Curriculum and resources

and tools to teach about the pain of slavery. The material was problematic and the way it went about was even more so.”

Parker said if people can’t see why the material is problematic, consider portraying the Holocaust is such a way.

She said children would never be allowed to produce a play about the Gestapo and Jews in concentration camps, using red and orange fabric to depict incinerators and dry ice to simulate gas chambers.

“That example has shocked people into understanding,” she said. “If someone doesn’t understand it after that example, I just let them marinate in their ignorance.”

But Holocaust plays aren’t allowed because it’s easier for many white people to resonate with why that would be harmful, she said. Some Holocaust survivors are living and share firsthand accounts about the atrocities they faced, but those who were enslaved can’t, so the history gets forgotten, she said.

“It’s because we’re increasingly generationally distanced from slavery,” she said. “Cracking the whip seems less absurd than pointing the gun. For those who don’t feel immediately impacted, they’ve lost the reverence and relativity. The more history is gradually sugarcoated as we go on, in 100 years I imagine some teacher somewhere will be assigning a play about the Holocaust.”

A group of Holocaust survivors and descendants recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the AuschwitzBirkenau death camp of World War II in Nazi-occupied Poland, reminding others to never forget that history amid more frequent reports of anti-Semitism.

Parker said. “It’s been painfully obvious from the lack of response of Hamden as if it’s the play that’s the problem. It says the leaders can do whatever and the ones at risk are the ones on the front line.”

Parker said if someone’s child was being bullied and parents didn’t get a response for a week, they’d hold the administrators accountable, too.

“If the teacher used ignorant judgment, then the principal should have stepped in,” Dumas said. “It’s the principal’s responsibility because you can’t not know what your teachers are doing in the classroom.”

Ten days after Parker’s daughter came home with the assignment, Superintendent of Schools Jody Goeler, Assistant Superintendent of Schools Chris Melillo, Social Studies Director Jennifer Vienneau and West Woods Principal Dan Levy met with Parker and her husband at school.

The district’s statement said said that, after the teacher was contacted a parent, “she understood that the play was an inappropriate instructional tool for teaching about such an important and sensitive topic, and decided not to continue using it.”

“The district and school administration immediately expressed their deep regret that this nonHPS approved play was introduced to students,” the statement said.

“I bet if we create a supportive environment, they wouldn’t be afraid to make their mistakes,” Parker said. “How can people admit fault when they’ll throw you under the bus?”

Schools have long been challenged by using teaching materials that exclude the histories and contributions of marginalized groups, according to the book “Reclaiming the Multicultural Roots of U.S. Curriculum” by Wayne Au, Anthony Brown and Dolores Calderón.

“To open the pages of textbooks and school curriculum and find out that your experiences are either nonexistent or presented in a manner that produces what