I'm a student teacher who is heavily considering transitioning...

I was hoping if I came back to this post later someone would have posted something more hopeful than I could. But it looks like I'm not the only one who had a really bad experience with this.

I had just come out when I started my teaching program, so during my student teaching I was fully out but totally non-passing. I started hormones at the end of my student teaching year and had top surgery at the end of my first year teaching. It was devastating. Your first year teaching is going to be the worst thing ever, everyone is going to tell you so (and minimize your problems by saying "well, the first year teaching is like that for everyone!") and it is made so, so much worse by dealing with transitioning in front of a classroom. Students wrote slurs on my classroom door and posted really gross stuff on social media about me. Parents tried to have their students moved out of my classroom under false pretenses. The administration did the barest minimum to support me, then told me to at least stay in the closet about my bisexuality. And this was in an EXTREMELY liberal area, at a school that initially hired me BECAUSE they wanted to diversify their staff and provide more support for diverse groups of students.

Here's what I can say, though: there will be moments. There will be students who tell you how excited they are to have their first out teacher, or to meet someone they can relate to for the first time ever. There will be students who NEED someone they can go to about this, and have never had that before. There will be students who can't relate but are willing to learn, and now have the opportunity to be sources of support to their peers when they never would have been able to before. And there will be many, many students who never say anything to you about it but are positively affected by knowing you for you, and will have that seed of knowledge and connection to draw on wherever they end up.

So, how to approach the situation?

1. Find support. Whether that's a solid group of friends, a Queer support group, whatever you have, make sure you have people outside the school you can go to who will listen to you and support you and not brush off your struggles
2. Take care of your health. Make sure you're seeing a therapist, make sure you have the right meds for any mental or physical issues you've got, make sure you're eating and exercising in a way that works well for you. Just, make sure you've got a solid foundation.
3. Document. Everything. Keep records of your lesson plans, of any incidents that happen in the classroom, of what your administrators and other teachers say to you. Ask a union rep to sit in on your meetings with administrators.
4. Hold on to those good moments. Write those down too, not for documentation but for you to look back on, to remind yourself of the good you're doing
5. But at the same time, don't let those good moments guilt you into staying when it's time to leave. If it's damaging you, get out. That might mean another school, another state, another career. I know you've worked really hard and put so much of yourself into doing this, this isn't a career anyone chooses for the hell of it. But it is okay to leave.

I'm so sorry this is such a heavy answer, and I really hope somebody else does come by this post to share a more encouraging perspective. Unfortunately, this is the experience I've had and I feel like it would be wrong not to be real about it.

Best of luck to you.