Why would you say some dumb shit like this to a 9-year old? Much less a Black 9-year old:
The mother of a black Queens girl yesterday pressed for the transfer of a white PS 35 teacher who made a racial “joke” about the gorilla pictured on the girl’s folder.
Rachelle Hogans-Blair said the city’s Education Department did not go far enough in disciplining fourth-grade teacher Gail Kaplan at the Hollis school for remarking to 9-year-old Cheyenne Griffin, “You took a picture of your family and put it on the front of your folder.” The incident happened Oct. 17 during a spelling test, the girl’s mother said.
Kaplan also told the girl not to tell her parents, who sensed that something was wrong when their daughter, usually bubbling to talk about her school day and phone friends, went straight to her room after school and was quiet the entire weekend, the mother said.
Even if she didn’t mean to make a racially charged statement as she claims, how are you gonna clown a little kid in front of the whole class? And all the teacher got was a slap on the wrist. Simply amazing…
Oh. My. God.
That deserves a beatdown right there, not the little slap on the wrist she got. And I don’t see how a transfer is a good idea. So she can go say some other mess to some other kids in a different school? Ugh.
Making the remark was insensitive and stupid. Urging the child to conspire with her in suppressing knowledge of the remark is where she crossed from sheer stupidity and racism into an even more damaging act.
What lesson was the class to take? That one should always hide inappropriate acts from one’s parents when an adult tells you to? What a grand lesson to provide to children who may one day encounter drug pushers, child molesters, bullies, and more aggressive racists
She should have been fired.