Two 13-year-old students, Zaria Daniel and Mea Thompson, charge that the substitute teacher in their eighth-grade social studies class uttered the N-word.
The kerfuffle occurred at Jay Stream Middle School in the unexceptional Chicago-area suburb of Carol Stream, Ill., Chicago Fox affiliate WFLD reports.
“She said, back then you guys would be considered (the N-word, plural) and we said well that’s not an appropriate term to use now, and she’s like well in history back then that’s what you’d be considered,” Thompson told the station. “I told her well we’re not in the past now, this is the present and I would not like to be called that.”
Daniel and Thompson are both black.
The unidentified teacher is a white woman in her sixties, according to WFLD.
The students say they were working a project involving the Cold War when the teacher approached them. The color of their skin came up, somehow, and the teacher identified the students — and two other students — as “African American.”
“All four of us that were sitting there got offended because none of us are from Africa. I’m Jamaican. So we said, ‘Can you please not call us that?” Thompson told NBC Chicago. “She continued to call us that and said, ‘It’s the politically correct term.’ Then she said, ‘Well, back then you guys would be considered the N-word.”
Thompson said she was pretty surprised.
“We were like, ‘What? Excuse me?'” she told the NBC affiliate. “She was like, ‘Well, back then that’s what African Americans were called.'”
Daniel said she was shocked and also saddened.
“I just want people to know how much it affected us and I don’t want this to happen to anybody else,” the second student added.
NBC Chicago reports that the teacher has since told Jay Stream Middle School officials the same basic story the students have told.
School officials indicated they won’t be asking the teacher back when the need for substitutes arises in the future.
Meanwhile, Thompson’s mother, Shayna Thompson, has filed a police report. She wants the teacher slapped with a disorderly conduct charge and, possibly, a hate crime.
“I’m angry,” the mad mom told NBC Chicago. “It’s a new world, and the people of the past that still hang onto hatred and bigotry don’t belong in this world anymore.”
While this incident may mark the first time a parent wants a substitute teacher charged with a hate crime, subs doing bizarre and ridiculous things are a frequent occurrence across America.
Just this month, for example, Symone Greene, a 22-year-old substitute English teacher at a Washington, D.C. charter school, allegedly provided oral sex to a 17-year-old male student on the first day of her teaching assignment, in her classroom, behind the teacher’s desk. Was it filmed on the boy’s mobile phone? You bet! And now there’s a $3 million lawsuit. (RELATED: Family Of 17-Year-Old Male Student Who Received Oral Sex From Teacher Now Wants $3 Million)
In June, Tiffany Leiseth, a 26-year-old long-term substitute teacher in rural Pennsylvania was arrested for having sex with two 18-year-old male students and giving them some beer inside her home while her husband was out of town on business. (RELATED: Hot English Teacher Victimizes Two 18-Year-Old Males By Banging Them, Giving Them Beer)
In February, a 72-year old substitute teacher at a public high school in suburban Connecticut proved that he’s still got it when he was busted for allegedly masturbating right there in a hallway. (RELATED: Substitute Teacher, 72, Arrested For Furiously Masturbating In High School Hallway)
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