{"id":131,"date":"2017-05-10T21:34:04","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T21:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/?p=131"},"modified":"2020-04-21T16:39:26","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T16:39:26","slug":"the-symptoms-of-being-human-by-jeff-garvin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/2017\/05\/10\/the-symptoms-of-being-human-by-jeff-garvin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>How many times have we all encountered a Riley? Someone dressed in a way that masks their gender and we don’t know, upon first appearance, if they are a boy or a girl?  As someone who works in high school, this isn’t as uncommon as people would think.  I encounter hundreds of students on a daily basis and every once in awhile I can’t differentiate gender on students.  However, this is the first time I have encountered a book that so clearly encompasses the voice and emotion of a genderfluid teen.  Riley wakes up every day and waits to see where the internal compass will shift.  Is it pointing more feminine or masculine?  What if one can’t decide? Then you do as Riley often does, dress in the middle, high-top Dr. Marten’s, solid jeans, band shirt and a beanie.  Let people decide for themselves.<\/p>\n

Something has happened to Riley that has forced the decision to transfer from a private school to a public school.  The event was so traumatic that it forced Riley to be medicated to control the anxiety, shaking, and fuzziness that accompanies stressful situations like walking the gauntlet of the school cafeteria.  Maybe starting at a new school is just what Riley needs.  But maybe things aren’t different at all and high school kids will be high school kids and binary in their gender identification.  What if you don’t fit?<\/p>\n

Garvin has written one of the best books I have read this year in keeping Riley’s gender neutral and readers don’t really know if Riley was born male or female.  In my experience in high school I think the vulnerability, bullying, and blogging aspects of this book are spot on to the experiences of some of my students.  This should be required high school reading in order to develop more empathy and truly understand the human experience from Riley’s perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many times have we all encountered a Riley? Someone dressed in a way that masks their gender and we don’t know, upon first appearance, if they are a boy or a girl?  As someone who works in high school, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":324,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stc_notifier_status":"sent","_stc_notifier_sent_time":"2020-03-31 20:38:00","_stc_notifier_request":false,"_stc_notifier_prevent":false,"_stc_subscriber_keywords":"","_stc_subscriber_search_areas":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48802,48832],"tags":[48804,48810,48822,48805],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-realistic","category-reviews-2","tag-48804","tag-hs","tag-lgbtqia","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/324"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/jessica.lorentzsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}