Teacher placed on leave for ‘inappropriate’ assignment

A high school teacher in Iowa in the US has been put “on leave” after asking students to “pretend you are a black slave” for a school assignment.

The teacher, whose name was not released, assigned the Iowa City school district online learning programme to different schools, which has since been removed, Iowa City Press-Citizen reported.

The teacher asked students to write four sentences about what they would do if they were a slave who was freed.

A statement from the district called the assignment “inappropriate” and said it “does not support and will not tolerate this type of instruction.”

Dibny Gamez said her 14-year-old daughter, Ayesha, could not complete the assignment because it made her feel uncomfortable.

Ayesha is among a small number of Black students in the class.

“She just starts tearing up,” Gamez said. “And I was, like, ‘No, listen, you don’t have to be ashamed of who you are.’ I said, ‘You are beautiful for who you are. Don’t let not one soul make you uncomfortable for who you are.’”

Assignments asking students to role-play enslaved people or slave owners trivialize or distort the actual events of slavery, said Justin Grinage, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Minnesota who focuses his research on race and education.

“The best-case scenario with lessons like this is that students come away with a fabricated lie about history. So, best-case scenario, they don’t really learn anything, or they learn the wrong thing,” Grinage said.

“Worst-case scenario is that it’s a deeply traumatic experience for students of colour, particularly Black students.”