Reflecting on the Needs of Gender Diverse Students in School and in the Community: A Question of Thinkability
This conference brings together an interdisciplinary group of people with the goal of heightening self-awareness and broadening thinkability - the ways that we think about and respond to gender diverse children.
School staff members, parents and clinicians face many challenges in responding effectively to the academic, emotional and social needs of LGBTQT+ students. Our speakers will be offering their insights regarding the inevitable pressures that come into play in the interactions between gender fluid or transitioning children and the school or other clinical professionals charged with helping them.
Transference and countertransference issues in clinical work and in daily relationships will be discussed. Highly relevant concepts that will be introduced include “adolescent ruthlessness” perceiving gender transitioning as a possible form of “creative becoming” and reflective practices that foster healthy identity development in children.
Conference presenters will explore the challenges and note the progress, or lack thereof, as schools strive to provide mandated supportive, non-discriminatory environments for all students including gender diverse and transgender students.
Speakers and audience members will include: school mental health professionals, school administrators and teachers; clinicians who work with gender diverse children and adolescents; educators of gender diverse children and leading writers and researchers in the area of non-binary gender identification in school age students.
This program provides an opportunity for participants to gain realistic information about this timely, and often controversial, topic. Open conversation between presenters and the audience will be encouraged. Most significantly, the event will support each of us as we reflect upon our own biases as well as on the possible role we can take in advocating for schools, and for the community at large, to be safe spaces for our gender non-conforming and transgender children.
Conference Information
Date
December 6, 2025
Time
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. EST
Location
Ruth S. Harley University Center
Adelphi University
One South Avenue
Garden City, NY 11530
View Accommodation and Directions
CEUs
7 CE contact hours available for NYS: Psy, SW, MHC, MFT & Psychoanalysts and APA: Psy
Fee
$100 – General Admission
$75 – Derner Alum, Adelphi faculty/clinical supervisor, Non-Adelphi psychoanalytic Candidate/student
$40 – Derner student/Postgraduate candidate
Presentations and Speakers
Working with Educators to Uncover Biases
An interactive presentation of experiences and activities designed to help educators discover and unpack their biases. By understanding our own biases, we can reflect on how we are performing gender in our teaching and how our expectations are based on deeply held beliefs.
Margie Brickley, MSEd, IMHE® IV
Margie Brickley (she/her) is on the faculty of Bank Street College of Education where she teaches courses in child development and assessment. She engages in reflective supervision with social work and education students. Her work focuses on educational repair, working towards anti-racist/anti-ableist ways of teaching, and gender expansive spaces for children.
Advocating for LGBTQ+ Students in an Uncertain Legal Landscape
The enactment of anti-LGBTQ+ curriculum laws – which stigmatize marginalized sexual and gender identities – poses significant ethical challenges for school psychologists, who are professionally obligated to promote equitable educational practices, embrace diversity, and challenge systemic structures that sustain oppression. This presentation will share findings from a study exploring school psychologists’ experiences navigating the tensions between their ethical responsibilities and legal mandates related to LGBTQ+ issues within school contexts. Results indicate that, although many school psychologists identify as allies of LGBTQ+ youth, their ability to engage in advocacy is often limited in certain geographic regions due to concerns about professional consequences and anticipated resistance from colleagues and community members. The session will include a discussion of strategies for supporting LGBTQ+ students in areas characterized by hostile or restrictive legislative environments.
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Dana E. Boccio, PhD
Dana Boccio, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the School Psychology M.A. and Psy.D. Programs at Adelphi University. After receiving her Ph.D. in Clinical and School Psychology from Hofstra University in 2006, she worked as a school psychologist on Long Island, NY before transitioning into academia. Dr. Boccio regularly presents at professional conferences on topics related to ethics and professional practice, including strategies for navigating unethical administrative directives and providing support to LGBTQ+ students in the context of stigmatizing legislation. She is currently a member of NASP’s Ethics and Professional Practices Board representing the Northeast region of the United States.
Reflecting on the Needs of Gender Diverse Students in School and in the Community: A Question of Thinkability
A Second Chance for Gender argues that the current culture war over sex education and trans adolescence is less an evidence debate than an emotional siege on care. Drawing on classroom scenes and clinical practice, I read gender as an “emotional situation” that arrives before understanding, organized by loss of certainty, group psychology, and transferential demand. In schools and institutes, characters—protectors of “normalcy,” disbelievers, glossary police, and creative experimenters—stage anxieties about dependency, recognition, and authority. These conflicts expose how theory hardens when practitioners cannot bear not-knowing. I propose a pedagogy that involves an ethics of care oriented by curiosity, risk, and waiting: receiving adolescent “sex research” as symbolic work rather than pathology or slogan. The paper reframes the question of the adolescent’s ‘agency’ as position rather than possession, and care as the capacity to keep thinking when certainty fails. A “second chance” names the opportunity to revise our stance—less cheerleading or prohibition, more radical hospitality toward the unfinished work of gender in education and psychoanalysis.
Oren Gozlan, Psy.D, C.Psych, FIPA
Dr. Oren Gozlan is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in Toronto. He is a member of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). He is the current National Scientific Chair of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. His book ‘Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning: A Lacanian Approach’ won the American Academy & Board of Psychoanalysis annual book prize for books published in 2015. He is also the winner of the Symonds Prize (2016), Ralph Roughton Award (2022) and the Miguel Prados Prize (2023). His edited collection titled: “Critical Debates in the Transsexual Studies Field: In Transition” (Routledge) was a runner-up for the 2019 Gradiva Award.
He has two upcoming books: Gender with Sexuality; situations of psychoanalytic learning and Gender: A Contemporary Introduction (both published by Routledge).
Dr. Gozlan is sessional faculty at the University of Toronto (Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development) and teaches at the Toronto Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Canadian Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.
Advocating for LGBTQ+ Students in an Uncertain Legal Landscape
The enactment of anti-LGBTQ+ curriculum laws – which stigmatize marginalized sexual and gender identities – poses significant ethical challenges for school psychologists, who are professionally obligated to promote equitable educational practices, embrace diversity, and challenge systemic structures that sustain oppression. This presentation will share findings from a study exploring school psychologists’ experiences navigating the tensions between their ethical responsibilities and legal mandates related to LGBTQ+ issues within school contexts. Results indicate that, although many school psychologists identify as allies of LGBTQ+ youth, their ability to engage in advocacy is often limited in certain geographic regions due to concerns about professional consequences and anticipated resistance from colleagues and community members. The session will include a discussion of strategies for supporting LGBTQ+ students in areas characterized by hostile or restrictive legislative environments.
Gaston Weisz, PsyD
Dr. Weisz is a licensed psychologist and certified school psychologist in NYS. He is currently the interim Director of the School Psychology Psy.D. program at Adelphi University this semester while Dr. Sapountzis is on Sabbatical. Dr. Weisz is the Director of Field Placements for the Psy.D. program and he teaches in both the Psy.D.and Masters School Psychology programs. Further, Dr. Weisz has worked as a school psychologist in the Valley Stream School District in Nassau County for 30 years and has been in private practice in Lynbrook, NY for over 30 years.
Credentialing Information
Adelphi University is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Adelphi University maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Adelphi University, Derner School of Psychology, is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0024 and by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0607 and by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0185; for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0083; and for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0058.
Disclaimer Statement
This continuing education seminar, seminar instructor/s, and the Postgraduate Programs as the seminar’s sponsor, receive no commercial support for the content of instruction (e.g., research grants funding research findings etc.), or benefit for endorsement of products (e.g., books, training, drugs, etc.) that are known to present a conflict of interest.
Cancellation Policy
Full refunds are issued for cancellations made up to 7 working days before the event. Cancellations of less than 7 days for any reason, or no-shows are not refunded. Credit towards a future event/workshop are issued for cancellations less than 7 days and up to 24 hours before the event. No credit is issued for cancellations less than 24 hours before the events or no-shows.
Planning Committee
Stephen Hyman, PhD
Co-Director of the Postgraduate Psychodynamic School Psychology Program
Joaniko Kohchi, MPhil, LCSW, IECMH-E®
Director of the Institute of Parenting and the Postgraduate Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Programs
Ionas Sapountzis, PhD
Professor and Director of the Masters and PsyD School Psychology Programs
Matthew Tedeschi. PhD
Co-Director of the Postgraduate Psychodynamic School Psychology Program