Long Island Teacher Reportedly Asked Students to Provide Funny Captions for Images of Slavery

In a statement released by Freeport Public Schools authorities, the teacher apologizes for being “careless”:

“As a teacher and fellow member of this school community, it is my responsibility to exercise the highest degree of care and thought in all of my student and staff interactions. I failed to do so last week, and I fully accept that I must work hard to rebuild trust from my students, colleagues and the community.”

In the same statement, Freeport Public Schools Superintendent Kishore Kuncham acknowledges that the lesson was a bad one that did not teach anything outside the fact that teachers are sometimes completely ignorant of and insensitive to the subjects they are teaching:

“Let me be perfectly clear: Our investigation has determined that this lesson was poorly conceived and executed,” the statement read, in part. “Aside from the fact that this is a poor lesson, it is an insensitive trivialization of a deeply painful era for African Americans in this country, and it is unacceptable.”

A few parents and some students, however, are defending the teacher’s intentions. “She’s a good teacher. She didn’t mean it that way. Some people took offense to it and I know how she meant it,” one student told CNN-affiliate WCBS.

Other parents and students of J.W. Dodd, a school with a student population that is 66 percent Latinx and 25 percent black, rightfully would like some further explanation for how such a lesson ended up being assigned to eighth-graders in the first place.

“What would make you even say something like that in the first place? It’s just unthinkable,” one parent told WCBS. That’s a good question and deserves a much more thoughtful answer from both the assigning teacher and the school administration that allowed such an assignment on a lesson plan.