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Trump, at Fund-Raiser, Says He Wants Immigrants From ‘Nice’ Countries

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Trump, at Fund-Raiser, Says He Wants Immigrants From ‘Nice’ Countries

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At rallies, Donald Trump frequently laments migrants from a list of countries from Africa, Asia and the Middle East as he stokes fears around the surge at the border.

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Final Due 4/16

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Angel Reese's celebrity has exacted a crushing toll

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Inappropriate responses to Baltimore star

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Inappropriate responses to Baltimore star

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Angel Reese of the LSU Tigers looks on prior to a game against the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Elite 8. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

Columnist Kyle Goon: The former St. Frances star opened up about her critics after Elite Eight loss and showed just how heavy her crown can be

It felt like a message. How could it not be?

As Iowa star Caitlin Clark warmed up on the court on Monday night for their heavyweight bout, LSU's Angel Reese placed a crown on the LSU bench mere feet away from her rival not long before they tipped off.

Online speculation started immediately, context be damned. Social media accounts rushed to share pictures of the crown that Reese left in Clark's view. Was it a taunt? A flex? Was it meant to say, I'm the champ until you come take this from me?

The crown was not meant as a message for Clark at all, it turns out. It's a prop merely for the Tigers' team ritual. Before every game, LSU teammate Amani Bartlett does a handshake with Reese and places the crown on her head because she's "the queen."

We've never really been able to see how burdensome that crown can be for the Randallstown native until after LSU lost to the Hawkeyes on Monday night.

The 21-year-old Reese started off the game electric, pulling the Tigers back ahead of Iowa - but then twisted her ankle and wound up shooting just 7 for 21. She had 17 points and 20 rebounds to go with three authoritative blocks, but it was not enough to counter against Clark's world-beating performance sizzling from well beyond the arc.

When asked about Reese's leadership, sophomore Flau'jae Johnson took the opportunity to push back at the people who throw stones at her teammate.

"Everybody can have their opinion on Angel Reese, but y'all don't know her," she said. "Y'all don't know Angel Reese. I know Angel Reese. I know the real Angel Reese, and the person I see every day is a strong person, is a caring, loving person. But the crown she wears is heavy."

Poetically, it was Johnson's praise of Reese's toughness that made her exterior finally crack. Reese sniffed and wiped away the tears forming at the ends of her billowing eyelashes.

Reese's Bayou Barbie persona (or "Baltimore Barbie" as she also has called herself) is about relentless confidence and self-assertion. She gives this city credit for raising her strong, for making her willful and hard-nosed, and for giving her the tenacity to climb to the top of women's basketball a year ago and be crowned champion. And she gives back, whether it be through scholarships, or a recent campaign to help Black women close the racial wealth gap.

But getting to the top, in brash fashion nonetheless, made her a target - and we're not talking about the teams who wanted to beat the Tigers on the court.

Reese has been called an "idiot." She's been called a piece of excrement. She's seen her likeness twisted and manipulated by artificial intelligence for people's crude imaginations. In the last week, she and her teammates were called "dirty debutantes" flippantly in a major publication ( the sentence was later removed for not meeting editorial standards).

Reese said before the game that she was willing to play a villain role if that's what people expected of her. But afterward, her teammates' words moved her to show just how much she's been dealing with since becoming famous.

A tiara that Angel Reese of the LSU Tigers placed on the bench is pictured before a game against the Iowa Hawkeyes in the Elite 8 round of the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament at MVP Arena on April 1, 2024 in Albany, New York. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

"I've been through so much. I've seen so much," Reese said. "I've been attacked so many times, death threats, I've been sexualized, I've been threatened, I've been so many things, and I've stood strong every single time. I just try to stand strong for my teammates because I don't want them to see me down and not be there for them.

Added Reese: "I just want them to always know, I'm still a human."

Because Reese is a champion, because she's a marketing star, newly rich and appears on the cover of magazines, she can feel more like a brand than a living, breathing person. For young girls, especially Black girls in her hometown, she represents the potential to succeed without having to compromise competitiveness and outspokenness - two qualities that women have been historically forced to suppress.

But achieving that level of celebrity at just 21 takes an enormous toll. Throughout the season, Reese has referenced how important tending to her mental health is. A mysterious in-season suspension raised all kinds of questions and conspiracy theories, undermining the sense of power she's cultivated as a champion. Although Reese has often touted her coach Kim Mulkey as a supportive figure in her life, often in this NCAA Tournament run Mulkey's own combative impulses seemed to be an off-court distraction.

If you add the projections that people place on Reese, including racist and sexist tropes, it's beyond imagining how hard it must be for her to shut out the noise.

Teammate Hailey Van Lith - a highly marketable hooper in her own right who was roasted online as Clark scored on her - said she's never seen anyone receive as much vitriol as Reese. But she's also never seen anyone handle it as well.

"Y'all do not get to Angel Reese, so you might want to throw the towel in because you're wasting your energy," Van Lith said. "Angel is one of the toughest people I've been around."

Of all the people who would reasonably bear a grudge against Reese, Clark has been one of her biggest off-court supporters. After beating Reese's team, Clark came up to to her in the handshake line and told her to continue being a great player. Reese said the same.

In the year since they went viral for Reese's taunts (and the overblown reaction), they've seemingly only gained more respect for the weight of the expectations they each bear. Maybe they're the only ones who can understand what that's like.

In the next few days, Reese (who has a year of eligibility remaining) will decide whether her LSU career is over. But her days as a celebrity seem only to be beginning: She'll undoubtedly be one of the WNBA's most interesting players, and it's easy to envision her outsized personality and charisma translating to other entertainment mediums whenever her basketball days are done.

Making the transition into the public eye has been difficult, Reese acknowledged. It has tested that human being who still remains beneath the Bayou Barbie facade. But it's not in her nature to harbor regrets, and she won't start now.

"I wouldn't change anything, and I would still sit here and say I'm unapologetically me," she said. "I'm going to always leave that mark and be who I am and stand on that. And hopefully the little girls that look up to me, and hopefully I give them some type of inspiration that know hopefully it's not this hard and all the things that come at you, but keep being who you are, keep waking up every day, keep being motivated, staying who you are, stand ten toes, don't back down, and just be confident."

Reese won't be a champion again this year, but leave her the crown. As heavy as it is, she wears it well.

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Angel Reese's celebrity has exacted a crushing toll

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After falling in a headlining game against Iowa, the LSU star and Randallstown native allowed the world to see how difficult it can be to carry expectations and misconceptions that accompany her celebrity.

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Part 2 is due on 4/11

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Impressive presentations in class

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Edutopia a fine source for educational resources

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Discover websites, organizations, articles, planning guides, lesson plans, and other resources dedicated to preventing bullying and harassment.

Each October, individuals and organizations nationwide work together to raise awareness of bullying during National Bullying Prevention Month, an initiative of the PACER Center. Whether you are an educator, education leader, parent, or other community member, you can take action to prevent bullying and harassment by fostering a culture of caring and respect in your school, home, and community. Use the resources below to support your efforts.

Resources for Educators

The resources from StopBullying.gov address detection, preventive strategies, and effective responses. How do you know if a child is being bullied? Keep an eye out for these warning signs. Need to know what actions to take? Review these effective responses to bullying and prevention strategies. "Bullying: A Module for Teachers," from The American Psychological Association, includes a useful tip sheet, " Myths and Facts about Bullying," that addresses beliefs about school bullying not supported by current research. It's also important to know the bullying hot spots within schools in order to prevent it.

Bullying Prevention Curriculum

Visit the websites below to find videos, activities, and lesson plans you can use in the classroom:

For more planning tips, the following Edutopia posts are good to reference:

Student Voice and Leadership

For more inspiration, check out these examples of student voice and leadership from Edutopia:

Resources for Parents

" Creating a Safe and Caring Home" from NSCC includes guidelines for parents to help children feel safe and create positive environments for children. To better understand what parents should expect from schools and what parents can do, read "What Can Be Done to Stop Bullying?" from NBC News' Education Nation.

Communicating With Schools

Cyberbullying

What are some ways you can initiate conversations with your children about cyberbullying?

For more ways to take action against cyberbullying, take a look at these resources from Edutopia:

School-Wide and District-Wide Approaches

For more school-wide strategies, check out these other posts from Edutopia:

Social and Emotional Learning

Cultivating Empathy

Programs like Roots of Empathy that teach perspective-taking skills and empower children to fight cruelty with empathy and kindness have shown effectiveness in decreasing aggression and increasing pro-social behaviors among students. The Empathy 101 videos, tips, and school examples from Ashoka's Start Empathy website include ideas for cultivating empathy in the classroom and at home. For more ideas about how you can foster environments of kindness, empathy, and connection, both inside and outside the classroom, check out VideoAmy's " Five-Minute Film Festival: Nine Videos on Kindness, Empathy, and Connection" and Lisa Currie's " Why Teaching Kindness in Schools Is Essential to Reduce Bullying" from Edutopia. Parents may want to explore Edutopia's curated list of blogs, articles, and videos for parents about fostering kindness and empathy (as well as resilience, perseverance, and focus) in children: " A Parent's Resource Guide to Social and Emotional Learning."

Diversity and Inclusion

Suicide Prevention

" Suicide and Bullying," an issue brief from the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC), discusses the relationship between bullying and suicide among children and adolescents, including recommendations, with a special focus on LGBT youth. Initiatives like The Trevor Project focus on crisis and suicide prevention among kids in the high-risk LGBT student population. All teachers should review the Trevor Project's list of warning signs.

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Resources to Fight Bullying and Harassment at School

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Discover websites, organizations, articles, planning guides, lesson plans, and other resources dedicated to preventing bullying and harassment.

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Maryland Adolescent Physical Health Facts

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The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) defines chronic conditions as including: "learning disability; ADD or ADHD; depression; anxiety problems; behavioral or conduct problems; autism or other autism spectrum disorder; developmental delay; speech problems; asthma; diabetes; Tourette Syndrome; epilepsy or seizure disorder; hearing problems; vision problems; bone or joint problems; and brain injury or concussion." For each condition, parent respondents were asked whether they have ever been told by a health care professional that the adolescent has the condition, and whether the adolescent currently has the condition.

Health insurance status, ages 12-17, 2011-2012

The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBS) defines physical activity as: "doing any kind of physical activity that increased their heart rate and made them breathe hard some of the time during the 7 days before the survey."

The YRBS defines used computers as: "having played video or computer games or used a computer for something that was not school work."

The YRBS defines obesity as: "≥ 95 th percentile for body mass index (BMI), based on sex- and age-specific reference data from the 2000 CDC Growth Charts." BMI is calculated from students' self-reported height and weight.

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Maryland Adolescent Physical Health Facts

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The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) defines chronic conditions as including: "learning disability; ADD or ADHD; depression; anxiety problems; behavioral or conduct problems; autism or other autism spectrum disorder; developmental delay; speech problems; asthma; diabetes; Tourette Syndrome; epilepsy or seizure disorder; hearing problems; vision problems; bone or joint problems; and brain injury or concussion."

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Baltimore County had a chance to spread diversity among schools. They missed it.

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When parents of Carroll Manor Elementary School learned their kids could be redistricted to a different middle school - one they said would split up their community in northeastern Baltimore County - they took action.

They organized and created a website, shirts and signs to make clear that sending their children to Pine Grove Middle School in Carneywas a nonstarter. They wanted their children to go to middle school with students from Jacksonville Elementary, feeding into Cockeysville or Ridgely middle. Theirs were the dominant voices in the room during redistricting meetings, and their community had the most participation in a public-inputsurvey.

For Carroll Manor parents, increasing school diversity was not a concern.

For Baltimore County Public Schools, on the other hand, it was supposed to be. A system policy says reflecting the region's diversity should be a primary consideration in changing school boundaries.

But in the end, Carroll Manor parents got what they wanted, and the new school boundaries do nothing to spread socioeconomic diversity, essentially keeping the demographics unchanged. .

'Is that what diversity means?'

As Baltimore County schools prepared to openanexpansion of Pine Grove Middle and a new middle school in Rosedale, it put the task of choosing school boundaries in the community's hands.The system contracted with Cropper GIS, a facility planning consulting firm, who created several map options.

Parents, teachers and principals of the 11 impacted middle schools were selected to be on a 42-person committee thatspent three months gathering community feedback before selecting a final map.The board will vote on it in May.

Guiding them were two primary directives: the efficient use of school capacity and maintaining or increasing the diversity of each schoolto reflect the diversity of the region and school system. Considerationslike maintaining the continuity of neighborhoods and minimizing the number of times students are reassigned are secondary, according to system policy.

The selected boundary map at least temporarily relieves overcrowding at several of the middle schools and keeps Carroll Manor and Jacksonville elementary students together, with all slated to attend Cockeysville Middle.

Matthew Cropper, president of the contractor, said diversity was taken into account along with other variables, which sometimes conflict with one another.

"The best plan would be one that adheres to criteria, considerations as a whole as best as possible," Cropper said. "The committee did do a very good job addressing and adhering to all of these factors including maintaining or increasing diversity."

ButRick Martell of Glen Arm, a parent of a Pine Grove student, said it didn't look like race or socioeconomic status "was taken into consideration at all" by the committee.

White students make up 86% of the Carroll Manor population and low income kids are, at most, 5%. The demographics are nearly identical at Jacksonville. Over at Cockeysville Middle, 41% are white are 42% are low income. White students are 59% of Ridgley Middle's population, where a portion of Carroll Manor students transition to, and 21% are low income.

In a map option Martell favored, Carroll Manor students would attend Pine Grove Middle instead of Cockeysville. A little more than half of the students at Pine Grove qualify for free and reduced meals, and 42% are Black. Had that map been selected, the percentage of low-income students at the middle school would have dropped from 56% to 44%.

If it was picked, Pine Grove would have inherited "a very dedicated bunch of parents," Martell said before the committee voted. "All Carroll Manor students will stay together and not split up. And on top of that, most students will actually be closer to Pine Grove Middle School than Cockeysville where most attend."

But the Carroll Manor group didn't want to go to Pine Grove. It's not part of their community, said Elisabeth McCollum, a Carroll Manor parent and the group's publicist. Parents don't work there, kids don't play over there, and it's not where they live their lives, she added. It's all explained on their website, stopthesplitbcps.com.

Martell said he doesn't understand why the Carroll Manor group seems "somehow inseparable with their neighbors to the west in Jacksonville and have nothing to do with their neighbors to the south in Glen Arm and Parkville."

He said the kids where he lives also participate with the Carroll Manor community in extracurriculars. In a letter to the editor, he wrote that it was "disheartening to see members of our community going to such lengths to ensure that their children not be exposed to peers of a lower tax bracket."

McCollum knows some form of diversity could be increased if Carroll Manor kids went to Pine Grove, but she isn't sure if that's "a good or bad thing." Greater diversitycould affect school ratings, for instance. Carroll Manor and Jacksonville have five stars on the Maryland School Report Card, the highest a school can achieve in the state's rating system. Pine Grove Middle has three and so does Cockeysville.

If Carroll Manor kids were to attend Pine Grove, "it becomes more white than Black, but is that what diversity means?" McCollum asked.

She said she doesn't know how the school system defines diversity. It's not spelled out in the boundary study policy. She doesn't want to guess, and she doesn't want to make the process about race.

"To be honest, I have been counseling our group not to discuss diversity," McCollum said.

Beyond neighborhood boundaries

The system's equity policy doesn't define "diversity,"either, but does describe "social identifiers" as demographic factors that include age, color, family structure, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status.

"The school system prioritizes educational equity by recognizing and removing institutional barriers and ensuring that social identifiers are not obstacles," the policy reads.

Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the progressive think tank The Century Foundation, said more diverse schools are better for students. It gives them "the experience to learn from people who are coming from different backgrounds," she said. It expands their worldviews, she added, helps their critical thinking and prepares them for the real world.

Research shows students in racially and socioeconomically diverse schools tend to achieve higher test scores and are more likely to go to college. Those schools also break down racial achievement gaps.

Keeping kids together comes up a lot as an argument against school integration, according to Potter.In Baltimore County, it was a point of contention in a 2017 boundary study involving Orems Elementary School in Middle River, when parents pushed to avoid a community divide.

There is research that says there are benefits in student continuity, Potter said, but that's addressing kids switching schools every year, which wasn't on the table in Baltimore County.

What district leaders "need to be pushing is how can we think bigger than just those neighborhood boundaries," Potter said, because the boundaries werehistorically designed "to create that separation" of race and class.

"The reality is there are a lot of different housing policies, transportation, infrastructure policies in place over the years" whose effects can still be seen today.

Prioritizing integration has been done before. Potter points to Dallas, Texas where, like Baltimore County, there's a diverse range of races and income levels. In 2014, Dallas Independent School District created "choice schools." It's similar to magnet schools but without the academic-based admissions, and students from across the district can attend.

To enroll in the choice schools, the system broke the city into blocksof population groupsbased on four factors: median household income, parents' level of education, single parent status and home ownership. Block one represented the wealthiest citizens and block four represented the quarter that's the most impoverished. They pick a group of children from each block to attend the schools.

No options that would move the needle

Robin Campbell, a Ridgley Middle parent and a member of the committee that selected the new school boundary map, said he thinks committee members were mindful of diversity, but "I did not see any options that would significantly move the needle one way or the other."

The option that would have shifted school demographics the most wouldn't have made a meaningful difference, Campbell and Martell, the Pine Grove parent, said.

In a survey conducted in mid-March that asked the community what options they preferred and why, more than 70% wanted a map labeledoption A. The main reason they liked it, the survey showed, was because it maintained neighborhood continuity. It would send all of Carroll Manor to Cockeysville Middle.

Of the 2,737 who participated, a quarter lived in the Ridgley Middle School zone, 21% lived near Cockeysville Middle, 17% lived near Perry Hall Middle and another 17% lived by Dumbarton Middle. Participation was slim among the other schools.

Campbell noted that the community living near Stemmers Run in Essex had only 17 people participate in the survey. Meanwhile, almost half of the respondents were from parents who lived near Cockeysville and Ridgely Middle schools.

"I don't know how effective Baltimore County Public Schools was at reaching out to some of the school communities that are disproportionately poor and people of color," he said. "To some extent, it raises the question how serious BCPS is in input."

Cropper said he believes the system did a good job letting the community know about the study and noted that the survey showed parents from each school participated.

Based on the results, Cropper made a new map, option E, that's essentially option A but with a few minor tweaks. It was introduced at the committee's last meeting on March 29, and the committee voted to bring it to the board.

Potter said it matters who's participating in these studies.

"If we think that students deserve access to quality education regardless of their family's income, we shouldn't let those types of neighborhoods be the deciding factor," she said.

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Baltimore County had a chance to spread diversity among schools. They missed it.

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When parents of Carroll Manor Elementary School learned their kids could be redistricted to a different middle school - one they said would split up their community in northeastern Baltimore County - they took action. They organized and created a website, shirts and signs to make clear that sending their children to Pine Grove Middle School in Carneywas a nonstarter.

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After Teen’s Suicide, a New Jersey Community Grapples With Bullying

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Recent concerns- how to resolve issue

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After Teen’s Suicide, a New Jersey Community Grapples With Bullying

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Amid grief and outrage over the death of Adriana Kuch, 14, students have mounted protests, and a schools superintendent has resigned.

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After School Shooting, Nashville Grieves and Ponders Its Divisions

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Finding common ground

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After School Shooting, Nashville Grieves and Ponders Its Divisions

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For decades, Nashville has prospered while finding common ground between urban and rural, left and right, state and city. In a partisan era, that’s becoming much harder.

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The coronavirus pandemic intensified a rise in adolescent depression, anxiety and mental health distress that was underway before the spring of 2020.

Mental health issues were rising in the United States even before the pandemic began, with emergency room visits related to depression, anxiety and similar conditions up 28 percent between 2011 and 2015. Credit... Bing Guan/Bloomberg

The United States surgeon general on Tuesday warned that young people are facing "devastating" mental health effects as a result of the challenges experienced by their generation, including the coronavirus pandemic.

The message came as part of a rare public advisory from the nation's top physician, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, in a 53-page report noting that the pandemic intensified mental health issues that were already widespread by the spring of 2020.

The report cited significant increases in self-reports of depression and anxiety along with more emergency room visits for mental health issues. In the United States, emergency room visits for suicide attempts rose 51 percent for adolescent girls in early 2021 as compared to the same period in 2019. The figure rose 4 percent for boys.

Globally, symptoms of anxiety and depression doubled during the pandemic, the report noted. But mental health issues were already on the rise in the United States, with emergency room visits related to depression, anxiety and similar conditions up 28 percent between 2011 and 2015.

The reasons are complex and not yet definitive. Adolescent brain chemistry and relationships with friends and family play a role, the report noted, as does a fast-paced media culture, which can leave some young minds feeling helpless.

"Young people are bombarded with messages through the media and popular culture that erode their sense of self-worth - telling them they are not good-looking enough, popular enough, smart enough or rich enough," Dr. Murthy wrote in the report. "That comes as progress on legitimate, and distressing, issues like climate change, income inequality, racial injustice, the opioid epidemic and gun violence feels too slow."

The surgeon general's advisory adds to a growing number of calls for attention and action around adolescent mental health. In October, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children's Hospital Association joined to declare "a national emergency" in youth mental health.

Although blame for adolescent distress is often pinned on social media, screen time alone does not account for the crisis, many researchers say. Rather, social media and other online activities act more to amplify an adolescent's existing mental state, causing some young people to feel more distress and others to experience enhanced feelings of connection.

The advisory, issued by Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, adds to a growing number of calls for action around adolescent mental health. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

Bonnie Nagel, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Oregon Health & Science University who treats and studies adolescents, said that online interactions appear not to satisfy core needs for connection. And recent research by her and her colleagues found that the feeling of loneliness is a key predictor for depression and suicidal ideation.

"I don't think it is genuine human connection when talking to somebody with a fake facade online," Dr. Nagel said.

Moreover, screen time may be displacing activities known to be vital to physical and mental health, including sleep, exercise and in-person activity, research shows. The current generation of adolescents express heightened levels of loneliness - more than any other age group - despite spending countless hours connected over media.

Authorities and scientists widely acknowledge that there has been insufficient research into the underlying causes.

Tips for Parents to Help Their Struggling Teens

Card 1 of 6

"There's a real dearth of scientists in this area just as there is a real dearth of clinicians," said Dr. Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, in a recent interview. "Parents can't get care for their kids."

Across the country in a variety of settings - rural and urban, richer and poorer - there is a shortage of specialists who can assess conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression and eating disorders. In May, Children's Hospital Colorado declared its first ever state of emergency for pediatric mental health, citing emergency rooms "flooded" with young people struggling with suicidal ideation and other issues.

Researchers have hypothesized that the pandemic intensified stress on young people, in part by isolating them during a period of their lives when social connection is vital for healthy development. But the pandemic does not tell the full story. In 2019, a group of U.S. lawmakers issued a report, "Ring the Alarm," focusing on a suicide crisis among Black adolescents, a group that historically has seen relatively low rates of suicide.

Some statistics, like the increase in suicides and emergency room visits, are stark and undeniable. But accurately measuring the scale of the mental health threat faced by young people and adults, scientists say, is made difficult by the fact that such issues are more openly discussed and assessed than in the past. An increase in self-reports of depression and anxiety may be a reliable indicator of the crisis, or it may be that earlier generations also felt distressed but lacked the popular language to describe their emotions.

"The question is whether it's new or we're medicalizing it," Dr. Gordon said. "Those are the kinds of answers it's really, really hard to get."

Dr. Murthy's advisory calls for more resources to be devoted to understanding and addressing mental health challenges, and it urges a greater appreciation of mental health as a key factor in overall health.

"This is a moment to demand change," the report concludes.

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Surgeon General Warns of Youth Mental Health Crisis

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The coronavirus pandemic intensified a rise in adolescent depression, anxiety and mental health distress that was underway before the spring of 2020. The United States surgeon general on Tuesday warned that young people are facing "devastating" mental health effects as a result of the challenges experienced by their generation, including the coronavirus pandemic.

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Ruby Bridges on Jackie Robinson paving the way for her to integrate a school | Jackie to Me

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School Integration - Ruby Bridges speaks 

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School Integration - Ruby Bridges speaks 

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Ruby Bridges on Jackie Robinson paving the way for her to integrate a school | Jackie to Me

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Tennessee House Expulsions: What You Need to Know

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Tennessee House Expulsions: What You Need to Know

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Four days after the House voted to expel State Representatives Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, the Metropolitan Nashville Council unanimously voted to send Mr. Jones back to the seat.

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Please be ready to discuss- your first interest in attending college, when and what motivated you. This is a question to be discussed by everyone

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Technology use, LGTBQ+ Issues

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Geographic differences regarding LTBQ+ Issues

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Syrus Hall, a 17-year-old from Mobile, Ala., has heard it all before: "You'll grow out of it." "It's a phase." "You're just confused."

"It makes me mad," he says.

Hall is transgender and in the early stages of his transition; he gets weekly shots of a low dose of testosterone.

"I worked really hard to be able to transition," he says. "I dealt with bullying at school, and people being mean to me just because I exist. If I can deal with that, I know who I am. I'm not going to go back."

So Hall is watching with alarm as the Alabama legislature advances bills that would outlaw hormone treatment for him and other trans youth in the state.

Thinking of the bills' proponents, he says, "Why should some guy who has never met me ... why should he get to tell me what I can and can't do? Why does he get to decide what is right for people who just want to be happy?"

This year, state legislatures have proposed a record number of anti-transgender bills.

Alabama is one of 20 states that have introduced bills that would prohibit gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.

And Alabama's bill is one of the toughest.

It would make it a felony to provide transition-related medical treatment, such as puberty blockers, hormones or surgery, to transgender minors.
"I didn't have the words for what I felt"
A high school junior, Hall hopes to study forensics in college. "I'm thinking about being either a forensics investigator or a forensic psychologist," he says.

Hall was assigned female at birth. But, he says, when he hit puberty around fifth grade, "That's when I started to fully get uncomfortable with, like, the way that I looked or the way that I felt. Like, in my head I looked a different way than I looked in the mirror."

Even though he was feeling this way, he didn't know how to explain it. "I felt different than everyone else that I knew," he says, "but I didn't have the words for what I felt. Like, I didn't know that trans people existed until I was about 12 or 13. I had never heard of trans people."

That's where the Internet comes in. Hall spent long nights online doing research to figure out who he is, and ultimately, over time, he came out as trans to his family.

Hall and his mother, Carla Saunée, found a clinic in Birmingham that provides medical care to trans youth. For his appointments, they wake up at 3 a.m. and drive four hours from Mobile to meet with the pediatric gender health team from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which includes a pediatrician, endocrinologist, psychologists and a chaplain.

After lengthy psychological counseling, and with his mother's permission, Hall was prescribed testosterone.
"He's more himself"
On a recent Zoom call with his pediatrician from UAB, Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, Hall talked joyfully about the changes he's started to see.

"The first thing I noticed was hair," he told her. "You start growing so much hair! And I was excited because I was like, 'Oh, something's happening! This is so cool!' And then I started noticing my voice changing a little bit."

"That voice - I'm lovin' it!" Ladinsky replied, and as she heard Hall chuckle, she added, "See, that laugh. I love that laugh!"

The physical changes are one thing, but the emotional transformation has been dramatic, too.

As Hall's mom describes it, her son used to be reclusive, and would mostly stay in his room.

Now that he's transitioning, she sees him becoming more confident and social, with good friends.

"He's more himself," Saunée says. "He's happy. You know, he's like a big kid. He'll still sit on my lap and cuddle up with me, and those are things he wasn't doing before."

The swift progress of the trans medical care ban through the Alabama legislature has caused anxiety for families like theirs.

"Throughout the last few weeks," Dr. Ladinsky says, "almost every clinic visit [has] ended with either a parent or a child choking back tears, saying, 'Where do you think those bills are going? Is it really gonna happen?'"

The Alabama legislation is called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.

It passed overwhelmingly in the state Senate, by a vote of 23-4, and could go before the full House as early as this week.

At a House health committee hearing this month, lawmakers heard an impassioned plea from Sgt. David Fuller with the Gadsden, Ala., police department, who is father to a transgender girl.

"The health care she got [at the UAB gender health clinic] was vital to her staying alive," he told the committee. "If you take this health care out, my kid's dead."

Those testifying in favor of the bill included retired Alabama pediatrician Bill Whitaker, who claimed, "The truth is that there are only two sexes based on biology, female and male, that it's impossible to change one's sex."

Pediatrician Den Trumbull of Montgomery stated, "Medical procedures intended to alter or delay the normal sexual development of a gender-confused child is child abuse."

The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville, has defended his legislation this way: "The bottom line is, we have a responsibility to protect Alabama's children. Minors are not mentally capable to make a decision of this caliber."

Those who treat transgender youth say remarks like these are not just factually wrong; they also stigmatize an already marginalized and vulnerable population.

This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement calling bills that prohibit trans medical care, or that ban trans girls from women's sports teams, "dangerous."

The academy warned that the bills "[threaten] the health and well-being of transgender youth," and concluded, "Politics has no place here."

For Dr. Ladinsky, the spread of anti-trans medical care legislation around the country is deeply disturbing. "There is a lot of viscerally repugnant language in those bills that really evoke pain and evoke fear and couldn't be farther from the truth," she says.

She points out that in their Birmingham clinic, no minor child is making the decision for treatment on their own. There is a detailed informed-consent process, and the child, their parents and the entire medical team all have to agree on a treatment plan.

Ladinsky also emphasizes that their hospital never performs gender-affirming surgery on minors.

But if the Alabama bill becomes law, she and her medical team could be charged with class C felonies for prescribing puberty blockers or hormones.

That means they could face up to 10 years in prison.

"As a doctor and a parent, the idea of this precedent scares the living crap outta me," Ladinsky says.

Bills like the medical care ban, she says, would "extend the reach or overreach of a state legislature. ... into the domain of parenting, and into the intrinsically sacred space of medical decision-making between a parent, child and the physician."

Earlier this month, the bill's Senate sponsor, Shay Shelnutt, acknowledged that he has never spoken to a transgender youth.

That admission boggles the mind of Hall's mom, Carla Saunée.

"I would ask him just to spend the day with us," she offers. "Let's have a conversation. It doesn't even have to be us! Find you a transgender youth and be around them, and experience who they are. You can't write a bill when you have zero experience with the transgender population."

There's another part of the Alabama legislation that infuriates Saunée, who teaches marketing and business technology at a public high school in Mobile.

It's a section that would force school staff to out transgender children to their parents.

"I think it would be dangerous," Saunée says, for students whose families would reject their gender identity.

"If a kid comes to me and asks me to call them by their pronouns and their name, I'm not going to deny them that," Saunée says, "because they deserve to be comfortable in an environment that is meant for them to be safe in. ... Who are you to tell me as an educator that I have to go break trust with a student, to out them to their parents, when that is not my place, at all?"

LGBTQ advocacy groups are gearing up for immediate court challenges if any of the medical care bans bubbling up around the country become law.

For Hall, Alabama's legislation would deny something essential: the person he knows himself to be. And, he says, the notion that he's a "gender-confused child" who's just "going through a phase" causes real pain.

"It's wrong," he says. "It's really messed up. And it hurts people. When people who know who they are can't access the things they need to make themselves feel better, it's awful."

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'It's Hurtful': Trans Youth Speaks Out As Alabama Debates Banning Medical Treatment

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Syrus Hall, a 17-year-old from Mobile, Ala., has heard it all before: "You'll grow out of it." "It's a phase." "You're just confused." "It makes me mad," he says. Hall is transgender and in the early stages of his transition; he gets weekly shots of a low dose of testosterone.

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My example Padlet

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Young Creators Studio | Being Me | Season 2 | Episode 2

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Students share stories that celebrate LGTBQIA+ youth, while struggling for acceptance.

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Recent census data

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Data in this figure represent an equally weighted average of the numbers in each category from 2016, 2017 and 2018.

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Strong resources, check cyberbully here

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Practical ideas

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A list of items to look for

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