Grapevine - Ep. 1: The Girl And The English Teacher

November 27, 2023·43 min·3 clips

Nearly 200 people sign up to speak at a small-town Texas school board meeting fighting over what some call 'woke gender ideology.'

Grapevine is the setting. On August 22, 2022, a school board meeting in a wood-paneled room draws a crowd shoulder to shoulder, a sharp break from the sleepy monthly gatherings the town had known. The room feels different. Grapevine sits in the orbit of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and the story uses that geography to sketch a place shaped by airline jobs, white-collar families, religion, and expectations about school. Ramster stands out. She arrives with a partially buzzed head, colorful pants, and no polished answer to the usual church question, and she says she looked like a gay person in a school where nobody else looked like a gay person. Plus, she started in the middle of the pandemic. Half of her kids were remote, the other half in person, and a lot of them were struggling. One freshman in particular did not seem very eager to be there. In some ways, it reminded her of herself in high school: the sad, quiet kid who wanted to work on art or play a video game and not talk to an adult. That is the kind of student she paid more attention to. There was one other thing that put Wren on Ramster's radar. At the start of the year, Ramster asked all of her kids to fill out a form telling her a little bit about themselves, including what names and pronouns they wanted to use in class. This student, listed as a boy in district records, asked to be called by female pronouns and by an alternative name, Wren. M. Ramster was happy to accommodate the teenager's request, but she had no idea what this shy, cerebral student was going through at home. Or that Wren's mother, Sharla, would end up setting off a cascade of events that would lead Ramster to question her career choices and, ultimately, her future in Grapevine. The story stays close to scene, place, and consequence, letting the airport noise, the suburban setting, and the district's routines give the conflict its shape. By the end, Ramster's future in Grapevine and the student-family conflict have become inseparable, which gives the story its gravity.

As heard by us

A Texas school board dispute that turns a classroom conflict into a close look at belonging and authority.

Grapevine - Ep. 1: The Girl And The English Teacher opens in a school board meeting in Grapevine, Texas, where a usually quiet room is packed shoulder to shoulder.

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A classroom pronoun request turns into a Grapevine, Texas school story.

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