Another day, another racist “teacher” –this one in Minnesota–shows us why they should be kept as far away as possible from Black students — or any students for that matter.
Meet Steven Dwight Williams.
Williams was a substitute teacher who taught four classes of 10th and 12th-grade English students at Woodbury High School in Minnesota. As of Monday, he is no longer in that role, having been banned from teaching at that school –and any other in the district. Here’s what happened. He decided that in order to prove to his students that police brutality was just a myth, he’d go ahead and reenact the murder of George Floyd by hemming students to the ground, apparently an affinity of his.
Oh, and did I mention Williams is a cop?
From the New York Times:
“This reported behavior is reprehensible,” the principal of Woodbury High School, Sarah Sorenson-Wagner, said in the email message. “I am embarrassed, and I am sorry this happened to our students.”
The substitute teacher, who told students he had been a police officer, told “sexist jokes” and made “racially harmful comments”; gave students “specific names of people he arrested”; and “put a student on the ground in front of the class” in an effort to re-enact the murder of George Floyd, the school said. He also said that “police brutality isn’t real,” according to the school.
The Times further noted that “although the teacher spoke in detail about his police work, he had never served as a police officer in the state of Minnesota.” The Woodbury Police Department confirmed that in a statement Wednesday, adding that he had been employed by the Prescott Police Department in Wisconsin. Williams has apparently been a patrol officer there for the past two years but also has a years-long working in law enforcement both in Wisconsin and Montana.
So, while Williams was never a Woodbury police officer — and clearly should never have been a police officer anywhere — the Woodbury Police Department did mention in its statement that it was “disturbed by the preliminary information of what occurred” regarding the Floyd reenactment and that the department is working closely with the school district to “investigate this incident to the fullest extent while showing compassion to the students impacted.”
More from the Times:
A photo posted publicly on Facebook by a woman who said she was the parent of a Woodbury High School student shows an adult male squatting with one knee on the body of a male student.
The student is lying face down on a tile floor with his arms outstretched and his face turned away from the camera. The man, whose face is not visible, is wearing a lanyard with a name tag or credentials.
The parent said her child had sent the photo to her following the episode.
In the school’s letter, officials said they were reporting the matter to the Minnesota Department of Education and the state’s educator licensing board. They said that the teacher had been sent to the school by a substitute staffing service and that he had been barred from “stepping foot on any district property” in the South Washington County School District. The superintendent also signed the school’s letter.
Seriously, how did this man end up with two government jobs that he never should have had?
Again, imagine teaching impressionable young minds that “police brutality isn’t real” and, during the same lesson, reenacting arguably the most high-profile police brutality case since Rodney King, and one that resulted in a Black man’s death and a police officer’s murder conviction and life sentence.
I mean — he had to be a cop, didn’t he?
SEE ALSO:
Black Students Perform Better With HBCU-Educated Teachers, Study Says
Source: NewsOne