The 29-year-old teacher's work with the school's gay-straight alliance helped win him the award. He said he's been working with them to write the school's bathroom policies, after the Trump administration revoked federal guarantees that they could use the ones matching their gender identity. They're not feeling they're going to be supported.' 'They never stop to think: Oh, maybe that's just who I am.'Īnd yet, the teacher acknowledged, there was a certain social significance in his decision to dress as himself to a White House that has revoked federal protections for transgender students, erased an LGBT rights page from its website and hired at least one adviser who appears to believe in gay conversion.īeacon - a small school in Woonsocket - has nearly a dozen transgender students, Giannopoulos said.
'The issue with being openly queer is our existence is constantly politicized,' he said. His attire in the Oval Office, he explained, was more or less the same style he wore in the classroom at Beacon Charter High School for the Arts, where his work as a special-education teacher won him Rhode Island's teacher of the year award and a trip to the White House in April. Giannopoulos, who only received the photo recently, did not sound fierce on the phone with The Washington Post.
