Oklahoma Teacher Urging Children to Call Boy ‘F*g’ Remains in Classroom

A boy the teacher drove to tears was suspended and has lost access to special ed services

Warning: This article discusses a homophobic slur many readers will experience as ugly and traumatizing.

What would you do if your 11-year-old son came home from school and asked what “fag” means? What would you do if he said his 5th-grade teacher urged his classmates to call him a fag? What would you do if your son broke down in tears when you defined fag for him?

What would you do if you found out that the teacher, besides urging peers to call your son a fag, has organized games of “fag tag” on the playground?

What would you do if you went to the school principal and district superintendent in distress, only to be told your son must either return to that teacher or transfer to an all-girls class?

This is not a thought experiment, it’s happening today in Talihina, Oklahoma

It’s happening right now to Amber and Jonathon Stepp and their 11-year-old son in the Talihina public school system. Amber and Jonathon say they’re shocked and saddened at the same time. Amber told local CBS affiliate News 5, “I’m supposed to trust this professional to teach my son positive things, not hatred?”

Jonathon added, “I never expected it to happen to anyone, let alone my own child.” He says his son asked him in tears, “Daddy, why would you call me that?”

Amber called the teacher with that question and audio-recorded his answer. He freely admitted he told students to call her son, who has special learning needs, a fag — because her son was “horse playing” with another boy:

Two of the boys were wrestling with each other and started yelling saying, “he’s touching me, he’s touching me” and I said, “yeah when he does that yell fag alert.”

The facts are not in dispute. Click here and then click on the video to listen to his astonishing admission for yourself.

Also not in dispute is that the school district has not acted to protect the boy from his bullying teacher or to protect other students from the teacher’s vulgarity. In a September statement, Talihina Public Schools said, “We have received this complaint and, in response, have completed an investigation and taken appropriate action.”

Students and parents say that whatever the “appropriate” action was, which officials say they cannot discuss for privacy reasons, it did not involve removing the teacher from the classroom or even suspending him during the investigation.

Administrators suspended the boy instead

Additionally, after Channel 5 first broke the news at the end of September, students and parents told reporters that the same teacher has encouraged children to play “fag tag” or “tag the fag” on the playground.

The school district has not commented on those allegations.

The Stepps say the district gave their son two options for returning to school: Go back to the bullying teacher’s classroom or transfer to an all-girls class.

Fifth-grade classes were reportedly segregated by gender due to an unspecified “incident” sometime in the past, in violation of federal Title IX law that prohibits discrimination in education on the basis of sex. Talihina parents say 5th grade is the only grade that separates students by gender. District officials have declined to comment on when they will re-integrate classes to comply with federal law.

Amber can’t believe this is happening. District administrators decline comment.

“It’s completely inappropriate,” Amber says, “to expect a child that’s been bullied by the teacher to return to that classroom and completely inappropriate to put him in the middle of an all-girl classroom.”

The boy remains at home, denied the special education services he needs.

I called Talihina Elementary School Principal Kathy Anderson this morning on behalf of the Los Angeles Blade, leaving a detailed message asking why she continues to employ a man who teaches children to call other children fags. She did not return the call. District Superintendent Jason Lockhart failed to return a similar call.

I tried to reach out to the teacher for comment, but the names of 5th grade teachers do not appear on the district web site. The names of teachers for all other grade levels do appear. The Internet Archive “Wayback Machine” has not crawled the site in over a year, so I can’t rely on that information.

If a parent or staff member from Talihina school system contacts me with the 5th-grade teacher’s name, I will attempt to reach out to him, and I will update this article to include his name.

What would you do if your child’s teacher taught kids to be homophobic bullies?

As a gay man who raised a child with special-education needs, I don’t even know how to begin to answer that question. I’m certain I never would have had to. I’m certain my son’s school administrators would have instantly suspended and eventually fired any teacher who taught kids to call other kids fags.

There would have been no question, but I didn’t live in Talihina, Oklahoma, where standards of decency, kindness, and civility are evidently quite different from what I’m used to, and I hope from what you’re used to.

I know this much. An 11-year-old boy is sitting at home right now, unable to return to school. I honestly have no idea what I’d do in his parents’ shoes. I’m appalled I have to ask myself the question.

I’m asking myself if being an American these days really means tolerating vile anti-gay slurs at school from the mouths of bullying teachers. Is this really who we are as a people?

I hope and pray the answer is no. I hope and pray schools officials in Oklahoma come to their senses and decide to embrace love and human decency.

Are you a young person in crisis? Reach out to the National Suicide Hotline.

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