As state lawmakers consider a bill that would do more to protect teachers from threats, teachers in Trumbull say school administrators failed to back them when they were targeted by outsiders triggered by a Eighth Grade Social Studies assignment.
For six years, Carolyn Collins and Lynn Brown of Hillcrest Middle School have been teaching a class on American National Identity, with a focus on the struggle for freedom and equality.
They say it’s ironic that they chose to place a special concentration this year on “promoting civil discourse,” because while teaching the course, they wound up becoming the targets of decidedly uncivil behavior: An unknown number of adults online turned nasty based on their perceptions of a unit addressing the treatment of immigrant and marginalized communities in America.
Accused of indoctrinating students with anti-Trump ideology, the teachers received a stream of online threats that led them to be concerned for their personal safety, and for that of their family.
At first, the February assignment in question, they believed, was business as usual.
“We are, in every unit,” says Collins, “tying whatever we are learning to current examples and historical examples, to kind of track the history.”
So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Trump administration immigration policies, including ICE enforcement, came up in the Marginalized Communities unit.
But, without first asking the teachers for context, one Hillcrest School parent published to Facebook their concerns about one of the “success criteria” for an assignment listed in their child’s schoolwork, circling this passage as evidence of teacher indoctrination of students:
“I can identify similarities and differences between immigration enforcement in the U.S. today and the persecution of Jews in Germany in the 1930(s).”
The parent’s complaint was picked up by the online instigator known as “Libs of TikTok” on X (formerly known as Twitter). Threats to the teachers and the school followed.
The teachers insist the passage was taken out of context. They say it was not a demand for students to tie President Trump’s policies to the Holocaust, but part of an instruction to consider the parallels, or lack thereof, between Trump’s policies and many other historical examples.
“We made it really clear to students… that we weren’t comparing the actual Holocaust with what was happening,” says Brown, “and even the Holocaust educator (on a recording included in the lesson) said ‘we aren’t comparing this to a genocide.’ That’s not happening in the U.S. today.”
“I absolutely do not try to indoctrinate any of my students," adds Brown.
“We feel very strongly that students should make their decisions,” says Collins. “We provide them with the sources that they can evaluate and determine whether they’re reliable or not, and then they make a decision. We don’t tell them what to think.”
The threats, online and via e-mail, came steadily in February.
“It got really ugly. I got some really nasty emails,” says Brown, explaining that she was scared in a way she hadn’t been before. “There were fellow teachers coming up to me, offering me a place to stay and my family a place to stay because some of the things they were seeing were so alarming that they were fearful for our safety.”
“I got an email saying that…they should drag me out of the building and publicly humiliate me, and calling me a ‘demon.’ No one was really letting us get the context out there, so (the situation) just unraveled.”
Collins says the assignment had been pre-approved, and complied with the curriculum and state guidelines.
But, in an e-mail to families dated Feb. 19, Hillcrest Principal Bryan Rickert condemned it, writing,
“This week, both Hillcrest administration and the Superintendent became aware that an 8th-grade social studies lesson included a success criterion comparing current U.S. immigration enforcement to the persecution of Jews in 1930s Germany. This comparison is not part of the district’s curriculum and is not an appropriate way to support student learning.”
He ordered the comparison removed from the lesson.
Neither Rickert nor Trumbull Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Martin Semmel responded to WTIC’s request for comment.
Collins is perplexed that school administrators seemed to side with the online protestors, while never publicly denouncing the threats faced by their own staff members.
“Kind of hanging over us is this concern that someone is gonna take an issue with something out of context,” says Collins, “and this is going to happen again and we won’t be supported by the district.”
“What’s left now is the perception that we’ve done something wrong that undermines our credibility completely."
The leader of the state’s major teachers’ union, Connecticut Education Association (CEA) President Kate Dias, says students should be left to draw their own conclusions:
“They’re on their social media. They’re watching history unfold in front of them. And they’re making the connection. And the teachers are saying to them, ‘What do the policies of the United States look like?’ They took a very intentionally balanced approach, including the White House publications and multiple media approaches… and asked the kids to look at these things themselves, because that’s we kind of teach kids to become consumers and decisive and to be able to be good thinkers.”
“It’s a shame that the administration really failed to do their due diligence, that they just reacted to an upset parent and threw a letter out into the community and created this, sort of, turmoil that is unnecessary when in fact, probably a conversation, a sit-down, maybe you bring the unhappy parent in and have them talk to the teachers. These are really logical ways to manage a situation, and, instead, we just do ‘fuel on the fire.’”
The CEA is pursuing a bill in the state legislature that would further protect teachers from outside threats. It would exempt teachers’ (and other public employees’) home addresses from Freedom of Information requests.
Unit on Marginalized Communities triggered hate
Unit on Marginalized Communities triggered hate
