While trying to teach students about the horrors of sharecropping and life for slaves post-Civil War, one Long Island teacher felt the need for the kids to add "funny" captions to pictures of these people, NBC reports.
The lesson caught the nation's attention earlier this week when some of the pictures surfaced on Facebook. A student's grandmother, Darlene McCurty, uploaded the pictures to her profile and claimed that eighth-grade students at John W. Dodd Middle School in Freeport, New York were asked to write funny captions so that the lesson didn't "bore" their teacher.
This led to captions like "Black girls work hard play hard," "Us black people need to get out," "Getting money," and "Black girl magic."
After the post was shared more than 1,000 times, the district's superintendent, Dr. Kishore Kuncham, released a statement regarding the incident. "I have been informed that during a recent eighth grade Reconstruction Era social studies lesson at J.W. Dodd Middle School, a faculty member is reported to have used directions to describe an assignment that were very upsetting to some students and families," Kuncham said. "The emotional and social wellness of our students is always our highest priority and we take any insensitive comments made by staff very seriously."
The superintendent also informed parents the district would launch an investigation into the incident. When it concluded, Kuncham realized the lesson was "poorly conceived and executed," but the teacher didn't target just one class of students. Still, the district empathized with the parents' complaints.
"The teacher instructed three separate classes of students to develop captions for photos of post-war sharecroppers," Kuncham said in his statement. "Aside from the fact that this is a poor lesson, it is an insensitive trivialization of a deeply painful era for African Americans in this country, and it is unacceptable."
To accompany Kuncham's statements, the unnamed instructor issued an apology to the students, family, and local community. The teacher assumed full responsibility for the insensitive lesson. "As a teacher and fellow member of this school community, it is my responsibility to exercise the highest degree of care and thought in all of my student and staff interactions," the teacher said. "I failed to do so last week, and I fully accept that I must work hard to rebuild trust from my students, colleagues and the community."
