A North Carolina teacher had his middle school students “improve” a letter he received claiming he has low testosterone for opposing arming educators, according to a Thursday report.
Language arts teacher Justin Parmenter gave the assignment to his seventh-grade class at Waddell Language Academy in Charlotte, N.C., reported The Washington Post.
Parmenter wrote an op-ed in The Charlotte Observer arguing against President Donald Trump and several other lawmakers’ notion of arming teachers after the Parkland, Fla., massacre. The teacher called the proposal “dangerous” and recommended instead boosting funding to school counseling and psychology programs. He included his email in the op-ed so that readers could contact him with their opinions.
“One of the responses I received suggested the real reason I was uncomfortable with the idea of armed teachers was that I lacked testosterone and said I needed to spend more time lifting weights,” said Parmenter, according to WaPo. “This message relied heavily on personal insults, offered very little in terms of meaningful support for the author’s views and made no effort to understand my position.”
Today my students read an insulting email I received in response to an op-ed against arming teachers and came up with suggestions on how to improve it. They suggested avoiding insults & taking a fact-based approach. Double win for writing instruction and #CivilDiscourse. #nced pic.twitter.com/ZwwAbyUlwj
— Justin Parmenter (@JustinParmenter) March 1, 2018
The teacher asked his class to “offer suggestions on how [the letter] could be improved.”
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The individual who wrote Parmenter could have “been a little more respectful,” “more neutral,” “use[d] better spelling,” “take[n] a fact-based approach,” and “refrain[ed] from name-calling,” according to the seventh-grade students.
Today my students read an insulting email I received in response to an op-ed against arming teachers and came up with suggestions on how to improve it. They suggested avoiding insults & taking a fact-based approach. Double win for writing instruction and #CivilDiscourse. #nced pic.twitter.com/ZwwAbyUlwj
— Justin Parmenter (@JustinParmenter) March 1, 2018
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