A fourth grade teacher in El Paso reportedly had her students draw pictures depicting the events of 9/11 earlier this week, and the inappropriate assignment has angered some parents.
Ivie Gremillion, whose daughter is in the teacher’s class at Hughey Elementary, told a reporter from El Paso’s KFOX-TV that her daughter told her “we had to draw the boom cloud, the planes hitting, and people jumping out of the windows.”
One of the drawings shows a plane with a speech bubble containing the words “ha ha” flying in to a cloud of smoke. Another drawing shows people falling from the towers with speech bubbles saying “help.”
Gremillion’s husband is being deployed to Afghanistan later this year, and she told the El Paso Fox affiliate that now her daughter is scared after her teacher reportedly told her “the Afghans did this because they hate all of us and want to kill all of us.”
The El Paso Independent School District issued a strong statement about the incident:
EPISD is very concerned about the images that were drawn in response to a lesson on the events of September 11. District and campus administrators are investigating the specific assignment and are interviewing the personnel involved. We regret the insensitivity that this action may have caused and wish to assure our community that we will act swiftly in this matter and will take any and all appropriate action. We extend our sincere apologies.
A blog post from the Houston Chronicle‘s Alex Yap described the pictures as “vivid” and “disturbing.”
