Oklahoma’s culture wars killed Nex Benedict. They’re also why I quit teaching.

I am officially a former teacher in Oklahoma. I taught special education for five years. Before that, I was a paraprofessional for four years. I’ve had a lot of experiences in education. I worked as a teacher, coached my middle school’s trivia team, coordinated the district’s trivia league, and worked as an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) case manager. 

I worked on the clock and off the clock to be a great teacher. I was district coordinator for my district’s trivia quiz bowl. I even wrote the trivia questions for my district to use, since we had no money to buy a trivia program. I enjoyed doing that, and I love writing and playing trivia. So, it was an act of joy and love for my students. My kids loved me, because we would always play trivia games that were cool and fun, like Jeopardy!, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, Jackbox, etc. I would even make my own trivia learning packets and have my kids do competition quizzes, and I still have my own trivia super packet filled with questions I self-created. I did it all.

Related:

Students walk out to protest school’s horrific bullying environment after Nex Benedict’s death

Current and former students paint a grim picture of Owasso High School’s disregard for the safety of its LGBTQ+ students.

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Teaching is never an easy job in America, with teacher shortages, low wages, student misbehavior, students struggling to learn due to food insecurity, mass shootings, large class sizes, and working on average 53 hours a week. 

It’s especially never easy in Oklahoma, where culture wars essentially make teaching walking on eggshells. 

Oklahoma is currently ranked 49th in education. Oklahoma has seen a precipitous decline in education over the past two decades under Republican governors Mary Fallin and Kevin Stitt. In 2018, teachers across the state of Oklahoma walked out and protested for two weeks, calling for changes in funding and for more support for student needs. Teachers had made posts about textbooks that were decades old, schools running out of soap in bathrooms, school buildings with mold infestations. During the teacher walkouts, then-Gov. Mary Fallin said that teachers were like “teenagers asking for a better car” as a way to dismiss our requests. 

While a pay raise was agreed to after a two-week strike, the conditions and environment surrounding teaching in Oklahoma only grew worse, particularly thanks to elected leaders like State Superintendent Ryan Walters. 

Walters was hand-picked by Gov. Stitt to state superintendent, and he would later become Oklahoma’s secretary of education, despite having no experience in school administration. From the moment he was in office, Walters has gone on a crusade against everything he considers “woke” in education. In his signature car rants, he has decried everything, claiming books like The Kite Runner are “pornography” to claiming language learning programs are Chinese propaganda infiltrating public schools.

However, the biggest target for Walters has been LGBTQ+ rights, especially those of trans and nonbinary students. Walters and the state’s Republican party have introduced measure after measure restricting trans and nonbinary students’ personal freedoms. 

In 2022, Oklahoma passed a measure sponsored by state Sen. David Bullard (R) that would force trans and nonbinary students to use the bathroom associated with their sex assigned at birth, fear-mongering that trans kids would prey on cisgender students in bathrooms (despite evidence showing trans kids are more likely to be the victims of assault in bathrooms).

Walters has specifically targeted and singled out districts in the state when they issue their own guidelines as to supporting students at school. Tulsa Public Schools, the largest school district in the state, saw its own superintendent resign after Walters threatened to remove the accreditation for the entire district after the district reprimanded a board member for reciting a Christian prayer at a school graduation.

Walters has also targeted individual educators, imperiling the safety of educators and their schools. After Chaya Raichik, Libs of Tik Tok founder and now Library Media Advisor for the state of Oklahoma (even though she doesn’t reside in Oklahoma), posted a video on X of a librarian from Union Public Schools in Tulsa mocking Walters’ “anti-woke” crusade, Walters posted it as well, and it led to six straight days of bomb threats against not only the librarian in the video but against Union schools as well. The schools had to shut down to determine the credibility of the threats.

In 2022, an Owasso teacher by the name of Tyler Wrynn was forced to resign after he posted a TikTok video stating that he would always support his students even if their parents didn’t support them. He said if their parents didn’t support them, then he would be their parents and support them.

Many students were disheartened by the fact Wrynn resigned due to threats, saying he was a great teacher whom they respected very much.

Teachers who were beloved by their students have been getting run away by hate attacks, and the students are paying the biggest price because they are losing academic and emotional support.

The school I taught at for a brief time was targeted with bomb threats after a teacher posted a photo of themselves in a classroom with a Black Lives Matter poster and a Pride Flag in the background. Our school CEO (who at one point said they would support all kids) came to tell us that we had no choice but to take down any and every single poster and art design and to never mention anything that one might consider “politically divisive,” essentially cowering to the people behind the bomb threats.

This is all despite evidence showing that trans teen suicide risk dramatically reduces with the freedom to transition and live in their gender identity. This all is happening despite evidence showing that just having one supportive teacher and educator reduces suicide attempts by LGBTQ+ teens by 40%.

It was essentially at this point that I began to see the writing on the wall that hate was going to win. I saw administrators who were originally supportive of all kids muzzled due to fear of being doxxed and threatened with bombs. I saw gay-straight alliances completely shut down at schools out of fear of being seen as “grooming” kids. This all coincided with Republicans in the state passing bill after bill banning trans kids from using their preferred names, using bathrooms and changing facilities of their gender identity, and threatening to out them to their parents, even if their home environment could lead to them being abused. 

Knowing gay friends who got kicked out of their homes for being gay and knowing that I, as an asexual guy, would be the target of Walters’ hate crusade, I put in my resignation notice on the spot.

The day I resigned was really tough for me. I broke down crying in my car. I went into teaching not looking to be a savior, but I wanted to be a source of support for kids to help them grow into confident learners and even more assured in their identity. I wanted to be the teacher I didn’t have as a kid, the kind of teacher who picked me up and told me that there’s nothing wrong with not wanting sex and not experiencing sexual attraction, as I was dealing with immense peer pressure to have sex I didn’t want. Having a teacher like that would have helped me find myself much earlier, where I wouldn’t have had to search for 26 years to find my sexual orientation. I would have had much less angst and agita in my youth.

I could never out a trans kid to their parents, knowing how I grew up with gay friends who got kicked out after their parents found out.

Republicans are doing everything to keep suicide rates high for LGBTQ+ kids.

When I heard the news of Nex Benedict – the trans teen who died after being bullied in a school bathroom in Owasso, Oklahoma – I found the news predictable and inevitable. It was the moment I dreaded would happen, while at the same time I knew a moment like this was inevitable. The culture and climate that Republicans have fomented, where politicians days after Nex’s passing call LGBTQ+ people filth, helped precipitate such a tragedy. 

No, I am not directly blaming Oklahoma Republicans for Nex’s death. I’m not blaming anyone but the students who bullied and harmed Nex, to where Nex had to go to a hospital for injuries. As we await more details regarding Nex’s cause of death, it has to still be said that rhetoric and legislation surrounding trans and nonbinary people is leading to more violence and bullying at school. 

Would Nex be alive today if the vitriol espoused by Republicans like Ryan Walters, Chaya Raichik, Kevin Stitt, and others were instead replaced with love? 

I believe the answer would most certainly be yes. 

Nex would not have been a target because of their gender identity if it weren’t for elected leaders pushing fear and panic about trans and nonbinary people. 

It’s so sad because Nex sounds like an amazing student. I had many trans and nonbinary students like Nex. They’ve been some of the greatest students I’ve ever had. We had great days in class,  I taught them in trivia league. They really brightened my day as their teacher and trivia coach. 

Nex loved Minecraft, their cats, and they were a straight-A student. Nex sounded like an amazing student, one that every teacher and every educator would delight in having. 

Yet, because people like Walters and Raichik choose hate over love, they will no longer delight classrooms with their presence.