Gentile-Montgomery said "that she is the only Black credentialed teacher at the school."
If this is true there is something biased with M-A's teacher hiring.
Would like to see statistics for Black teachers at M-A and Ravenswood HS since 1950. Ravenswood up until it's closure.

Depicting Israelis as "puppet masters" is taking a side as this is a pejorative depiction. Teachers should not be taking a side. Teaching the history of a conflict, and potential reasons each side feels they are right, is fair game. Teachers need to be developing students' abilities to make up their own minds when presented with two conflicting arguments. At least this is what a good teacher should do.

After engaging in this poor judgment, the teacher pulling the racial victim card herself as the "only black teacher" seems ironic.

This is not about Ms. Montgomery, it’s about the specific curriculum taught in her class (and perhaps in the wider district). That said, harassment of her or anyone else should not be condoned. This is precisely why we owe it to our students to teach them with a factual, balanced curriculum. Sequoia Union High School District should be in support of speech and actions that provide an atmosphere of mutual respect, free from any form of prejudice and intolerance.

The student in the article spoke about bullying and lines being crossed. Then she held up a sign directed at attendees behind her to deliberately incite and provoke families already in pain.

What has our polarized, tribal world come to these days? Was the teacher "taking sides" or instead presenting different sides on the understanding of the Israel-Hamas War? If so, that's exactly what a teacher is supposed to do, i.e., present alternative views of a controversial issue, not propagandize for a single position. Her use of the puppet image may have been offensive, but the point of view she was presenting, though not her point of view, might consider the puppet an appropriate image...for that point of view. Prepares students for the road, not prepare the road for the students.

It would be helpful to include images from the slideshow in question, so that readers can evaluate the lesson plan for themselves.

The lesson includes a stereotypical cartoon of a Hasidic Jew to represent all Israelis, in addition to the puppet imagery described in the article. It erases Jewish indigenuity in the region, minimizes the Holocaust, includes false maps of Israel and Palestine, calls the State of Israel “illegal,” and makes no reference to Hamas’s stated mission of eliminating Jews.

The lesson requires students to echo the author’s opinions. It implies that President Biden’s statements about the conflict are questionable because he is a “person with power and/or privilege.” It clearly violates district policy and state education codes that were put in place to protect students from discrimination and political propaganda.

Many of us who spoke at the board meeting made it clear that we condemn the harassment of all teachers, at all times and in all forms.

We do expect administrators to hold teachers accountable to district standards; to alert families that their children were exposed to inaccurate and harmful content; to correct all falsehoods taught in the affected classes; and to create guidelines to prevent political propaganda from making its way into classrooms.

Finally, it is clear that biased and politically charged content in Bay Area schools has created an environment that is isolating, hostile, and painful for Jewish students. With antisemitic incidents at an all-time high in California and across the country, it is time for us to evaluate what is causing so much hatred, and how we can work together as a community to prevent it.

The teacher absolutely should not have been harassed. That is shameful, and I hope she soon will feel comfortable enough to return to M-A. No one should be traumatized in such a manner.
That said, I found parts of the lesson (including the puppet master slide) extremely offensive, reviving ugly stereotypes that one would have hoped had disappeared. The parents were entirely right to protest.