Consider... Lesley

I remember back in the nineties when the first transgender person joined our team.  I think that started my whole journey, actually. Some of the educators said, “Are you going to leave them all alone with the children?” I said, “They pass the records checks. What’s the problem?”  

They couldn’t answer that.  

The other comment was, “What are the children going to think? What are the children going to say? Isn’t that going to bother them?” I said, “Well, let’s see. Let’s see how this pans out.” So, the children went up to our new team member and said, “You look like a girl, but your voice is like a boy’s. What’s with that?” She explained her journey to the children, not in depth, but a small piece of that journey. And the kids said, “Okay. All right, can you read me this book?” And that was that.  

Then everybody relaxed.  I think they needed to journey with that person, and we just built on that as we went along.