A Dangerous Muslim Radical...

[Lord Jim]

Malala...

New Jersey Teacher Says She Was Fired After Showing A Video Of Malala

A New Jersey public high school teacher has filed a lawsuit against her former school and some of its administrators claiming that she was let go from her job for being a Muslim American of Palestinian descent.

Sireen Hashem said in the suit that she repeatedly felt targeted by the administration at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, N.J., for her religion and ethnicity.

Hashem said that while training for her teaching position in 2013, she sat in on the class of a non-Muslim colleague who showed her students a video about Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. That day, Hashem screened the same film for her class, according to the lawsuit.

Eleven days later, Hashem said, she was called into a meeting with her department supervisor, Robert Zywicki, who informed her that school Principal Susan Cooley had received complaints from parents about the video.

"Zywicki told [Hashem] that she could not teach current events in the same manner as her non-Arab, non-Palestinian and non-Muslim colleagues," the complaint said.

According to the lawsuit, a parent also complained several months later after Hashem assigned students a common standardized essay question that referenced Osama bin Laden.

Hashem says that Cooley told her that "she should not mention Islam or the Middle East in her class" and that she "should not bring her culture, life experience or background into the classroom." She also said in the lawsuit that she was later accused of anti-Semitism and was told that she "caused trouble since she was Palestinian."

In mid-April, Hashem was told that the school wouldn't be renewing her contract, the lawsuit says. She is asking the school to reinstate her and is seeking damages.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tea ... a6887d0085

[Scooter]

Some of this doesn't hang well together for me. She showed the Malala video while she was still in teacher training; if it was enough of an issue to prevent her contract from getting renewed two years later, why wouldn't it have prevented her from being hired in the first place once her training was done. The complaints from parents that led to her being told not to bring her culture into her teaching happened "a few month later" i.e. later in 2013 or early in 2014, so presuming she had been hired and was in her first year of teaching, why was the accumulation of these incidents not enough to refuse to renew her contract at the end of that school year, but were then dredged up to justify the refusal to renew a year later?

I have to wonder if there might have been other, more legitimate reasons for letting her go, and that if these allegations are in some measure true, she is trying to claim that they are the real reasons for refusing to renew her contract. Otherwise the timing is putting this in Judge Judy's category of "if it doesn't make sense, it isn't true."

[MajGenl.Meade]

@DTisourman says: "Malala? Malala? What cd be mre obvs? Mal = greek for bad. Ala - allah. Code for Allahabad. ISIS plans attack on India!"

[RayThom]

((FYI: The racial makeup at HCRHS is: White (85.2%), Hispanic (6.4%), Asian (5.5%).))

Obviously a case of Trump influenced, backdoor discrimination due to repressed societal racism. The christian, white privileged element became uncomfortable with Hashem's brand of personal identification. In America diversity is welcome as long as it's christian based diversity.

Knowing lawsuits might follow, the school's administrators attempted a "hail Mary pass" hoping it would fly under the radar. Unfortunately, not enough team members were there to grab the ball and run with it. And now the school, and the district, are stuck with a lawsuit to try and defend the indefensible. Good luck to that.

I'm confident Hashem will eventually prove her case even though she, herself, may develop her own biased principles in the process. However, whether she truly wins will depend on her finding gainful employment once it's all over. Sadly, she just branded herself with a scarlet letter.

Equality for all... what a concept.

[Fafhrd]

Christian based diversity, huh? So the Catholics are welcome, right? And no more black churches are going to be bombed and burned?

[rubato]

Hashem says that Cooley told her that "she should not mention Islam or the Middle East in her class" and that she "should not bring her culture, life experience or background into the classroom."

So they want a machine to do this not a person? Or is it a conformity thing, a teacher with the same culture, life experience, and background, as them is ok because then the kids will be exactly as ignorant as they are about the rest of the world?


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

Shocking. Life experience is what makes for a good teacher.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Not very nice at all. If true....