Posted on 06/25/2015 9:32:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A third-grade teacher and an assistant principal at a North Carolina elementary school have resigned after facing strong backlash over the teacher's decision to read a book about two gay princes falling in love and getting married aloud to his class without first seeking parental consent.
In April, Omar Currie read the book King & King, a tale about two princes who get married, to his third grade class at Efland-Cheeks Elementary School after one of his students told him about how he was insulted by other kids in the class who called him gay.
Currie told The Associated Press that he felt inclined to read the book in order to teach his students about tolerance and acceptance of people's differences.
The 25-year-old Currie, who is openly gay, borrowed a copy of the book from the school's assistant principal, Meg Goodhand, and admits that he did not think about how the parents would react after he read the book to their children.
But once parents found out that Currie read the book without notifying them first, three different families filed complaints before the school year concluded.
"When I read the story, the reaction of parents didn't come into my mind," Currie said. "In that moment, it just seemed natural to me to read the book and have a conversation about treating people with respect. My focus then was on the child, and helping the child."
Due to the outrage among the parents, Currie and Goodhand felt compelled to issue their resignations last week. And Currie said he felt he could no longer teach at a school located in the socially conservative church community of Efland.
"I'm resigning because when me and my partner sat down and talked about it we felt I wasn't going to have the support I needed to move forward at Efland," Currie added. "It's very disappointing."
Just hours after reading the book to his students, Currie said he was told by the school's principal that he would need to meet with her the next morning, as three families filed complaints with a school review committee.
Despite the fact that the review committee upheld his right to use the book in class, the school's principal instituted a new policy that requires teachers to submit an advanced list of all the books they plan to use in class for the parents to review.
Currie told The Herald Sun that he detested the policy because he feels it gives parents the ability to opt out of teaching their kids about important topics, such as LGBT issues.
He also said the policy would limit the books he could read to his class, saying that "great teachers pull text because it's right for the moment."
"I think that [policy is] very dangerous for a school system to get behind and support," Currie contended.
However, the parents that filed the complaint against Currie said he had no right to teach their third-grade children about homosexuality without them first being informed or given the opportunity to object.
Brandy Davis, who is the mother of two children enrolled at the school and was among the parents that complained about the book, told the News Observer that her children didn't even know what homosexuality was until the book was read in class.
"It's not about being gay or straight," Davis asserted. "They're my children. I thought we were supposed to be on a team. Parents and teachers are supposed to be on the same team."
"I don't think it's appropriate material," she added. "My children did not know what homosexuality was until all this came about. That is something we were going to talk to them about."
Davis further accused Currie of coming into Elfland with the intention of spreading an "outside" agenda.
"I'm just really disappointed," she said. "I grew up here. My family went to school here. I'm very sad that people who came from the outside, people who have to Google the community to get here, would do something like this."
Although Currie denies attempting to spread an agenda, his critics point to a statement he made at a recent LGBT conference that he co-lead with Goodhand.
According to the News Observer, Goodhand conducted research on the difficulties faced in school by children who don't fit into normal gender roles.
"Meg's research shares a perspective that through transformative learning opportunities, educators can reframe their attitudes, beliefs and knowledge about gender nonconformity, the LGBTQ community and the heteronormative culture within schools and society," Currie was quoted as saying at the conference. "Ideally, with this new understanding, educators as social justice leaders will be willing to disrupt the heteronormative culture of a classroom and their schools."
Currie defended himself against agenda allegations, however, by saying that he always teaches what's in the best interest of his students.
"I think that anyone who knows me as a teacher would understand that that is an absurd claim," Currie said. "Every single decision is based on what is best for my kids, not what is best for Omar Currie. I am a champion for my kids. I fight tooth and nail for every single thing that my kids need."
More in your face...
Gay or not, this guy has no place in the classroom...teaching, anyway.
be rehired before summer is over
Promulgating pornography and degeneracy to minors used to be a prosecutable offence. Sad that I expect both the teacher and the vice principal to be reinstated after the news cycle blows past this.
(Currie told The Herald Sun that he detested the policy because he feels it gives parents the ability to opt out of teaching their kids about important topics, such as LGBT issues.)
How dare parents have any control over the propaganda being taught by their “teachers”!
The article discloses that this so-called teacher is really another “social justice” far-left extremist. I didn’t know there were communities and parents strong enough to offer any resistance. This is 3rd grade we’re talking about! I doubt very much that any student at that young age would know that they are gay, let alone be bullied about it as this teacher says happened.
Bravo to those parents!
Well, they definitely do not need to know about homosexuals in third grade.
These people are mentally ill and should not be hired by any school district that values its children.
In a better world he would be indicted and spend a few years in prison for child abuse.
“Every single decision is based on what is best for my kids”
The definition of “what’s best” is what’s at issue here.
Translation: "I'm a victim"
(Donning flame suit)
I agree with him using the classroom to teach how to avoid, put up with, and stop bullying, specifically. I don’t mind if he used anything children were bullied for, including names like “gay” or any other insult a kid heard for any reason. Kids shouldn’t be insulted for who they are. Some boys are effeminate - maybe he still has a lisp or prefers jump rope to football. Kids are mocked for their choice of clothing (more likely, their parents’ choice), their hair, their glasses, etc. Addressing it formally in a lesson was correct.
But I agree he should have gotten permission to use that book.
“Every single decision is based on what is best for my kids”
The kids are not “his” by any stretch of his imagination. Glad to know the parents stood up to these perverts.
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“In April, Omar Currie read the book King & King, a tale about two princes who get married, to his third grade class at Efland-Cheeks Elementary School after one of his students told him about how he was insulted by other kids in the class who called him gay.
Currie told The Associated Press that he felt inclined to read the book in order to teach his students about tolerance and acceptance of people’s differences. “
IT’S A CLASS OF THIRD-GRADES, YOU RETARDED HOMO!
Tell them to knock off the name-calling and then go on with actual teaching! Or does this idiot think that a 3rd grader is actually gay???
And what flipping lesson does that book even teach? That some inbred twit of a prince decided he wanted to diddle another dude? Someone should write a book on how the kingdom later fell apart when the two idiots found out they could not reproduce.
“disrupt the heteronormative culture”
It is what “homosexual” marriage (the oxymoron) is all about-—to corrupt and warp little children’s conceptions of their own bodies and destroy normal sexual identity formation.
Normal children will submerge the sexual instinct during latency-—as Rousseau stated-—it encourages intellectual development (Limbic Area of brain (primitive base instincts) is being suppressed).
Sex Ed-—enlarges the Limbic area at the time it needs to be suppressed-—to become Virtuous-—(disciplined) so that the Intellectual part of the brain flourishes. Sex Ed focuses children on Lies and Vice-—in corrupt warping way to use the human body which eliminates God/Truth and Natural Law. It creates a tribal, pagan worldview.
Sex Ed was a Cultural Marxist construct to hyper-sexualize chiildren at inappropriate ages to disrupt normal (virtue) formation and destroy Christian Worldview in children. Without Virtue, civil society collapses (Socrates). We have known for over 2400 years that the destruction of Virtue in children will collapse culture-—that ALL Virtue is habituated and practiced in young childhood.
Children naturally bond to same sex during Latency (5-13)——what the Marxists sodomites want to do is create trauma to that stage so that the children are fixated in this immature stage (where they will be unable to mature to “love” the Other). It takes maturity to “love” true diversity.
It is what they do with Afghani Harem boys-—they embed emotions (warped) in childhood so the boys grow up to lust after males, boys and goats and hate and mutilate (the other). They are immature which is total IRRATIONALITY and removal from Natural Law (Reason). so that these children will SEE others through an unnatural twisted, Marxist lens.
It is almost impossible to eject ideas once posited in young children. Teaching children about “sex” is objectifying their bodies and affects all emotions towards parents, males and females. It literally WARPS how they see their Father and Mother and Self-—and reduces man to animal—and removes mystery and dignity from the Sex Act (which is their point-—to make it sterile and meaningless). It will destroy the dignity of male and female and that mystery and dignity that only Innocence in Latency creates—which will create normal sexual identity formation where maturity is the ability to love “the Other”. Marriage is the only institution which unites male and female-—true diversity.
All sexual behaviors (desires) are learned and taught-—by experiences with the two sexes (if only one sex parent—desires will be warped) -—their early relationships determine if they will mature normally. Trauma and neglect will always warp desires.....and over 70% of all homosexuals (if not more) have been literally raped during childhood. First sexual experience is indicative of what will become “normal”.
We are in VERY dangerous times because parents do not understand the necessity of parenting their own children and are allowing perverts to destroy normal formation (all public schools).
A battle won in a war that we are losing.
Get YOUR children out of the government indoctrination centers - NOW!!
Beat me to it.
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