March 05, 2011|By Janene Holzberg, Special to The Baltimore Sun
"We're interested in any tool that helps further learning," she said. Officer Karen Reyes and Mary Campbell, compliance officer for the county's Office of Human Rights, are jointly leading the sessions. Llewellyn also noted that the objectionable photo has been removed from the drunken-driving presentation.
As part of the Howard school system's professional development day on Friday, Gullucci is working with her mother to give a workshop on "Protecting Transgender and Gender-Variant Children from Bullying."
The session will be offered twice, once for school counselors and other student services personnel, and then again for health and physical-education teachers.
Patti Caplan, a schools spokeswoman, said, "There's already a lot of bullying and insensitivity toward gays and lesbians in our schools, and we're trying to give educators the tools to deal with it."
The workshop, which will be attended by several hundred employees, is "all about making people more comfortable about living with our differences," Caplan said.
Hyde couldn't agree more.
"We need everybody on board, since these issues frighten people, and when they're scared they behave badly," Hyde said, adding that understanding is especially important right now since the transgender issue "seems to be popping."
Just last weekend, she said, she met separately with two sets of Howard County parents whose young children — one 6 years old, the other 3 — have expressed the feeling that they're in the wrong bodies.
Gullucci, who has made a lot of friends in high school, is looking forward to graduation, where she'll don a white cap and gown like the other girls. She also wore a drape, not a tuxedo, for her graduation portrait and plans to major in psychology at Towson University while continuing to perform in drag.
"Will's a girl," Hyde said. "All we ask is that she's treated like one."
A previous version of this story contained an incorrect statistic about the incidence of police-initiated violence against transgender people.
jholzberg76@msn.com
If you go
PFLAG videotaping of testimony will begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Owen Brown Interfaith Center, 7246 Cradlerock Way, Columbia. The general meeting starts at 7:30 p.m. A showing of a 40-minute documentary film, "Bullied," which is narrated by Jane Lynch of "Glee" fame and depicts a gay teen's story, will be followed by a panel discussion on bullying with Howard County public school administrators, counselors and specialists. Information: 443-280-9047 or http://www.pflagmd.org.
