Massachusetts teacher on leave after holding mock slave auction and using racial slur, official says
A fifth-grade teacher in Massachusetts has been placed on paid leave after a series of incidents including holding a mock slave auction, using a racial slur, and calling out the student who reported the slur, a school official said.
Officials did not name the teacher at the Margaret A. Neary Elementary School in Southborough, a town about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of Boston.
District Superintendent Gregory Martineau told parents in a statement this week that he first learned about the incidents from parents in April.
He said the first incident — a mock slave auction — took place in January during a history lesson on the economy of the Southern colonies.
“The educator asked two children sitting in front of the room, who were of color, to stand, and the educator and class discussed physical attributes (i.e., teeth and strength),” Martineau wrote.
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In the second incident, in April, the teacher was reading aloud from a book and used a slur, which the district later discovered does not appear in the book, officials said. Martineau told parents in his statement that dehumanizing words such as slurs should not be spoken by employees or students.
Grew up in Mass. I remember one year I had to go to a multi-night field trip called nature's classroom. One the things we learned about was the underground railroad. They lined us up in rows of 2 and walked us like we were slaves while calling us negros and made whip cracks. They warned us that it would be Intense beforehand and a few kids cried who were allowed to fall out. It was intense but it was eye-opening of just a fraction of what slaves went through.
This however clearly had a bias of the participants color, did not get approval or suggestions from other staff. Or have a place for students to disengage from participation if they were yo troubled by it.
Ya this doesn't sound like a bad lesson tbh, but it needed to have some kind of warning and a way to not participate, plus it should have had all students in the slave auction and not just the black ones, so even the white kids could see what it was like at the time. The needless "n" word could also be dropped lol.
When was this? Pretty sure we didn't have anything like this anywhere near us growing up in MA... Although there are always weird exceptions. I foolishly feel like I gotta mention that not everyone who grew up in Mass had experiences anything like this. I'm about to be 40 fwiw.
I dont remember what grade I was in. But I'd guess between 13 - 19 years ago. I just looked Nature's Classroom up though and they've been around for 50 years.