A white teacher at a multiracial elementary school in San Diego was fired for using the N-word while reciting an iconic Harlem Renaissance poem about the black writer Countee Cullen’s experience of racism as a child.
Amy Glancey, a fourth-grade teacher at High Tech Elementary School in Point Loma, read aloud the racial insult from the famous poem Incident, which caused two upset students to leave the classroom while others complained to the school’s dean.
“I can’t believe you did that!” Said a student before leaving the room with another insane peer, Glance said Los Angeles Times columnist Sandy Banks.
‘Miss. Glancy, you don’t understand how hard it is to hear that word, “said a Glancy student an hour before complaining to the dean.
Glancy, who is in her first year teaching at High Tech Elementary School, told Banks that she decided not to censor the poem “to demonstrate that the poet’s words can evoke emotion – in this case anger and sadness.” .
Amy Glancy, a white elementary school teacher in San Diego, was fired for using the word N while reciting the famous Harlem Renaissance poem “Incident.” She is pictured above with a group of her students
When she read the racial slander, two students stormed the classroom and others reported it to the school’s dean. Count Cullen’s “Incident,” published in 1925, describes his experience of racism as a child.
She said she did not expect to be at the center of a debate over whether young children should be exposed to harmful language or other sensitive material in an educational setting.
Earl Cullen’s “Incident,” published in 1925, describes a narrator who visits Baltimore at the age of eight to see a “Balitmore” boy stick out his tongue and call the narrator an N-word.
The narrator writes about the impact of the interaction and how, even though he spent seven months in the city, this is the memory that stands out the most.
“On Tuesday, a High Tech Elementary teacher read a poem to students that included language that was upsetting to some students. We take these issues very seriously, “said High Tech spokesman Anthony Milican San Diego Union Tribune in a statement
An Incident by Count Cullen
Once, while driving in old Baltimore, full of hearts, full of heads, I saw a Baltimore fortress looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very young, And he was not older, And so I smiled, but he stretched out his tongue and shouted at me: “H ****”.
I saw all of Baltimore from May to December; Of all the things that happened there, that’s all I remember.
Milican confirmed that Glance was on administrative leave after the incident and said the school was “committed to ensuring that the school is a safe place for all our students,” Milican added.
After seeing the reactions of his students, Glancy apologized in an email to parents seen by the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“I learned a great lesson today as I tried to teach your students the mood and tone of poetry,” she wrote.
“The lesson was intended to show that the poet’s words can evoke emotion – in this case anger and sadness. “Unfortunately, this caused some very big emotions for the students, which I did not expect,” she wrote.
A high-tech elementary school in the United School District of San Diego is listed with 64% of minorities enrolled in american news – 42.2% are Hispanic / Latino, 36% are white, 7.2% are Asian / Asia Pacific, 6.7% are black or African American, 5.7% are of mixed ethnicity and 2.1% are Indians.
Michael Dominguez, chairman of the San Diego Unified School’s Ethnic Studies Committee, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that he advises anyone who is not black not to use the word N, even if it is in an educational context.
“Words matter to everyone … without context, without preparation, without framing and thinking, seeing one of these words or hearing one of these words pop up in the context of literature can be really triggering because it triggers this whole historical a relationship of trauma, frustration and feelings about something else, “Dominguez said.
“It requires training, it requires skills and support, and we need to give our teachers more than that, not on a superficial level,” he said.
Francine Maxwell, chair of the San Diego-based Black Men and Women United, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that she had received calls from families at the High Tech Elementary School about the incident.
“We need to acknowledge the trauma that has been caused and what we can do to get through it and start treatment,” she told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Given that this is the month of black history and things are getting worse, we see this as an opportunity to start a dialogue that has not taken place.”
Count Cullen, born Count Leroy Porter, moved to the pastor of the largest congregation in Haarlem, the Rev. Frederick A. Cullen of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Salem, beginning in 1918 after his paternal grandmother and guardian died.
He began his poetic career at New York University before pursuing his master’s degree at Harvard University, where he published his first volume of poetry, Color, according to his biography at the Poetry Foundation.
Cullen received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write poetry in France in 1928 and married Nina Yoland Dubois, the daughter of the famous civil rights activist WEB DuBois. Cullen was discreetly bisexual and left his marriage by writing a letter in which he confessed his love for his wife’s men.
He had a series of homosexual relationships before marrying Ida May Robertson in 1940, with whom he remained until his death in 1946.
The high school, in the United School District of San Diego, is listed as a 64% minority by US News
The charter school left Glance on administrative leave after the incident, saying the school was “committed to making sure the school is a safe place for all our students.”
Glance said she had decided not to censor the poem, “to demonstrate that the poet’s words can evoke emotion – in this case anger and sadness.”
Glance told Los Angeles Times columnist Sandy Banks that he wanted to “raise the voice of black poets” and chose Incident because of his focus on US history “from the point of view of non-whites.”
She added that after the students confronted her in an hour, she said she shared “the experience of the poet and his language and it is not my job to censor this.”
Glance told Banks that he was sorry to say the word out loud.
“I’m trying to get an education. I want to do better, “she told the writer.
“What I struggle most is that I am quite well educated and literate and I read a lot of opinions that are different from mine. I’m looking for information and I still had no idea. That’s what scares me, “she added.
Glance’s reaction comes amid an escalating debate on the censorship of literature and what is appropriate and necessary for young children to learn.
Last month, a Tennessee school board voted unanimously to remove Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about Holocaust survivors from the eighth grade curriculum, citing a drawing of a naked woman, eight swear words and her “unwise or healthy” content.
The McMinn County Education Council voted 10-0 to remove Art Spiegelman’s Maus from the curriculum on Jan. 10, although teachers say the graphic novel is an “anchor text” in eighth-grade English arts education. and at the center of a month-long Holocaust study.