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Parents and students at Sequoia Middle School in Fontana, California, are criticizing a language arts teacher after she was caught on video pressuring a student to say the N-word in class.
The student who filmed the troubling video said she and her classmates were reading a Mark Twain novel when the incident occurred, according to ACB 7 Los Angeles.
The teacher said the N-word 15 times, according to student
After the N-word appeared in the book, a student raised their hand and asked for the teacher to clarify the spelling of the racial slur. That’s when things took a turn for the worse. The teacher began pressuring the student to say the N-word.
“She was trying to force him to say the word and she repeatedly kept saying it and she had a smirk on her face,” the anonymous student who filmed the startling clip told the outlet. “She said it a lot of times. Probably like 15 or more.”
At one point in the video, the student appeared to get uncomfortable when the teacher kept taunting him to say the N-word.
“Say it. N—–,” the teacher said repeatedly in the brief clip. “You’re asking me how to spell it, so go ahead and pronounce it: N—-. Pronounce it after me.”
Then, the teacher attempted to minimize the meaning of the slur.
“The teacher got in front of the class and she was saying that the word is just an English word and everybody can say it if she wants to, it’s in the dictionary, and people are oversensitive over the word,” the student, who is Black said. “I was just thinking, ‘Dang, this teacher is out of her mind.'”
Parents are urging for the Fontana Unified School District to discipline the inappropriate teacher.
Bianca Gibbons, the mother of the anonymous student, shared the video to Facebook calling for the teacher to be “fired.”
Caroline Rivera, a mother who has two children enrolled at the school, advised for officials to issue the teacher further training.
“Not acceptable” she said to ABC 7 Los Angeles.
The teacher reportedly said she did not care about the backlash
Surprisingly, the Sequoia Middle School teacher in question has since been allowed to return to the classroom, KTLA 5 reported. She allegedly said that “she did not care” about the students and parents’ outrage. It’s unclear whether school officials have taken disciplinary action against the language arts teacher.
On the Fontana Unified School District’s website, Superintendent Miki Inbody said he and officials were aware of the startling video and that the matter was being investigated. He also claimed that the district would “provide training and support” to faculty to ensure “they understand the importance of creating an inclusive and respectful learning environment.”
“While the use of the word was in connection to its use in a historical literary work, there was a lack of understanding regarding the emotional impact of using this word could have on our students,” Inbody added. “As a District, we take such incidents very seriously and we are committed to ensuring that our learning environment is inclusive and welcoming for all students.”
Kids should feel safe going to school, but this is another example of our educational system failing our students of color. Last week, a teacher in North Carolina was caught on camera whipping a Black student with an extension cord.
In 2022, a teacher in Rochester threatened a group of students with discipline after they refused to participate in a history lesson that required them to pick cotton. When will it ever end? We hope Fontana school district officials do the right thing and give this teacher the boot.
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