The latest salvo against the President-Elect within our San Francisco bubble: A post-election newsletter to public school teachers from the United Educators of San Francisco includes an optional lesson plan referring to Donald Trump and those who supported him as racist and sexist, and describes ways to engage students and help them feel empowered in this time of uncertainty. The Examiner picked up on the lesson plan, which was made available to some 6,000 teachers and paraprofessionals in the San Francisco Unified School District, and which states in its introduction, "Let us please not sidestep the fact that a racist and sexist man has become the president of our country by pandering to a huge racist and sexist base."
You can see the lesson plan in full here, and it includes a clip from Michael Moore in Trumpland, a reading from W.E.B. Dubois's The Souls of Black Folk, and an interview with Professor Carol Anderson about her book White Rage.
The plan, written in an obvious fervor on November 9 by Mission High School Peer Resources Teacher Fakrah Shah, tells teachers to say to their students, "We do not have to go anywhere, not Canada, not ‘back’ to any place we came from. We also do not have to give in to brutality, police or otherwise, verbal or physical. Ever. We have rights and we REFUSE TO BE DENIED. WE DEMAND JUSTICE AND EQUALITY. WE WILL KEEP ON FIGHTING."
SF Unified School District spokesperson Heidi Anderson said in a statement to the Examiner, "This lesson plan was shared as an optional resource with high school principals. Educators are entrusted to create lessons that reflect the California standards, support students’ social and emotional well-being and foster inclusive and safe school communities."
The Chronicle's token conservative Debra Saunders reacts with her own white rage to the lesson plan, saying, "It is scary to think that people entrusted with children’s education are so clueless that they see it as their job to inculcate students with a cartoonish view of Trump voters." Also, in an insulting aside, she points to the 10 percent of San Francisco voters who went for Trump and writes, "That’s probably more than the number of transgender students administrators work overtime to make feel welcome. So share the love."
It must be hard to be a Republican in this town, but with all due respect Saunders, do fuck off.
The Examiner also points out that if Trump keeps his promise to revoke federal funds from all sanctuary cities, that could mean a $28 million loss to the SFUSD.
Meanwhile, that principal in Milpitas who was placed on administrative leave last week after screaming "Fuck Donald Trump" at a school assembly is now back at work, and so is the Mountain View teacher who compared Trump to Hitler. Hey, emotions have been running high. And they are forgiven.
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