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FIRST ON FOX: One of the top teachers unions in the country is facing criticism over an upcoming training session that will instruct members on how to go through a gender transition at work, including best practices for using gender pronouns and combating transphobia, while also being provided with literature labeling conservative opposition as "villains."
In a document posted on its website, the National Education Association (NEA) announced to its more than 3 million educator members a slate of training programs, including a session named "Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice," scheduled for Dec. 2-4, 2025. The union will also hold an "Advancing Racial Justice through Union Work" on Jan. 13-15, 2026.
"Understanding this community and their issues are critical to providing support and guidance that is not only inclusive but liberating," the NEA says about the LGBTQ+ training.
Goals of the training include establishing a "common understandings about the identities under the LGBTQ+ community umbrella," developing a "shared understanding of the anti LGBTQ+ policy landscape and how to develop counter narratives of inclusion and equity," "deepen skills and strategies to confront implicit bias, micro-aggressions and stereotypes in the LGBTQ+ community," and "develop a toolset of tactics for dismantling systems of privilege and oppression as it relates to LGBTQ+ educators and students."
Defending Education, an education transparency advocate organization, obtained two packets, a "pre-attendance package" and "participant handouts" for "Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy" training that help union members prepare for training sessions. The documents are littered with far-left agenda items, including a guide for members who are potentially going through a gender transition at work taken from the Cornell University "Transgender Guide To Transitioning & Gender Affirmation."
The guide gives "tips" for "coming out" at work and "tips" for "transitioning at work."
The literature dives into the "debate" about men in girls' sports, lamenting the fact that "our opposition wins the debate on trans youth in sports against any and all arguments we have tried for our side."
"Our base and persuadables want to support transgender student athletes, but are extremely susceptible to our opposition’s argument that excluding trans youth is necessary to protect the fairness of women’s sports," the NEA explained.
The literature then goes into deep detail on several steps to more effectively communicate the benefits of biological men playing in girls' sports, including the instruction, "reduce the potency of opposition attacks through race-forward, deep, story-based, and culturally specific public education on who transgender people are."
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The "pre-work" document also featured the "Gender Unicorn," which Fox News Digital has extensively reported on as a popular tool for transgender activists to promote and break down the idea there are more than two genders. The document includes a coloring book for individuals to mark where they fit on the gender spectrum.
The literature spends two pages explaining the importance of addressing others with the proper gender pronouns and says, "Over the last few years, the transgender community has asked allies to help normalize offering pronouns during introductions, in education, and the workplace to indicate an understanding of trans identities and show that they are a safe person.
"As gender identity and gender expression do not always align, offering pronouns is a way to create a space where people do not need to rely on assumptions of others’ gender."
Kendall Tietz, investigative reporter at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital that the NEA is sending the wrong message to both educators and students with the DEI training materials.
"Every time we get a look behind the curtain at the National Education Association, its priorities are unmistakable: a race-based, gender-ideology-driven model of activist education," Tietz explained.
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"A teacher’s job is to teach facts and skills, not train kids to be social justice activists. Yet NEA members are focused on staff transition plans, pronoun pins and a ‘Race Class Gender’ playbook that filters every part of life through a race-and-gender lens and insists no one can ever escape ‘ever-present’ systemic oppression. From the largest bloc of teachers in the country, this rhetoric tells students something devastating: no matter how hard you work, the system is rigged, and you are doomed from the start."
The training material also contains multiple examples of the NEA lashing out at conservatives.
"The right has exploited ignorance about transgender people and our lack of an affirmative, race-forward message to advance anti-trans attacks, further splinter and impugn the left, and sabotage progressives on a broad range of issues," the handbook states.
"Over the last ten years, Republicans in state legislatures have increasingly turned to anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation as a powerful complement to their arsenal of racist dog whistles used to whip up fear and consolidate power."
"Using a Race Class Gender Narrative" is a prominent theme in the literature as the NEA aims to "mobilize our progressive base (particularly Black, AAPI, and Gen Z audiences)" to "marginalize our opposition, and move persuadables across race."
As part of that narrative, the NEA labels its opponents, presumably conservatives, as "villains" on multiple occasions.
"Name the villains who violate our values, expose their motivation of getting back into or holding onto power, and position them as a barrier to what our families need," the document explains in a section called, "Architecture of a race-class gender narrative."
Critical race theory, an agenda that the Trump administration has made efforts to root out of academia, is defended in the documents with critics being portrayed as "racist."
"Recently, they have paired these attacks with fear-mongering about Critical Race Theory, mobilizing their base with a potent mix of racist and transphobic tropes," the document explains. "Progressives cannot ignore these attacks hoping that simply sticking to economic issues alone will save us. Our appeals on any topic will always be filtered through the noise of this unrelenting fear-mongering and scapegoating on the right."
Erika Sanzi, senior director of communications for Defending Education, told Fox News Digital, "The NEA is the largest teachers' union in the country, and they have decided to vilify half the country in an upcoming training. As far as they are concerned, the only reasons anyone could oppose their preferred ideologies are racism and transphobia and they name Republicans as villains, in writing!"
The NEA has long-faced accusations of putting far-left agenda items in front of the educational needs of students, including earlier this month when Defending Education released a "lookout" warning to parents warning of radical indoctrination at both the NEA and American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
Sanzi suggested to Fox News Digital that the training documents show the NEA’s federal charter should be questioned.
"Their federal charter was granted because they promised to ‘elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching; and to promote the cause of education in the United States.’ Seeing as their leadership—and by extension, the organization itself—has morphed into a far-left insane asylum that is actively destroying the cause of education, that charter is no longer defensible."
Fox News Digital reached out to the NEA for comment.
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