A 15-year-old in South Carolina is suing her school district for violating her civil rights after a teacher assaulted her in the hallway for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Marissa Barnwell, a Black honor roll student at River Bluff High School, was walking to her classroom on November 29, 2022 — her birthday — when a teacher, Nicole Livingston, grabbed her and held her against a wall while the pledge was being recited.
Livingston, whom Barnwell does not have a class with, demanded that Barnwell stop walking and acknowledge the pledge, according to the lawsuit, which lists the teacher and the state Department of Education as co-defendants. Livingston then sent Barnwell to the principal’s office to face further discipline.
Although other students were walking in the hallway and not reciting the pledge, Barnwell was the only student targeted, the lawsuit notes. Barnwell was the only Black student in the hallway, and the school is predominately white.
After discussing the situation with Barnwell, the principal decided against punishing her and agreed to watch security camera footage of the attack. Barnwell’s mother later called the school, in tears, after learning that her daughter had been targeted.
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Imagine having such poor control over your emotions as an adult that you’d yell at a child in anger. Fucking embarrassing.
It’s never acceptable and should get you banned from ever working with children in the future, or maybe you need to take anger management classes and have a psychiatrist okay you.
Tbf they were just like “stand up!” in a commanding voice, idk if the way I worded it made it sound like they were screaming insults at me but it definitely made me feel uncomfortable with sitting from then on
Also, my friend in another one my classes, who was black, wouldn’t stand and the teacher was like “you wanna be Colin Kaepernick, go ahead, doesn’t change the fact America is the most racially inclusive country”
I know I replied to you already but I think your position that “if you yell once, you should be banned forever” is a bit extreme. There’s a lot of circumstances that go into things and tbh teachers are still humans with human limits. Like I described my situation in the other post but idk have you ever worked with kids? Particularly large groups of them? I only remember losing my temper on one induvial child once, and I handled that by apologizing after like I described in my other post (the kid did not give a single fuck btw, its actually a cute story but I wont get into it), but I had to raise my voice at the group at a whole to like coral them pretty frequently, especially once the stress of the new boss came in.
I agree that it should be avoided but there’s issues of like, management and shit that can cause shit to get out of control in ways I dont think you’d understand unless you’ve worked with kids.
Yeah you’re definitely right, I was being too extreme. Apologies. But it should be taken as a serious issue when it happens, not just accepted as an everyday occurrence.
