A California teacher, who previously presented as a man, will return to school after spring break as a woman.
The Fresno Bee is reporting that the Yosemite High School teacher, formally known as Gary Sconce, will be known to students and staff as Karen Adell Scot after April 22.
"When you aren't who you really are, it's like being smothered," Scot, 56, told KFSN-TV. "It's like being rolled in a wave, if you've ever been rolled in a wave in the ocean where you can't find your way up, you don't know which direction you've been turned."
Scot, who says she came out to her family as transgender in April 2013 and has been teaching science and multimedia at Yosemite High School for 24 years, then added, "I was born transgender. My earliest memories were that even though my body was a little boy body, which I really didn't understand, I was a girl. I knew I was a girl."
Scot told her colleagues of personal struggles involved in her decision to come out as transgender in a letter this week, according to the Bee.
"I have been shunned by those who used to be my friends, have been shunned by family, have had people try to cast demons out of me, have left my church of nearly 30 years, and have been scorned and laughed at by those who had for decades said they were my friends," Scot is quoted as saying in the letter.
Still, Scot's announcement has received a mixed response from parents, students and other community members.
"Some parents are pulling their kids out of classes and things like that and some of the staff is uncomfortable, which I don't understand because if you work with someone that long, they're not a different person, they're the same person just a different gender now," Natalie Choin told KFSN.
In 2012, British primary school teacher Lucy Meadows revealed she was transgender in a letter sent home to parents during the Christmas break. Just three months after she began living and working as a woman at St. Mary Magdalen’s Church of England Primary School in Accrington, Lancashire, the 32-year-old committed suicide.
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