Elementary teacher suspended for asking white student ‘cops’ to shoot black ‘Michael Browns’
A sixth-grade teacher at Brantley Elementary in Selma, Alabama has been placed on administrative leave after a parent reported that students were asked to research and reenact the Michael Brown shooting in class, The Selma Times-Journal reports.
The administration became aware of the assignment after Jessica Lynn Baughn posted about it on Facebook. “His teacher made them reenact the two current shooting of the young black males,” she wrote. “The white students had to play the police officer. She even has them get on the internet and research how many times the young man was shot where he was shot at.”
“That is absurd to me then you turn around and make them reenact every bit of it including the shooting,” she continued. “Then sit in class and tells them our black children can not walk in their own neighborhood without white people shooting them and she hated to sound racist but whatever.”
Baughn then accused the teacher of being racist, and of “teaching these children to hate one another when we’re supposed to be teaching them to love one another.”
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/21/elementary-teacher-suspended-for-asking-white-student-cops-to-shoot-black-michael-browns/
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details, imo, like the teacher's response. I in no way condone what took place in Ferguson, nor in the escape from justice afforded thus far to the killer Wilson. It's a sticky wicket and I really don't know what teachers of elementary-school kids should be saying to students who ask about the incident. I just know that children have a natural curiosity and very little escapes their attention, whether we wish it or no.
I'm not going to lapse into vapid 'liberal-ese' about a 'teachable moment'. But I think our children deserve a frank and age-appropriate discussion of these events if we're ever going to heal from them.
It sounds as though the school district, in placing the teacher on paid administrative leave, is doing its best to preserve the teacher's due process rights while responding to the parents' concern. (I never thought I'd be defending a big school bureacuracy, so there you have it. 
Just out of curiosity, what do you think elementary-age children should be told about this (if anything)? I have ZERO experience teaching that age cohort, so I think I should probably defer to those with more expertise in the field. I'm unsure if 'academic freedom' has much standing in public-school instruction, but I'd be curious to hear what the experts have to say on that also.
who live in Auburn and I visited them once there quite some time ago. Still remember stopping in at a waffle house on the way there from Atlanta for some breakfast and the waitress asking me if I wanted some 'greee-yits' with my waffles. I didn't know WTF she was asking me but, fortunately, my Aunt (transplanted Yankee) was with me and was able to translate There's some interesting history in the immediate vicinity, like Plains, GA (home of President Carter) and Andersonville (site of the main Confederate prison camp).
But i was only there for about a week, so I really appreciate your local insights.
I guess, perhaps, we may have to wait and see. 