Even up until recent times, transgender athletes haven’t had much acceptance in the world of sports. Many are unable to compete at professional and even nonprofessional levels, and the ones who are able to play aren’t given the respect and treatment they deserve.

In Upper School history teacher Dan Greenstone’s course “The Sociology of Sports,” Greenstone is educating students and about what it is like being a transgender athlete by having them make a documentary film.

The film, titled “Sport in Transition,” opens with a history of transgender athletes. This leads into the larger point that transgender athletes deserve equality and greater representation in the world of sports.

Greenstone and his students are making this documentary in hopes of educating people within and beyond the Parker community about this topic.

“It’s honestly not something most coaches or athletic directors think about until it happens,” Greenstone said, “and we want to change that.”

He believes this matter needs to be discussed more frequently so situations when a transgender athlete joins a team will not seem so uncommon to people.

“There’s a real need for something like this project,” Greenstone said. “If you’re a coach or athletic director, the vast majority has never had transgender on their team, but it’s become much more common now, and there is no training for it.”

So far a wide range of interviews with transgender athletes themselves have been done, as well as with coaches and athletic directors, and the results have varied, Greenstone said.

“We interviewed a lot of athletes and wanted personal stories from them,” senior Rebecca Ross said, “so we could put more detail into the movie.”

The interviews created a learning opportunity for the students, who were able to both learn about this topic and strengthen their communication skills.

“The students have enjoyed doing it,” Greenstone said. “They’ve learned a lot, and have developed useful real world skills about how to communicate and work with people.”

Senior Izzy Saker spoke about some of the difficulties students faced while creating the documentary.

“It was hard to find interviewers,” Saker said. “It took a lot of researching and persuasion on our end.”

Over time, students were able to learn from past interviews and improve their skills.

“Originally the interviews started out being hard,” Ross said, “but eventually we learned what questions to ask and how to frame what we wanted them to say in the questions.”

Some subjects were more willing to be open and share their experiences while others were more private.“We’ve had other interviewees, typically those who are older,” Greenstone said, “and they have been much more willing to explain the feelings of going through the transition and having the spotlight on them.”

Ross attests to this improvement in interviews.

“Our two most recent interviews have been our best yet,” Ross said, “because of what we’ve learned.” From analyzing past interviews, Greenstone’s class was able to learn from past mistakes and correct them the next time.

During one of their earlier interviews, they talked with a recently transitioned athlete just coming out of high school. While the information he gave them was useful, they felt that his answers weren’t as personal as they would have wanted. They learned to frame their questions in such a manner as to get more personal results.

It wasn’t just the questions they asked him that caused him to give less intimate answers than other interviewers. His transition was fairly recent, and he was young, younger than most athletes they had interviewed. Greenstone said, “I think what we’ve learned from other people is that, with time, things get easier.”

Greenstone has not decided where the direction of the film is heading. “The truth is when you’re making a documentary video,” he said, “you don’t know what you are going to get until the end.”  

Students in the class do have some ideas on where to show it.

“We talked about showing it to sports teams in the beginning of the season,” Ross said. “We will probably re-evaluate once it’s finished, but we want to spread it all over.”

Greenstone and his class hope to share the documentary beyond just the Parker community as a helpful platform for anyone in sports.

“I would absolutely plan on showing this to the Parker community if it’s good,” Greenstone said, “and not only the Parker community, but we’ve been in touch with all kinds of advocacy groups.”

Since the main focus of this film is to educate people about transgender issues through other people’s experiences and opinions, the class hopes many people from all over will benefit in watching and learning from it.

“The intent of the movie is that this will be useful for coaches, athletic directors, athletes, fans, and parents across the country,” Greenstone said. “That is our dream hope.”