Tag: elementary schools
9-year-old kills self after racist taunts from class
A black 9-year-old girl in Alabama allegedly took her own life after facing relentless bullying and racism in class, according to reports.
McKenzie Adams’ relatives said she hanged herself Dec. 3 in her home in Linden, about 100 miles west of Montgomery, and was discovered by her grandmother, according to the Tuscaloosa News.
Since the start of the school year, the fourth-grader had been the target of bullying at US Jones Elementary School, where she was teased over her friendship with a white male classmate, according to her family.
Her aunt, Eddwina Harris, said the group of students taunted McKenzie by telling her to commit suicide.
“She was being bullied the entire school year, with words such as ‘kill yourself,’ ‘you think you’re white because you ride with that white boy,’ ‘you ugly,’ ‘black bitch,’ ‘just die,’” Harris told the newspaper.
Harris said she’s speaking out about her niece’s death because she wants to promote anti-bullying.
“There are so many voiceless kids,” Harris said. “God is opening great doors for justice for my niece.”
Naked teacher chases kids on playground in bizarre video
A physical education teacher was caught stripping naked and chasing children around a playground in a bizarre video circulating online.
Parents are outraged after footage surfaced of the Carthay Center Elementary School teacher exposing himself to nearby second-grade and fifth-grade students Friday on the Los Angeles campus, news station KCAL reported.
The video was reportedly captured by a construction worker who started filming the man, who was not identified, as he put his pants back on in the middle of the playground.
“He was supposed to be helping them learn P.E., run around and have fun,” a parent told KCAL. “But he undressed and started chasing the kids while he was naked, and then the kids ducked and dodged, ran into some of the classrooms and got safe haven that way.”
School officials reportedly notified parents of the horrifying episode in a robocall and letter sent home with students.
Counselors were also made available to students in light of the incident.
No charges have been filed against the man but authorities are investigating the case, KCAL reported.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/01/23/naked-teacher-chases-kids-on-playground-in-bizarre-video/
Bullied 10-year-old girl hangs herself
A 10-year-old Colorado girl died of an apparent suicide — two weeks after she hanged herself when video surfaced on social media of the pre-teen fighting an alleged bully, according to a local report. Ashawnty Davis, an aspiring WNBA player and a fifth-grader at Sunrise Elementary School in Aurora, got into her “first-ever fight” on school property at the end of October, her parents told local news station KDVR.
Another student captured the fight on video and posted it on an app called Musical.ly, her father, Anthony Davis, told the station.
“She was devastated when she found out that it had made it to Musical.ly,” Davis said.
Once the video was posted, Ashawnty was relentlessly bullied until she reached her breaking point, her parents told the station.
“My daughter came home two weeks later and hanged herself in the closet,” said her mother, Latoshia Harris.
She spent another two weeks on life support at Children’s Hospital in Colorado before dying Wednesday morning.
Her parents believe that Ashawty was a victim of “bullycide” — when someone takes his or her life because of bullying, according to the report. They hope her story could help save other young victims’ lives.
“I want other parents to know that it’s happening,” Harris told the station. “That was my baby and I love my baby and I just want mothers to listen.”
In a statement issued to the station, the Cherry Creek School District said that it does not tolerate bullying in its schools, and has a “comprehensive bullying prevention program” in place.
“We were made aware of that video when a media outlet approached us with it,” the statement continued. “We took immediate action in response, turning the video over to police and addressing the matter with students.”
The fight did not take place during school hours, the district said.
via: https://nypost.com/2017/12/01/bullied-10-year-old-girl-hangs-herself/
White student tells Black student ‘You are my slave’ in school’s ‘Civil War Day’ has mom furious
KENNESAW, Ga. — A new battle line has formed in the national debate over Civil War flags and symbols — this time at a Georgia school not far from a mountaintop where Confederate soldiers fired their cannons at Union troops more than a century ago.
The school near Kennesaw Mountain last month invited fifth-graders to dress up as characters from the Civil War.
A white student, dressed as a plantation owner, said to a 10-year-old black classmate, “You are my slave,” said the black child’s parent, Corrie Davis.
“What I want them to understand is the pain it caused my son,” Davis said of her child, who did not dress up that day. “This is bringing them back to a time when people were murdered, when people died, when people owned people.”
Davis recorded an emotional video in which she explains how she was affected by what happened to her son. It has attracted about 70,000 views on Facebook. The distraught mother said she met with school officials, but was dismayed when they refused to promise that they would never conduct a class in that way again. The issue could come to a head in a couple of weeks, when Davis plans to bring it up at a regularly scheduled school board meeting.
“No student was required to dress in period attire and any student that did so was not instructed, nor required, to dress in any specific attire,” school system spokesman John Stafford said in a brief statement. Cobb County school officials haven’t said whether the annual Civil War Day will continue next year at Big Shanty Intermediate School.
However, the note sent home to parents before the event said “it creates a more realistic simulation when dressing in Civil War clothing.”
Its suggestions included overalls — which Davis believes could have been meant to represent the clothing worn by slaves — and dark pants and white button-down shirts. White button-down shirts have become synonymous with demonstrators protesting the removal of Confederate statues in recent months. They were worn, for example, by some of the white nationalists who staged a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to violent clashes in August.
Communities around the country have removed Confederate monuments under pressure from those who say they honor a regime that enslaved African-Americans. The debate over such symbols intensified after a self-proclaimed white supremacist who had posed in a photo with the Confederate battle flag fatally shot nine black parishioners in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. And it has shown little signs of waning since the Charlottesville clashes that left one woman dead.
“BE CREATIVE and use your resources to ensure that your costume is as accurate as possible,” the Georgia school’s note informed parents. It included a small picture of a man in Civil War dress with what appears to be one of several flags used by the Confederate States of America.
“If they’re requiring that the costume be as accurate as possible … some kid is going to come to school dressed as a plantation owner,” Davis said in her video. “My son is going to be looked upon as a slave at the school.”
The best way to help students learn about difficult historical events such as the Civil War is to create an environment in which they can talk about them and learn different perspectives, said Andy Mink, a former Virginia teacher and now vice president of education programs at the National Humanities Center, a nonprofit organization that works to strengthen teaching.
“I think the best reason to teach history is to teach empathy,” said Mink, who works with schools nationwide on teaching strategies.
“The question we have to ask is whether or not dressing in a particular outfit is really achieving a learning outcome of some kind.”
Davis said she doesn’t object to learning about the Civil War. “I’m simply saying the way in which you are going about teaching this standard is offensive,” she said.
Earlier this month, students in Georgia’s largest school system, Gwinnett County, were asked in a class studying the rise of Nazism to come up with ideas for mascots that might have been used as propaganda for the Nazi party. Gwinnett County schools spokeswoman Sloan Roach said it wasn’t appropriate, and that the matter was being addressed with the teacher.
“We don’t want to do things in our classrooms that would intentionally provide traumatic experiences for young people,” said Sandra Schmidt, associate professor of social studies education at Teachers College at Columbia University.
Schmidt said educators have been aware of the possible pitfalls of student role-playing exercises since the late 1960s’ “Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes” experiment, in which Iowa teacher Jane Elliott designated blue-eyed students as superior to brown-eyed peers.
“She quickly realized how out of hand it got,” Schmidt said.
Davis said she won’t back down in her effort to stop the dress-up aspect of the school’s Civil War Day. She said she doesn’t want other students going through what her son did.
“What they can do is say, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore,’” Davis said. “It is mind-boggling to me that no one will say that.”
via: http://nypost.com/2017/10/13/you-are-my-slave-elementary-school-civil-war-day-has-mom-furious/