“Are you a boy or a girl?” the 5-year-old asked, staring at me as she waited for my response. I froze. Having worked primarily with middle and high schoolers, I wasn’t yet used to the blunt inquisitiveness of our younger students. I was caught off guard.

It was 2022 and I had recently been hired as the principal of an all-girls elementary school in New York, and it was my first visit to the school to meet students, staff and families.

“I’m a girl,” I said, smiling through my discomfort, before slinking away to chat with another student. The moment was brief, but it stuck in the pit of my belly throughout the day.

When I arrived home, I debriefed the day with my wife. I told her about the exciting moments from my visit — learning about the school culture, seeing teachers in action, and meeting my incredible new students. When I mentioned my experience with the pre-K student, she sensed my unease and asked me how I was feeling about it.

As I reflected, I found myself wondering aloud what it would be like leading an all-girls elementary school as a masculine-presenting queer woman. I was worried that the community would not accept a woman who wears suits and ties to lead their daughters’ school, that I would be too different. My wife reassured me that my individuality was valuable and my students would love and respect me as they always had when I was a teacher.

Since becoming principal of an elementary school, I have been asked the same innocent, yet awkward, question by multiple students and have still not found out the perfect response. But each time I’m asked, it reminds me of the fact that young people are constantly exploring identity and part of my job is to foster a community where curiosity, individuality, and diversity are seen as assets.

To create this kind of inclusive community, I want to develop a thoughtful response that challenges students to cultivate their own worldview — one that gets them thinking about why this question is coming up for them and helps them understand how they can ask questions about identity with care.

Identity exploration is a key element of childhood and adolescence and working with young people requires us to support it. There’s a body of research showing the importance of identity development and a positive self-concept for social and emotional growth. Since our school is an all-girls institution, gender identity is something we think a lot about — and it starts early. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children typically develop a sense of their gender identity by 4 years old. As children explore, they often express curiosity about aspects of their own identity and the identity of others in their community.

Most of the staff and students at our school identify as girls or women. But none of us is the same. We each show up and represent our identity in unique ways. There’s no singular expression of girlhood or womanhood. How, then, in a space that is organized around a shared gender identity, can we create an environment that embraces diversity and difference?

As a leader, I believe in order to create this type of environment, I have to start with myself.

While considering how to respond when a student asks a question about my identity, I’ve been thinking about where my insecurity stems from and I’ve recently come to realize that it’s fueled by traumatic experiences I had when I was a student. Today, I am a school leader, but I was once a child who was looking for a safe space to become myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that at school. Instead, I experienced rejection and bigotry, living through years of racist and homophobic bullying. Clearing the emotional rubble created by those experiences, I now have an important perspective on what our young people are going through in school today.

My own feelings of being misunderstood in my youth, as well as the homophobia I’ve lived through for being open about my identity as a queer educator, inform my passion for creating spaces where our girls can just be, without the fear of having to fit into a specific mold. I feel a great sense of responsibility to lead a school community that expands the definition of what it means to be a girl, supporting whatever identities our students bring to the classroom each day, and empowering our students to become adults who are beacons of our community.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that every student should question their gender. Instead, I’m proposing that all students deserve a safe space to explore their identities, ask questions, discuss identity openly and learn about individuals who are like them — and not like them.

When I model vulnerability and authenticity as a leader, I invite others to do the same. The challenge? Leaders like me are not really encouraged to be vulnerable. As a young Black queer woman in school leadership, embracing vulnerability has felt frightening at times.

Facilitating open conversations about identity is important and can lead to validation and support, but there can also be potential backlash. For example, I’ve worked in schools for nearly a decade and in every space I’ve taught in, we’ve gotten pushback from families about celebrating, or even acknowledging Pride Month in reaction to activities promoting inclusivity for LGBTQ+ people because they feel it is inappropriate. Each time, I assure families that we value an inclusive curriculum and anything we’re teaching is in service of supporting our students.

These sentiments are hurtful personally, but that’s not my main concern. It’s not just about me. It’s about my students and my staff and the kind of environment we cultivate for them. An environment where everyone can bring their full selves to school. Our students deserve to have a school where they’re being challenged to learn about their own identities and the identities of others.

Our school was founded to provide the empowering experience of an all-girls education in a public school environment. The International Coalition of Girls’ Schools, which researches the impact of girls’ schools across the globeargues that girls’ schools are uniquely positioned to develop girls into leaders precisely because we are honest with our students about the real world. Sheltering our girls from exploring conversations about identity, flattens their voices into a two-dimensional box. Girlhood — or womanhood — is not monolithic. The beauty of a space dedicated to women and led by mostly women is in the variety of who we are, how we show up, and how we support our girls.

I want to create a learning environment that nurtures curiosity and promotes diversity, not one that encourages everyone to be the same. To do that, I have to stand in who I am despite the potential backlash, knowing the space I am creating for my students to one day stand in who they are proudly.

Moving forward, if a student asks me if I’m a boy or a girl, or any other question about identity, I will pose a question to open up the conversation before I share my response. I will ask them why they are asking and why this is coming up for them. I will take their curiosity as an opportunity to encourage them to articulate their own ideas about identity because girls’ schools do not teach girls what to think, but how to be critical thinkers and agents of change.