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The Teacher Learns His Lesson

Nov 15, 2022

Teachers teach and students learn... at least that's the way classroom learning is constructed but not in this case. Children look to teachers to protect them from harm but what happens when the teacher is causing the harm! Here's another example of a teacher who learned a lesson because of their poor choices with their students. Read the details here.

man and woman sitting on chairs

Our education systems are intended to be a safe place for children to learn and grow but this relies on the effectiveness of our schoolteachers. Not only did this teacher's racists beliefs and comments cause harm to his students, but also negatively affected their families and community. These children have lost trust in one of the only people that they're supposed to be able to trust, their teacher. In addition, the teacher has also lost the trust of his community and colleagues and was rightfully fired for his completely inappropriate and disrespectful behaviour.


How does he Rewind his Brand in this moment, well this time it's not easy because of what teachers represent. Yes, he needs to start with an apology to the students and community, but he has many hours of personal work that needs to be done because he obviously needs to be re-educated himself on race theory, bias (both conscious and unconscious), systemic racism, anti-racism and true American and world history. He also needs to re-examine if he should be back in a classroom or any teaching environment anytime soon because he lacks self-awareness to understand that the amount of influence and impact he has on children's minds and how that affects their future. I would also add that this school needs to have a Brand Rewind because it's obvious that they haven't done their work to ensure that all of their teaching staff understands that their personal beliefs have no place in their classroom, especially with the age groups that they serve. Yes, they did the correct thing by immediately removing and apologizing but how did that teacher think that his behaviour was tolerable. There is a lot of work to do to fix this situation and this time the teacher learned his first lesson the hard way; your behaviour is not tolerated!


Zoe Mitchell is the founder of Sharp Processes, a leadership consultancy focused on improving employee engagement using Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Psychological Safety and Process Improvement best practices with her 20 years of corporate senior leadership positions. She is also the author of Inclusive Leadership Now (available on Amazon).
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