The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WHY VIDEO MAY COST A TEACHER HIS JOB
A French teacher in DeKalb accepted a student’s suggestion during a school lockdown and played a YouTube clip from the animated classic, “The Triplets of Belleville.” That decision — made while students were marooned in their classroom due to a robbery at a nearby store — may cost the teacher his job.
Veteran French teacher James Dickson is on paid administrative leave, a status frustrating some parents at the high-performing DeKalb School of the Arts who believe the district is overreacting to the August 18 incident.
What is the district doing? “We are in discussions with the Anti-Defamation League to determine services they can provide to the school. We have taken steps to examine our approach to cultural sensitivity,” said a spokes- man. Also, the Professional Learning Division and Legal Affairs divisions are involved, and a counselor has met with the class.
All this for a three-minute video from a movie that Common Sense Media rates as appropriate for kids 12 and older?
During the lockdown, Dickson had already nixed other French music video suggestions from his level-three French students because he was unfamiliar with the content. But he’d seen “The Triplets of Belleville,” a French movie nominated for two Oscars in 2003 and celebrated as groundbreaking animation. So, he thought a brief YouTube clip of a musical number from the film would be safe; a decision Dickson later described in an apology to a parent as a “lapse in diligence.”
The clip showed some of the film’s wildest scenes, including parodies of American-born French performer Josephine Baker’s banana skirt skit and hoofer Fred Astaire being eaten by his tap shoes. What happened next is a cautionary tale about overre-
actions or under-reactions, depending on your point of view.
After her daughter told her about the video, parent Nwandi Lawson complained, escalating her protests from the teacher to the principal, district, media and the NAACP. Some other parents are upset at the removal of a respected teacher from the classroom as a result of Lawson’s complaints and her efforts to compel what she calls “a process of restoration and education for the class.”
A communications consultant and TV producer and host, Lawson shared her concerns and related emails with media, including Dickson’s apology in which he explained, “I did stop the video before it was finished and will definitely not show it again. It is a reminder to me to screen everything first and keep the Promethean remote handy to hit the blank/stop button in case of anything unexpected and unsavory. I apologize for this lapse in diligence.”
In talking with Lawson, I asked whether she was concerned about the fate of the teacher. That, she said, was a district matter outside of her control or knowledge, adding, “I am not familiar with his personnel file.” But the anger around her role was misplaced, she said. “There are a number of parents lashing out at me ... We are searching out a villain; we are forming sides, we are going to punish someone.”
Students should be the priority, she said, whether or not they complained about what they saw in the video. Adults in this setting have a responsibility to recognize the clip was harmful and an obligation to address with students what she feels was the mocking of people of color and women, she said.
Some parents contend DeKalb Schools shouldn’t force intervention on students who weren’t fazed by the video. Lawson called that response “immature,” saying people can’t shrug off or make light of racism or sexism under the rationale “I wasn’t impacted.”
The clip from the movie — without context — may well be out-of-place in a classroom. However, I’d argue the teacher should not lose his job over this. DeKalb’s response has dismayed educators, who contend this is an example of the vulnerability of their profession.
“If you watch more than a few minutes of this movie — which I showed to my own francophone child countless times, as a toddler and older — you understand that it’s a live action comic strip. Caricature, satire, parody, all of which that age group of students can be taught, if they don’t understand it initially,” said language teacher Juli Fleming, who has taught at several top Atlanta private schools. “If I were this teacher, I would clear my name, then resign from this thoroughly unsupportive setting. He is in charge of teaching French language and culture, not of adapting it to all parents’ sensibilities.”