Controversial school training video removed after substitute teacher raises questions

WASHINGTON (TND) — A mother and substitute teacher in Utah raised questions on a controversial teacher training video that was eventually removed.

Parents Defending Education's Director of Outreach Erica Sanzi joined The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat Friday morning to discuss the situation.

The Utah State Agency took down the training video for teachers that explained how to teach gender identity to students.

“Basically this video encouraged teachers to wholeheartedly invite students to explore their gender and engage in what they call ‘gender play,’” Sanzi said. “One of the presenters said in the video and again, I'm going to quote, that his time as a teacher had 'taught him how important it was to model gender play with students, especially young children.'"

Sanzi says no one at the agency provided a rationale for it and believes incidents like these are targeting young students to "become supporters of causes that they just don't understand."

"They took it down very quickly, and then they put out a very sort of bland statement that said, you know, 'We hired these people as subject matter experts. We love our LGBTQ youth, and we value parents,'" Sanzi said. "So I think they tried to check every box and essentially say nothing. But again, we're seeing so much of this where what it appears is that who knows where it originally emanates, but they are really trying to get, you know, gender ideology, critical gender theory, queer theory into schools."

The training was also paid for with COVID Cares money three years ago, something that many parents were outraged about.

You can watch the full interview below: