“We had the job of planning the Leavers’ Assembly and we had the help of a teacher, Penning explained to the Birmingham Mail . “Recently, I performed in the school’s production of Hairspray as the character Edna. The teacher who was helping us was very impressed by the performance and suggested I did something related to that. I thought this was a brilliant idea. However, when I spoke to the other teachers about wearing a dress for the Leavers’ Assembly and possibly even wearing drag, they said they needed to think about it,” said the teen.