#Roommates, was this teacher in the wrong? Lisa Houston, a white math teacher at Palmetto High School in South Carolina, voluntarily quit her job this week after video surfaced showing her standing on a black student’s desk and pulling his hair to wake him up.
In the Snapchat video, the student appears to be dozing off and she tried multiple things to wake him up, including pushing him in the chest with the bottom of her foot.
There are definitely mixed feelings about the footage, but the teacher says it was all in fun.
“If you ask any kid I’ve taught, they’ll tell you I kid around with them, make them stay awake and laugh with them,” Ms. Houston told @wyffnews4. “I know the video looks bad. If you don’t know the situation, you don’t know what’s going on, but it was not a malicious act. It was all in fun. I want the public to know that I love the student, and that our rapport with each other was great. I would have never done anything to hurt him.”
The school district launched an investigation into the incident once the video started to spread, but Ms. Houston decided to resign on her own.
She’s worked at the high school for 27 years and not everyone is happy about her leaving. On May 4, students, alumni, and local residents in Williamston, South Carolina held a rally to express their anger over her quitting.
There’s also a petition titled “Demand ASD1 To Restore Lisa Houston’s Teaching Position.” “Lisa Houston was wrongly accused of ‘hurting’ and ‘mistreating’ a student, when all she was trying to do was have fun, wake him up, and make him LEARN,” the petition reads. “ASD1 should have taken a stand behind her, and they didn’t. She deserves her job back, more than anyone else.”
Thoughts, Roommates?
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