[Mpls] Two Mpls Teachers suspended after humiliating incident

[Shawn Lewis]

As a graduate of the Mpls Public Schools system who also attended
Susan B. Anthony Middle School, I find the actions by these two
teachers abhorred!

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Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Humiliation by teachers may leave lasting scars
by Lauretta Dawolo 

The Minneapolis Public Schools Board of Education has 
finally taken action in the case of Jordan Harper. 
On June 3rd, Harper, who at the time was in eighth grade 
at Susan B. Anthony Middle School, was humiliated in front 
of his peers as well as faculty and staff members. 
Teachers ordered him to crawl up and down a school hallway. 
The humiliating incident that has had a major impact on 
Jordan and his family. It has taken a significant amount of 
time for the Harper family to persuade school officials to 
pay attention to their son’s case. It wasn’t until July 13th 
that a decision to take disciplinary action was made. 
The School Board gave the perpetrator teachers, 
Jennifer Hansen and Theresa Agerter, 10-day suspensions 
and appointed them to take special harassment and 
sensitivity training.

The Harper family and other community members are 
not satisfied with the rather modest punishment. 
“I am appalled. These teachers should not be teaching at all,” 
said Francine Chakolis, President of the Minnesota chapter 
of the National Association of Black School Educators (NABSE). 
“The school system needs to find a way to monitor 
the teachers. All we hear about is the childrens’ behavior, 
especially Black children,” she said.

Jordan Harper is an exception. This ambitious young man 
who was top of his class and who was a proven leader and 
peer-mediator at his school, gets good grades and does not 
have a history of behavioral problems. Jordan was the 
keynote speaker at his graduation ceremony. At the ceremony 
he gathered close to nine different awards for academic excellence, 
service, and leadership just to name a few. According to the 
Star Tribune (June 22nd), “Harper has had good relations with 
the two accused teachers. In fact, one of them nominated 
him for the presidential academic achievement award, 
one of several citations he received upon graduating 
from Anthony.”

On June 3rd, Jordan was working on his final paper in 
advisory class, which is a class that usually allows school 
time for students to complete assignments, address problems 
with their teachers, or socialize with their peers. 
In thinking about his mother’s pleas to complete his 
course work in a timely manner in preparation for graduation,
he was in class pushing himself to put the finishing touches 
on his final paper, he said.

Unexpectedly, the advisory class instructor, Jennifer Hansen said,
 “You can’t work on that [paper] in my class or I’ll rip it up.” 
The student went down to the U.S. History classroom to work on 
his paper as the assignment was for this class anyway. 
The U.S. History instructor, Theresa Agerter, received a 
call soon after Jordan entered the classroom. The student 
and his mother, Pamela Harper, are still uncertain as to 
who was on the other end, but they speculate that it could 
have been Hansen. The student witnessed laughing and snickering 
by Agerter while she was on the phone. Soon thereafter, 
the “crawling game” began. Agerter got off of the phone, 
jokingly telling the student, “You can’t work on your paper 
here, you’ll have to go back to the advisory class. 
But you’ll have to crawl and if you don’t, I’ll tear up 
your paper.” At first the student pretended to crawl, 
but then he knew his teachers were serious as they permitted 
other students to watch and held stern expressions on their faces.

The first person that came to the student’s rescue happened to 
be the student’s math teacher (an African American male), 
who stopped the display because he did not think it was funny. 
“He said when he saw Jordan’s face, he knew something was wrong,” 
said Pamela Harper, Jordan’s mother. She said he then reported 
the incident to the Assistant Principal, who told him to bring 
the matter up at the teachers‚ [team] meeting. The math instructor 
confronted both responsible teachers and they apologized. 
But the apology wasn’t heard loud enough. The eighth grader, 
the witnesses in the hallway, or his mother did not hear it.

http://www.insightnews.com/articles.asp?mode=display&articleID=1455

Shawn Lewis, Field Neighborhood


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