Teaching for Irving ISD (Irving, TX) in 2021-2022 looked like this:
Irving ISD threatens me (RS) with termination after I defend LGBTQ students and my newspaper staff’s investigation of prejudicial acts by the district (removing rainbow stickers and citing a policy that didn’t exist): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lgbtq-students-texas-school-rainbow-stickers-rcna23208
Rolling Stone’s post-termination account of the clusterfuck: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/texas-school-board-ousts-teacher-over-pro-lgbtq-rainbow-stickers-1342040/
Hundreds of students walk out like badasses, when this all started: WFAA - Student Walkout at MacArthur High
Me on Dallas radio’s Lambda Weekly, 89.3 KNON-FM:
Students speak out at Irving ISD board meetings throughout the year. Again, total badasses:
September 20 board meeting 4 days after I was pulled from school, in which GSA students talk about being targeted and interrogated about what the two GSA sponsors (me and my colleague) said about the principal: from 1:00-11:45 under Item II H public comment: http://istv.irvingisd.net/board-of-trustees/09202021-1034
October 18 board meeting, public comment requesting my reinstatement and the replacement of the stickers from 00:00-10:40 under Item II H: http://istv.irvingisd.net/board-of-trustees/10192021-596
March 21 board meeting at which GSA teachers made their final arguments to get LGBTQ stickers back up on teachers’ doors and to get mandatory LGBTQ competence trainings in place for teachers, which of course, were summarily rejected with zero questions from the board (clip below and full video on our YouTube):
Elle Caldon, badass, and the Editor-in-Chief of the MacArthur High newspaper I advised, speaks at a special session of the House Oversight Committee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (27:15-32:00). (I submitted a written statement to the Congressional record, which I’ll keep on the DL to be nice to IISD.)
Elle’s winter 2021 Dallas Voice article: https://dallasvoice.com/we-will-not-back-down/
Institutional hilarity:
The funniest coda to this saga happened after the district had already told my lawyer and I that they’d be proposing my termination. Yet still, just to get me out of the classroom at the Secondary Reassignment (DAEP) Center (where I had been transferred since January and was again teaching students who called me their favorite English teacher), the district put me on leave again in early April, for retweeting an ACLU dude’s tweet about what happened at MacArthur (see offending tweet below). Then they did a whole forensic analysis on my computer — no joke.
The “goldmine” they thought they found was a collection of 2017-bookmarked research links that I had apparently opened accidentally on my district computer, probably from opening a OneTab link. I didn’t intentionally do this, of course, but they thought they had something GOOD. (Long ago, I was working on a dissertation chapter about porn, in the style of my SMU Film Studies mentor Dr. Kevin Heffernan, for which I interviewed porn actor Lily Cade.) Trust, I wish I had had any time since 2017 to open those links and work on that project, but I haven’t and I didn’t open them intentionally. No matter.
So, after I had already been terminated, on the last workday of the school year, they wasted my and my union lawyer’s time to interrogate me about those links, which of course were the only “suspicious” material on my computer because I was a great teacher — and because, like every other teacher I know, I had my personal Google account synced on my work computer and unintentionally opened old bookmarks.
Many of the “sexy” websites named were for academic articles — lol. My lawyer and I chuckled heartily after we got out of there. And, as their last act: the district flubbed and sent me their dumb results-of-”investigation” document, which I was supposed to sign, after the end of the workday — which, yes, they wanted me to return to the district HQ to sign at 4:45 p.m., when I was literally no longer an employee of the district. Just because they wanted more time to hang out with me, I guess? I declined.
On NBC Now’s “Pride and Backlash” special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgGaWSIuTpM
On “The Takeaway” with Melissa Harris-Perry: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/teachers-are-not-alright
On Milk Makeup: “How Rachel Stonecipher Creates Safe Spaces for Students”
The tweet that so offended IISD administrators that they put me on leave from the DAEP school where the kids were succeeding in my English class to “investigate” it:
