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Offensive Student Project Raises Concerns In Buffalo

via Clear Creek Facebook

A substitute teacher in Johnson County School District claims administrators at Buffalo’s Clear Creek Middle School mishandled an offensive student project.

According to a news release written by teacher John Egan and published on social media this week, the 7th grade social studies project was a cereal box decorated with a picture of a stereotyped Mexican man with a cardboard knife sticking into him. The box was captioned “Can you pin the knife in the Mexican?”

Egan says the lesson plan called for student presentations, so he told the school principal he would not allow the disturbing project to be presented. Egan claims the principal ordered him to follow the lesson plan anyway.

“It was the response of administrators that was unacceptable and, likely, illegal,” Egan wrote. “Not only did they permit an intimidating message of genocide to remain in the classroom, they also attempted to silence the person who challenged it.”

But Principal Darren Schmidt disagrees with Egan’s account. He claims he’d seen the project more than a week prior, had already deemed it inappropriate, and had already called the parents of the students who created the project. 

“We used it as a learning opportunity for the kids,” says Schmidt. “The teacher addressed it. The kids never presented that. It was behind the teacher’s desk. John Egan saw it. And I agreed with him. I said, ‘I agree, this is inappropriate, and that’s why it was addressed a week and a half ago when it was brought in.’”

Schmidt says the students were studying the Mexican-American War.

The incident happened two months ago, but Egan brought his concerns to the school board this week.

Johnson County School District Superintendent Gerry Chase says the project should never have returned to the classroom, where students could have seen it.

“In hindsight, there could have been more sensitivity to the image, and really the substitute teacher should have never come across that,” says Chase. “And that’s just something that you learn, through experiences, and we’ll know that going forward.”

Chase says the offensive project was never going to be presented. He also says he’d like to work with Egan to improve cultural awareness in his district.

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