PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Nairobi Colon has been teaching middle school art at KIPP Whittier Middle School in Camden for nearly five years, but it was only recently that they were able to bring their full, authentic self to the classroom.
“One day I really woke up and I was kind of tired of being called ‘miss,’ and knowing that that didn't sit right with me.”
So they asked their students to start referring to them as Teacher Robi, instead of the gendered titles like miss or mister usually associated with grade school educators.
“I came out as nonbinary to … myself, I would say, three years ago. To my students, I came out during the pandemic,” they recalled. “ ‘I want you all to call me Teacher Robi instead of Ms. Robi, are you OK with that?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, what are we learning today?’
“The school was also very supportive.”
Having that support is essential, and being able to share their life as a nonbinary teacher and person of color, not just with their students but with LGBTQ and other communities online, is a great way to foster representation.
Colon is what the kids call “TikTok famous” and boasts a following of nearly 500,000 on the app that’s extremely popular with Gen Z. Through their account, they chronicle life as a nonbinary middle school teacher and strive to be a role model for living authentically.
“People make this assumption … being nonbinary means this, it is bad. And when people see me and see the content that I create, especially on social media, they can look to me to get these answers that they're looking for, and see their own identities and see that they can be their true self and express their true self, when they see people who are doing that exact thing,” Colon said.
Colon often responds to comments from previous videos with new ones, and in one they have a conversation with one of their students who is also nonbinary, showing firsthand the inclusive space established in Teacher Robi’s class.
“Being nonbinary really opens the door to having an open classroom and having a safe space because of the fact that I'm able to be myself. And kids look at me, and they're like, ‘Teacher Robi is being themselves. I can be myself too,’ ” Colon said.
Of course, with the millions of views comes both positive and negative interactions.
“I do get backlash,” Colon said. “Like, you're mentally ill, you're mentally unstable, you're grooming our kids. ... In a lot of ways, I ignore it. But I do read it. I do respond to it sometimes. But never coming from a place of hate. Always coming from a place of love, a place of compassion.”
Despite the negative attention, Colon’s mission is to stay true to themselves, to their students and to any kid out there going through the same identity struggles they went through, themselves.
“It keeps me going knowing that at least 25% of our youth identify with a combination of pronouns that are outside of ‘she [or] he.’ And so it keeps me going to know that I'm not the only one,” Colon said. “It keeps me going to know that there are other people out there like me benefiting from my content. And youth need people like me. I needed somebody like me when I was growing up, and I did not have that. And that is one of the main things that keeps me going.”
You can follow Colon on TikTok at @robigotsoles.