Teacher Suspended After Making White Students Bow To Black Students
A Florida teacher made a video that he thought would own Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Instead, the teacher earned himself a suspension and will likely lose his job.
Ethan Hooper, a sixth-grade teacher in Orlando, Florida, made a video on his personal TikTok account that was intended to criticize DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE Act” which mandates the removal of books from school libraries that promote critical race theory and sexually explicit material. Among the videos that were is a video that showed white students bowing to black students.
From The Blaze:
Ethan Hooper, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at Howard Middle School in Orlando, Florida, was placed on administrative leave after he posted a video to his personal TikTok account that showed white students fanning, feeding, and bowing down to their black classmates to commemorate black history month.
Hooper’s controversial video was one of several that mocked Florida Department of Education policies backed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.
In July, DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” Act was enacted, which forced school districts to remove books from school libraries and classrooms that espouse critical race theory or include sexually explicit material.
In one of Hooper’s satirical social media videos, the educator interrupts students reading harmless children’s books and mockingly claims that the titles are “problematic” and therefore banned.
“You reading Harry Potter?” Hooper asked one student.
“Witchcraft. Got to go,” the teacher claimed while removing the book from the child’s possession.
The parents in Hooper’s class had mixed feelings about this. Some parents were supportive of Hooper, but others were not.
One parent, CJ Johnson, told WKMG-TV the videos were an inappropriate offense.
“If one of the teachers was using my kid for political gain, that would upset me,” Johnson said. “What if I don’t believe in that, and, you know, that’s not what I’m teaching my kid.”
Other students and parents came to Hooper’s defense.
“We all agreed to it,” Jania Jackson, a student in Hooper’s class who appeared in one of the videos, told WESH-TV. “He didn’t really do anything wrong.”
Jackson’s mother, Shauna Thompson, told the outlet, “The fact that the students really devised the content specifically means that it’s something that matters to them. And to say that they were used as pawns is false.”
“The other example my daughter showed me was for Black History Month. They put some Black students on the chairs, and then the white students were fanning them and making them comfortable. You know, it’s awesome, it’s beautiful, it’s celebratory, and I loved it,” Thompson added.
The school superintendent has suspended Hooper for exploiting these kids and using them as political props. It is also very likely that Hooper will be fired.
If you want to see the videos, the Twitter account Libs of TikTok saved the videos and posted them on Twitter. Hooper has since deleted the videos from his own account.
Teachers can express themselves on their personal social media accounts on their own personal time. But there is a problem when kids are used as political props, which is what Hooper did. This is highly inappropriate and the school district is making the right decision beginning the process of firing him.
