LAKEWOOD, Colorado – Several parents are disgusted with a lesson in Black History Month that they say has been treated inappropriately.
The class, in a talented and talented 8th grade social studies class at Creighton Middle School, focused on slavery.
“It made me sick,” said one student. “I felt a knot in my stomach.”
This student, who asked to be called Kaye, said the instructor told the class that class was a serious matter. But Kaye said that some students did not take it seriously.
“One was joking that slaves could not get up to go to the bathroom and had to urinate on themselves,” explained Kaye during her forced trip across the Atlantic.
“He said it was cool and was fixed in the chat,” she said, adding that the student continued: “Give them a TV and they’ll be fine.”
“That was very inappropriate,” said Kaye.
Kaye said the instructor allowed students to joke about it and laughed alone at the time.
“It’s never normal to make jokes or laugh when talking about slavery,” said Kaye.
Kaye and a colleague, both black students, wrote a note to the professor expressing his concerns.
They described how she made the students lie on the ground to simulate crossing the Atlantic and then made them clean the cotton so that they could empathize with what the slaves were going through.
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“That ‘covered in sugar’ is a very serious and horrifying event in American history,” said Kaye.
“She used the phrase ‘my little cotton pickers’, it’s time to stop what they’re doing and move on with the lesson,” added Kaye.
“The lesson was handled without tact,” said Kaye’s mother, Amanda. “My daughter said it was disgusting.”
Amanda said there is a lot of diversity at Creighton Middle School, “but the gifted and talented program is less diverse.”
She shared her daughter’s letter with a close friend, Rebecca Dutcher, who is like an aunt to Kaye.
“I was horrified, but I didn’t know what to do about it,” said Dutcher.
She believes that the instructor should have treated the slavery class as seriously as a class that deals with the Holocaust.
“I can’t see a teacher doing a simulation of the train cars or saying ‘my little campers’ in reference to a concentration camp,” she said.
Dutcher shared Kaye’s note with an African-American friend who posted it on Facebook, where he got responses from all divisions in the district.
“It makes me wonder if she taught that lesson to someone of color,” said friend Danette Hollowell. “The more I thought about it, the more upset I was, because the [two girls] they were acting more mature than the teacher. ”
The teacher responded to the note from Kaye and her friend, saying that “I felt deeply that it hurt your feelings, because that was NEVER my intention”.
She added that she reads from Stamped from the start and White Fragility to make sure you try to develop your empathy as a white person, using your privilege to help black people.
She also said that she corrected the students’ offensive behavior by saying “this was not supposed to be funny” several times and asked if the girls hadn’t heard her.
“Sometimes we only hear what we want to hear, but then again, if I offended him, I am deeply sorry,” she wrote.
Kaye said the instructor “handpicked” what to answer.
She said the teacher did not address the comment “my little cotton pickers”.
She apologized for how she made us feel and not for her behavior, “said Kaye.
Denver7 contacted the Jeffco Public Schools to comment on the student’s concerns, but has not yet received a response.
Kaye said she wants the teacher to change the way she conducts the class, so that other students don’t have to experience what she and her friend have been through.
Dutcher said, “If anyone calls your attention to that, in my opinion, the correct answer would be … let’s find out how to fix it.”