I’m a Teacher Who Blew the Whistle on CRT in Schools, Suffered Retaliation, but Now I’ve Prevailed

On July 13, 2021, I blew the whistle at Legal Insurrection on how a new Critical Race curriculum in the Providence, Rhode Island, middle school where I taught was creating racial hostility, turning students and staff against me because I was white, and turning students against their country.

My students, almost all of whom were minority, started calling me “America” because I was white — You are America, they would say, we are not. How could I keep silent seeing what the Critical Race curriculum was doing to the students and our society?

{snip}

What followed was a year of retaliation, harassment, intimidation, and involuntary transfer to another school where there was no teaching position for me. I was forced to spend a year alone in a windowless empty school basement resource room, as students and staff passed by and gawked at me like I was some strange caged zoo animal, audibly mumbling how I was that ‘racist’ teacher they had been warned about.

{snip} I am emerging from the basement victorious, with a full-time regular classroom assignment. I am unbowed, and more committed to fighting the CRT scourge than ever before.

{snip}

On October 18, 2021, I was involuntarily transferred from my permanent position as a teacher at Esek Hopkins School in Providence Rhode Island, to Classical High School. This transparently punitive action seemed retaliatory for me sounding the alarm on critical race theory in my school.

There was no job slot for me at Classical High. The district sent me someplace that didn’t want me or ask for me. With no classroom assignment, and without any formal or disciplinary reason, I was exiled to the Classical High basement for 9 months.

{snip}

Without any explanation or justification, I was left down there to be viewed and on display.  It was clear after a short time that students and faculty had been coached to believe I was some sort of villain.  {snip}

Most heartbreaking for me was when I was approached by two students who were told complete lies about character, specifically, that I was a racist and homophobe. Apparantly, they were told by faculty members that I was a homophobic white supremacist.

{snip}

I filed grievance after grievance not willing to let the school department win. Blowing the whistle on this racialized, anti-American and most  harmful curriculum was and still is an important story to tell. Over the past two years, I have seen a disturbing and frightening radicalization of the school curriculum, in which race became the central focus, with heavy emphasis on oppressor-oppressed narratives. The result was increased racial tension in school, particularly directed against me as a “white” teacher both from students and other teachers.

{snip}The Providence School District management have essentially replaced the study of American history with a mutated version that is nothing more than woke, racist propaganda intended to inject the politics of “white supremacy” and to apply the canard of systemic racism to the past, airbrushing white historical figures from factual American history and changing their race to Black or Asian.

{snip}

I have received notification that coming this fall, I will have a permanent classroom assignment at Classical High. {snip}

{snip}