So I tell that to educators, to administrators at education facilities, to teachers, because if you want to complete your goal of teaching this kid, you need that kid to be there, you need them to be present, and being present is also a function of one's identity. If you're at war with who you are, how are you going to learn how to do calculus? How are you going to learn the alphabet? How are you going to learn the names of the presents? You're not. There's lots of research that shows the more a kid can show up with their full identity and not feel unsafe because of who they are, the more they'll learn, the better their test scores, the better their attendance, the better their graduation rates.