Community leaders are calling for a Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District teacher to be fired after she allegedly used a Black student as her example of “a fugitive slave” during a lesson on the Civil War and the slave trade.
According to Click2Houston, the incident happened during a ninth-grade History class at Kahla Middle School. The 8th grader, who was the only Black student in the class, is said to have felt hurt and embarrassed by the teacher’s actions.
“She is in advanced courses. She is in the eighth grade but taking ninth-grade courses,” the student’s mother, Tori Ards, said. In the wake of the incident, Ards said the school’s assistant principal got in touch to inform her about what had happened.
“She [the asst. principal] explained it to me as it was explained to her and then she put my daughter on the phone to let me know, in her own words, that the teacher had used her as an example of ‘a fugitive slave,’” Ards recalled, adding that the teacher used her daughter to re-enact a scene during the aforementioned lesson.
The teacher allegedly made Ards’ daughter come to the front of the class before saying, “I could snatch her and take her to the South and sell her during slavery!”
Quanell X, who is a community activist, said, the teacher was “crazy as hell.” “No one should have that kind of teacher in the classroom because they are already arguing in Texas about Critical Race Theory being taught in schools,” Quanell X added. “Well if we leave that teacher in school to teach our young beautiful Black and Brown children, she would teach them that slavery was a choice. We should never have a wolf like this in sheep’s clothing teaching our babies!”
Ards also said that “no student present should have been used as an example to teach any part of this lesson. It was uncalled for, it was unnecessary, it was damaging and hurtful.”
The incident was also not the first time the teacher had raised eyebrows with her comments, Click2Houston reported. Days prior to the recent incident, Ards said she received a call from her daughter to inform her about comments the teacher had made about the Confederate flag.
During that conversation with the students, the teacher allegedly challenged what the history books have said about the flag. The teacher allegedly said the Confederate flag was a “good flag” and it had “nothing to do with slavery.”
School administrators were notified about that incident. “They promised to investigate and do something about it, but their lack of concern about this serious issue enabled that teacher and emboldened her to go even further to move now to a slave auction,” Quanell X said.
“She went on to lie about that rusty, dirty, no good, dirty, low-down Confederate flag. That is not a flag that any human being would be proud of, and that flag did stand for slavery. That flag did fight for slavery, and that flag fought to make sure slavery and human indentured servitude was never ended and thank God that flag lost.”
Community leaders have since called on officials to fire the teacher. “We are demanding that teacher be removed – not suspended – removed and she should never be allowed to teach anybody’s children regardless of the race of the student body,” Quanell X said.
The Cy-Fair ISD said they were investigating the incident at the time of this report. “We are thoroughly investigating these allegations, and the staff member will not be on campus prior to the outcome of the investigation,” Cy-Fair ISD said in a statement they reportedly sent parents. “We look forward to a swift resolution to this matter and remain committed to providing a respectful, safe, and supportive learning environment for our students.”
