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The Influence Of A Good Teacher Can Never Be Erased Shirt, hoodie, tank top
MELBOURNE, Florida — When 16-year-old Andrew Triolo and his mom, Laura Cobb, pulled up to Brevard County’s school board meeting on March 9, there was already a group of protesters outside. One man in a neck gaiter and baseball cap held a sign reading “Straight and Proud.” Another, a kid who couldn’t have been older than 12, held one reading “Pervert Biden Wants Girls to Shower With Boys.” A man with a megaphone yelled anti-gay slurs. He got right in Andrew’s mom’s face and told her she was going to hell, she said. She knew him. He lived down the street.
Andrew is shy and soft-spoken, and often hides his eyes behind his messy dark hair. Just a few years earlier, he hadn’t wanted anyone at his new school to know he was a trans boy, but now here he was about to give a speech to a roomful of people, recounting his experience of coming out. The prospect was nerve-wracking to him — all the more so because this crowd was full of people who, he believed, hated his existence.
Zack Wittman for BuzzFeed News
Andrew Triolo in his room on June 1, 2021, in Satellite Beach, Florida
He’d prepared a speech in defense of guidelines the school district had recently rolled out seeking to enshrine protections for LGBTQ students, such as allowing students to use the restrooms and locker rooms and play on the sports teams that align with their gender identity, and “decide when and to whom their gender identity and sexual orientation is shared.” The district began working on the guidelines over a year ago, before the sudden sweep of dozens of state-level bills passed around the country regulating the everyday activities of transgender kids. When the Brevard County school district’s guidelines were released at the beginning of March, the new guidelines sparked a backlash, leading to protests at school board meetings and outside the home of one school board member. But instead of stripping Andrew of support and making him feel he had to hide who he was, the fury he faced has only made him and other queer kids in his community more resolved to fight for their rights. Not long ago, Andrew had just wanted to blend in with the rest of the suburban teens in his town, to play sports and go to prom. Now, because of the hate, he has become an activist, organizing in his community and his high school — even at the risk of making himself a bigger target for bullies both at school and around the neighborhood.
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