Image Credit: Color of Change / Facebook & Joselito Tagarao / CC
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
A former Sullivan County social studies teacher is waiting for a judge to decide whether he can return to teaching in the district.
Matthew Hawn spent sixteen years teaching in the Sullivan County school district before he was fired in 2021 for showing a video to his Contemporary Issues class that featured the poem “White Privilege” by Kyla Jenee Lacey.
Now Hawn is appealing his dismissal and asking for the district to pay his full salary for the time period since he was dismissed.
The case was centered around two main points of argument – whether Hawn was insubordinate in his actions and whether the dismissal was the correct response from the district.
Rick Colbert, who is representing Hawn, says his client was not being insubordinate and calls the dismissal “wrong…not well considered…and arbitrary.”
The initial complaint filed regarding the showing of the video was in regards to profanity contained in the video.
Colbert said it was an “unintentional failure” that Hawn did not mute all of the profanity, arguing instead that the case is really about the teaching of controversial topics.
Colbert argued that Hawn followed the Tennessee code of conduct, which requires that teachers allow access to varying viewpoints but does not require that they provide those varied beliefs.
The school system, however, says that Hawn failed to give his students those varying viewpoints and also deliberately opted to go against instructions provided by supervisors regarding his course content.
“That’s why we’re here, your honor,” said the system’s attorney Chris McCarty. “Not because of one incident. Not because of one quote, horrible thing. But because you have a teacher who believed and who still believes that he’s above authority.”
According to testimony from Brent Palmer, who serves as the Supervisor of Curriculum Instruction in Secondary Education, this is not the first time Hawn received a complaint about materials provided to his class. In September 2020, Hawn, who himself is white, “mistakenly” posted material to his personal finance course that included the statement, “white privilege is a fact.”
Palmer said an email was sent to Hawn as a means of guidance in his choice of materials.
Additionally, Palmer said the system does not encourage use of materials with profanity because their goal is to “teach students to become the citizens and the people we want them to become to be successful in life. Those are not words of young people who will become professionals in a society that we live in.”
Judge Katie Priester will make the determination on the case. She says she plans to carefully consider all evidence and will give her opinion on the matter within 60 days.
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2 Responses
Glad to know this is NOT about showing alternative view points, but about ‘insubordination’. The teacher was disciplined for a previous incident…on of all things “White Privilege”…sounds like an ‘agenda’ to me. He did not deserve to be a teacher but deserved to be fired – KUDO’s to Sullivan County School Board! If ONLY ALL local school boards would be so bold! I’d imagine that some school districts, including WCS would give this teacher an award for showing this particular video, foul language and all. They’d only have fired him if he dared present the negative down sides of a subject matter like WHITE PRIVILEGE or DEI. VOTE to take our schools back from leftist, educrats who think and act like they know better than parents!
Lucifer’s dimmercrap, WAAY too many of them in the FAILED pubic ejikashun system.