A teacher initially said she would no longer use a portion of a lesson asking students to imagine how they would punish a “disrespectful” slave, but later doubled down on keeping the lesson as is, according to emails provided to Madison365.
The teacher is now one of several Sun Prairie teachers on paid administrative leave after a lesson on ancient Mesopotamia included the question, “A slave stands before you. This slave has disrespected his master by telling him, ‘You are not my master!’ How will you punish this slave?”
The mother who first brought the offending lesson to public attention said she was “shocked” when she first saw the assignment — and angered when the teacher doubled down.
In an interview Monday, Dazarrea Ervins, whose son Zayvion Hopkins is in Mary Headington’s sixth grade social studies class, said she was “shocked” when her son showed her the assignment.
“I was taken aback, honestly. I couldn’t believe that it was an assignment. I was just really, really shocked and confused,” she said.
She said she emailed the teacher to discuss the assignment.
“I was not aware it would offend anyone,” Headington wrote in an email to Ervins. “I plan to debrief the student about it tomorrow and have pulled it down in my other hours.”
Ervins, however, was not satisfied with that response.
“I would like to know who approved this assignment, specifically this ignorant question,” Ervins wrote back. “I am happy I could bring awareness to you on how offensive this assignment is and will disregard your ignorance and the privilege you have of not being offended by the question stated!” Ervins went on to say Headington should have apologized.
In response, Headington revoked her decision to remove the question from future lessons.
“In Mesopotamia slaves were considered anyone that had a debt to pay off,” she wrote. (That isn’t true; while indentured servitude was one form of slavery, not all debtors were slaves, and other people were enslaved as punishment for crimes or after being captured in war.) “I will leave the assignment as is as I believe that a good discussion can be had about intent and feelings tomorrow.”
“It was at that point that I decided to post it on Facebook,” Ervins said. “I felt like basically you got offended because I said that you were privileged enough to not be offended. And so you decided to use your privilege to say, ‘You know what, now I’m going to keep it up there and we’re going to talk about it.’ That’s the way that I took it. And so I just didn’t email her back after that. And I just posted it on Facebook and said ‘Let’s see what the community thinks about this.’”
For his part, Zayvion said he feels “scared and unsafe” at the thought of returning to Headington’s class.
“If I was in the classroom (instead of) via Zoom, how they would think of me and how they would treat me?” he said.
“I would like to see the teachers just gone,” Ervins said. “All I wanted in the beginning was an apology from the teacher. I just can’t come to my mind and see how a few adults, now, these are all educators, a group of them, thought that this was appropriate. It’s just ignorant.”
Lesson removed from website
The online platform where teachers could pay $4 for a lesson with identical wording has removed it from the site’s inventory.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported Monday night that the question matches one found in a lesson plan available on Teachers Pay Teachers, a site where educators can exchange lesson plans, presentations, worksheets and other materials.
It is not clear whether the Sun Prairie teachers were using a lesson they purchased from TpT, even though the wording is an exact match to one question in a lesson that was available on the site until Monday. Sun Prairie school officials have not responded to a message seeking clarification.
Reached late Monday night, a Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) representative said the lesson had been removed from the site.
“Racist or offensive material is strictly prohibited on TpT,” the company said in a statement emailed to Madison365. “ As soon as we were made aware of this resource, we immediately removed it from the site. We take inappropriate content very seriously and expect every TpT Teacher-Author to abide by our Inappropriate Content Policy, which prohibits any resources that trivialize traumatic experiences, or disrespect, discriminate, or have the effect of marginalizing others. This resource was unacceptable, inappropriate, and antithetical to TpT’s values. We will continue to listen to our community and partner with experts in the field to continuously improve and ensure materials on TpT are appropriate, representative, and accurate.”
