by Rhys
It all started something like this:
“We’re going to start every meeting by sharing our names and pronouns. This is so this group can be a safe place to try out new names and pronouns.”
The four junior students sat in various huddles on the floor. They’d already started on the sour Skittles. The counsellor meeting room was dim because we’d pulled the blinds down for anonymity.
“So, my name is Mr -” It never felt right. “My name is Feeney, you can call me Mr or Miss, I don’t mind. Recently, I’ve been thinking of using he/they pronouns.”
The four students introduced themselves. Names from anime, books and of course inanimate objects. A range of pronoun combos I’d never really heard in real life before, he/she, they/it, and some classic he/hims. We set up kawa (protocols) for our club, but we couldn’t decide on a name. So, we talked about what we wanted to do: talk about TV, music, rainbow history, and what the school could do better. They gave me the names of a few teachers who were particularly bad at using their chosen pronouns. The sugar got to them in the first 20 minutes and the rest of lunch was a disaster.
That was our first Queer-Straight Alliance (QSA) meeting. A name picked for its plausible deniability. We named our Teams group chat guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. We were going to meet at lunch every week in this small forgotten room behind the guidance counsellors.
My school was tucked away in a deep valley in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), Aotearoa (New Zealand.) It wasn’t big — 600 students — and wasn’t exactly well-off. When I started in 2020, well, things got in the way. The next year there was an influx of students with dyed hair, winged eyeliner, and squishmallows clipped on their bags. I put the QSA adverts back in the notices. What started in that backroom quickly became much bigger.
Each year, brave students joined. By 2021, a dozen students usually turned up and we ran our first ever School Pride Week. We outgrew the meeting room and found our home in my classroom, with its long wall of internal windows, no longer afraid to hide. The meetings were a haze of sugar, caffeine, and conflicting neurodiversity. About half the students had ADHD, while about a third were autistic, and the rest had other processing issues. The jokes never ceased to make me laugh. Seeing the students grow up in front of me, and start to change their pronouns set something off. By the third term, I was introducing myself by they/them. I changed my honorific to Mx. By the end of 2021, I had become “Mx” — not Rhys — to both staff and students.
I was really lucky. Around a third of the staff at my school were queer. With help from teachers from digitech, music, art, social science and our Māori immersion unit (the Wharekura), I worked on a range of LGBTIAQ+ projects around the school. Teaching English at a challenging school that was undergoing intense changes to the whole curriculum model was difficult to begin with.
I’d already taken time off for my mental health in my first year. I didn’t realise at the time that this was autistic burnout. Still, these projects gave me some happiness among the grind of lesson planning, marking, report writing, behaviour management follow ups and constant phone calls home. I was busy though. I worked with the principal to rewrite the uniform code to be gender non-specific, helped start a challenge to get staff to use pronouns in their email signatures, ran professional development about gender identities, talked to teachers about their gendered language use, helped the library set up pride displays, and consulted on the sex ed program.
For the trans and gender diverse students, I often took over their pastoral care, and they always took my classes. I was being a teacher, mentor and social worker, and sometimes friend, all in one. It was too much. Like every minority at a school, there was mountains of unpaid work expected of you. But each Wednesday lunch, when I held the QSA and heard the laughter and tears, I knew I had to do it. I changed my pronouns again: they/she
I’d started wearing women’s clothes in the classroom. First, blouses and high-waisted trousers. Then, I started wearing long skirts and dresses. Sometimes kids were confused, mostly they just told me that I had cool fashion taste. I have Aotearoa’s rich cultural history to thank for this being so easy. My school was pretty evenly split between indigenous Māori, Pākehā (white settlers), and Pacific Island students. Our uniform already included a le faitaga (formal lavalava), so it wasn’t unusual to see the big rugby boys wearing what British people would call a skirt. Trans people had been traditionally accepted in Māori culture, as well as fa’afafine in Samoan culture – though the church had changed some of that.
By 2024, I was barely even a husk. The workload, stress, national systemic change, constant reminders about my pronouns, and verbal abuse had taken its toll. I could barely smile at my partner when I got home. I had to do something for myself. I decided to move to the UK, to do some supply teaching and let myself transition away from everyone. Luckily, because Aotearoa allows informed-consent treatment, I started feminising HRT on my 28th birthday without much of a wait time.
During my last Pride Week, I set out with another teacher to do something we’d always planned on — taking the QSA on a field trip. First stop was the rainbow crossing, then the queer archives and then to parliament where we went to the “rainbow room” and saw key LGBTIAQ+ legislation. The guide reminded the students about who the system is built for, and how to fight for a spot at the table, while Georgina Beyer’s portrait —the world’s first trans MP — watched over them.
My whole last week was bittersweet. I had made a difference. The whole school was more queer-friendly because of our effort. I was showered with thank you notes, while I tried to push through burnout which had been going on for months.
At our last QSA meeting, I started:
“So, for the last time, my name is Mx Feeney, and I use she/her pronouns. I need you to know that whatever inspiration I’ve been for you, that you have been bigger ones for me. I only came out to my parents a month ago, and you guys are brave enough to do this as kids. You’re all amazing and so f***ing brave and —”
I was crying. We said our goodbyes, ate cake, and took photos. I let them all choose one from my crystal collection to keep. They painted a picture of an astronaut floating surrounded by pride flags, which they’d signed the back of. They knew space was my special interest.
In Te Reo Māori, the word for teaching, ako, also means learning. It implies learning is a cycle, and that teachers learn from their students too. Teaching and learning from these students was like the trans childhood I’d never had. I looked at the students who had grown from 12 year olds to little adults, and I thanked them. I thanked them for all the exposure that I’d needed. Without them, I never would have figured out my gender or neurodiversity. Without me, they never would have had an advocate, role-model and a teacher in all things queer.
Now, in the UK, I’m terrified of both parental and organisational backlash for being openly queer in a school setting. So, when I step into a British classroom in a few weeks time, I hope I see a student with a pride pin or another hint, and I hope we can share a smile.
Author bio: Rhys Feeney (she/they) is a poet and teacher from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. Her debut chapbook, ‘soyboy’, was published in AUP New Poets 7 (Auckland University Press, 2020). Their work can be found online in places like Starling, Stasis, Overcom, Milly Mag, and others.