Teacher should be commended

The Fairbanks teacher who was put on leave because of guidance she gave her students should have been commended instead.

The teacher, Connie Gardner, was giving her students advice for dealing with a difficult situation, advice that could keep them alive. She was advising them on how to deal with a volatile situation in which actions can be misinterpreted and a person could get killed.

Unfortunately a child’s parent who was in the room felt the teacher was being racially insensitive. It’s easy to see how someone could come to that conclusion since the teacher was trying to make her students understand how others might interpret their actions.

The Lathrop High School special education teacher was giving her students advice on how to avoid getting into a situation like the one that cost George Floyd his life last year in Minneapolis. Floyd struggled with a police officer after a store clerk accused him of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. The officer held his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes and the man suffocated.

Teacher Gardner said Floyd would still be alive if he hadn’t fought the officer, who probably thought the 46-year-old-man’s actions, especially his fighting, suggested he might be a danger to others. The assumption was reasonable based on the situation even if it wasn’t accurate.

Gardner told her students what she would have done to avoid a confrontation and having a police officer wrongly assume she was going to misbehave.

“I’m an old white lady,” she said, “and if the cops come up to me and said, ‘Ma’am, put your hands behind your back, you’re going to jail, I’m putting my hands behind my back.”

Gardner told her students that a police officer might also make an incorrect assumption about a person because of the way they were dressed, making it especially important to behave appropriately.

“Look at how you guys are dressed,” she said. “You’re dressed nicely. You don’t look like thugs. You don’t have your pants down around your knees.”

The parent in the room, a woman of color, took offense at the suggestion that the way the youngsters dressed might suggest something about their character. That is certainly understandable but it seems important that young people be aware that their actions and the way they dress can be misinterpreted. And that can put them in danger.

The world is a dangerous place — and it can be made more or less dangerous by the things we say and do. And even by the way we dress. Explaining that to children in a way they can understand is difficult and does run the risk that a parent in the room will be offended and go ballistic.

But that doesn’t mean teachers shouldn’t attempt to educate their students about the world around them and the risks that they face. It is very important that they understand those things as best they can.

Teacher Connie Gardner was placed on paid administrative leave. She should be reinstated and encouraged to keep up the good work.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of six books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.