If you haven't heard of it, there's a high school science teacher in Batavia who is going through the process of becoming a woman.

Some parents want their students removed from the classroom and are being denied. Most students say "it's no big deal," but really, what are they supposed to say? Can any teenager in the social pressure cooker that is high school be expected to make a stand one way or the other?

Changing genders is a difficult situation all the way around. Our culture is often disapproving of cross-gender behaviour; the individual is often stigmatized and discriminated against. So little is clearly known about GID that those seeking help often end up educating the professionals who are supposed to be treating them. The surgical process itself is fraught with failures - transforming genders does not always work and when it does, does not always make the subject happier as it is supposed to. The process is unnerving and sometimes leads to uncomfortable situations.

All that said, if this person wants to go through with it, that is her decision and I believe it should be respected. We should all show compassion for her and her ordeal. What I do not respect is her decision to drag the students into it.

According to the Daily News, this individual is a tenured teacher. That gives her the OK to take a year off as a sabbatical or simply as time off. Either way, she has the option to remove herself from the classroom while going through the transformation and returning when it is complete. She *has* the option of sparing the children, parents and community all this controversy and discomfort. She chooses not to.

Perhaps she has her academic subjects mixed up. It is this teacher's job to educate high-school kids about earth science. That does not make it her job to educate them about psychiatric or transgender science.

Perhaps she's just tired of living in the closet and wants to get the whole thing out in the open. That's just plain selfish. If she's as good a teacher as is claimed, she needs to think about the students first.

She doesn't just want to transform - she insists that the world see it. That, in my opinion, is the selfish part and reeks of attention-seeking personality disorders. That behaviour should not be condoned and the school district is wrong, in my opinion, in supporting it when there are alternatives that will preserve her job and her dignity.