A sixth grade teacher in Selma, Ala. was suspended on Wednesday after allegedly having students reenact the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
According to The Selma Times-Journal, the mother of a sixth grader at the school complained about the incident Tuesday on Facebook.
The mother, Jessica Baughn, said she couldn’t believe that a teacher had staged the scene and described it in vivid detail to television station WSFA.
“She had them get on the internet and look up everything about it. They proceeded to reenact this shooting in class,” Baughn told WSFA. “Paper guns, the paper bullets … they actually shot them out of this made gun. The child falls on the ground like he’s dead. You’ve got a white child playing the white cop and a black student playing the black male that got shot. What are we teaching our children?”
Dallas County Schools Superintendent Don Willingham said the topic of Ferguson was raised during a discussion of current events. The name of the teacher had yet to be released and Willingham said the teacher would be on leave until an investigation had been conducted, according to WSFA.
h/t Raw Story
Such is the life of being a teacher: either you’re doing things to engage your kids, you’re doing nothing to engage your kids, or you’re on leave pending the outcome of an investigation.
My money is on the mom being white.
I’m mostly curious about how these kids constructed a paper gun that shoots paper bullets.
No. Just no.
It is one thing to have the children research the shooting. It would be great to have them enact a moot court, or a press interview. But to re-enact a shooting?
Any kind of shooting, regardless of racial overtones seems highly inappropriate for a classroom. Aren’t they surrounded by enough violence?
Well that’s ridiculous. Your position is that either the teacher reenacts a shooting that started riots and about which we don’t know bunches because it only happened a few days ago, or the kids will be so “disengaged” they won’t get an education at all? How long exactly since you’ve been in a classroom? “Poor teaching practices” doesn’t even begin to describe this situation.