Welcome to Gaia! ::

re-enact Missouri shooting


An Alabama teacher was suspended after her sixth-grade students re-enacted along racial lines the police shooting of Michael Brown, the black teenager whose killing in Ferguson, Missouri, has sparked nightly clashes, school officials said Friday.

The skit was the students' idea, but the teacher erred when she did not stop them from acting it out, said Audrey Strong, principal of Brantley Elementary School in Selma, Alabama, where the re-enactment occurred on Monday.

"The teacher made the poor judgment of allowing that skit to continue once she saw the props and the context," Strong said.

The incident happened after the teacher assigned her students to select a current event to re-enact as an extension of a social studies lesson, Strong said.

The students, most of them black, chose to act out the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown, as well as the 2012 slaying of Trayvon Martin, a black teen shot dead in a confrontation with neighborhood watch patrolman George Zimmerman in Florida.

The students used a fake weapon and played their roles along racial lines, with whites acting as the shooters and blacks as the victims, Strong said.

Strong declined to provide the teacher's name, race or the length of her suspension without pay, which was ordered by the school district on Thursday. But said she has not been fired.

The principal described the teacher as dedicated but inexperienced.

The incident came to light after a parent of a student in the class took to social media on Tuesday to voice her anger.

"They are teaching these children to hate one another when we're supposed to be teaching them to love one another," Jessica Lynn Baughn wrote on Facebook.

Phone messages left with a Selma resident of that name were not immediately returned.

The incident highlights the balance teachers must strike in encouraging students to think and act creatively while keeping them within the bounds of what is acceptable, Strong said.

"As educators, we still have to monitor that learning and redirect it if need be," she said.


Not funny

Yeah, I wondered how historically accurate it was myself.
Especially since the 'facts' are being hotly disputed and investigated.

Given the assignment it is not very surprising the kids came up with this.
It had to be something in the news. Logically it had to be something with few enough people involved they could act it out. It is reasonable to expect they would pick one of the bigger current news stories rather than something obscure. Most of what comes to mind doesn't seem appropriate for them to be acting out. The ones they did. Or the recent executions in Gaza, or the beheading of that journalist. Maybe people dying horribly from ebola or attacking and looting the medical clinics.
There are all kinds of opportunities for that assignment to go sideways.

Also -
"The students used a fake weapon ..."

OMG! I hope it wasn't a pop tart or a roll bitten into the shape of a gun or (gasp!) a 2 inch plastic rifle from a GI Joe action figure. I mean, that's prison stuff right there!

Teacher should stopped the skit..or at least reversed the roles. If the majority of the class was black, then the white kids should have been 'shot', not been put as the 'killers'. Social Studies lesson of the day; Minorities outnumber the 'white' kids now. So long as they're re-inenacting social events, they should have been expected to shoulder the burden of being the majority.

They're not happy? To bad. The skits should have been limited to that which has already been settled in the news recently. Wrongful prison sentences, saving miners, and the situations in the Middle east are all much better.

Teacher lets students do the project that they chose: banhammer.

Teacher throws a five year old against a wall repeatedly and claims he bullied her in class: Paid vacation.


What the ******** is wrong with the American school system?

But you can be white and Hispanic though.