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Middle school teacher suspended for Obama comment

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jrknothead
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03 Oct 2008, 9:16 pm

Middle school teacher suspended for Obama comment

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MARIANNA - A Florida middle school teacher has been suspended after students said he used a racial epithet directed at presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Seventh-grade social studies teacher Greg Howard reportedly wrote the word CHANGE as an acronym on the board and wrote an expletive with the letter 'N.'

The phrase he wrote has alternately be reported as "Can You Help A (N-Word) Get Elected" and "Come Help A (N-Word) Get Elected."

The incident happened last Friday at Marianna Middle School.

The Jackson County School Board said Thursday that Howard has been suspended without pay for 10 days and will be transferred to the Jackson County Adult Education program. He is also required to submit a letter of apology to his students and attend diversity and sensitivity training.

Marianna is near Florida's border both with Alabama and Georgia.

A message left for a Greg Howard in Marianna, Fla., was not immediately returned.



:lol: :lol: :lol:



philosopherBoi
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03 Oct 2008, 11:39 pm

This is why we need change, because people like this teacher should not be around kids corrupting their innocence.


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ShadesOfMe
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04 Oct 2008, 12:19 am

Ugh. I saw this on the news while at the bank. It really annoyed me. This teacher is a real idiot if he thought he could get away with saying something so racist. I don't care if he doesn't want the guy to be president(Neither do I, and i don't McCain either) but he has NO right to be racist.



Roxas_XIII
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04 Oct 2008, 9:00 am

Was this teacher black? I could really see this happening if a white person said that, but from what I overhear from the African-American population at my high school, "n*****" seems to be the same as saying "dude" or "man", as long as it is used between two or more black people with no white people involved. It's still not something you would want to say in public, but I don't see why the school would think it was racist if it was said by the a person of the target race.

Still, I have been wrong before...


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Macbeth
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04 Oct 2008, 11:54 am

It amuses me that a man can be suspended from an American school for the use of a word, but there are schools variously reported to duct tape students to chairs, handcuff them and force them to fight, allow the rape of other students..apparently without censure.

Way to go with the priorities. So he used the N-bomb. So f*****g what. There's a whole race of people who insist on using it all the time, apparently as punctuation. There are much more important things to be worrying about where teachers are involved.


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DW_a_mom
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04 Oct 2008, 12:03 pm

Macbeth wrote:
It amuses me that a man can be suspended from an American school for the use of a word, but there are schools variously reported to duct tape students to chairs, handcuff them and force them to fight, allow the rape of other students..apparently without censure.

Way to go with the priorities. So he used the N-bomb. So f***ing what. There's a whole race of people who insist on using it all the time, apparently as punctuation. There are much more important things to be worrying about where teachers are involved.


Apples and oranges. Those schools are under investigation, as well, but the programs are different, the goals are different, the districts are different. Each school district develops it's own standards and guidelines. "Local control." Things can vary a lot across this very vast and independently minded nation.

The issue with the teacher no doubt goes beyond use of a word. It is what the word expresses, and goes to the core of if the teacher can be fair to a student group that most surely is diverse. Most of our classrooms face a huge challenge of teaching across ethnic, economic, ability and belief lines.


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