Cmerkwan

The Star Tribune reported that a white social studies teacher discussing slavery to a seventh-grade class bound the hands and feet of two black girls. The New York Daily News reported that the teacher also made the girls crawl under desks representing slave ships.
“My daughter didn't volunteer for this. My daughter was embarrassed. She's extremely uncomfortable," mother Christine Shand said of her daughter 13-year-old Gabrielle Shand. The other girl who was bound did volunteer (NY Daily News).
The teacher, Eileen Bernstein, apologized to Shand but Shand said Friday she thinks the teacher should be removed from the class (Star Tribune).
"I think the teacher should have gotten some discipline," Shand said. "I know if that was me, I would be uncomfortable going back to that class. Why should my daughter have to switch?" (Star Tribune).
"We encourage our teachers to deliver the curriculum in a variety of ways, to go beyond just reading the textbook," superintendent Brian Monahan of the North Rockland School District said. "We don't want to discourage creativity. But this obviously went wrong because the student was upset," (Star Tribune).
The New York Daily News reported that Bernstein said that she had done the lesson before. Wilbur Aldridge, head of the local NAACP chapter, said he feared that the teacher still "didn't get it" after their meeting. He said the teacher apologized "because Gabrielle was upset, not because she admitted she did something wrong." (Star Tribune).
"Are you telling me when you do a section on the Holocaust, it's okay to simulate an oven and have a grandchild of someone who was a survivor just get in the oven?" Aldridge asked. "That makes no sense." (NY Daily News).