A white male schoolteacher in Georgia was terminated and met with internet backlash after being filmed writing a racial slur on a classroom whiteboard. And the whole chaotic affair was caught on someone’s smartphone camera.
According to reports, the incident occurred at Walnut Grove High School in Loganville. Staff member and assistant wrestling coach Robert Walker was seen writing the N-word as students clapped and cheered in the background. In the 19 second video clip, the teacher wrote the offensive word out with the last letter missing on the classroom whiteboard.
A student, not visible in the footage, shouts the final letter: “R! Arrrrr!” Then Walker turns his back and writes the final letter on the board, igniting a classroom uproar of laughter from the students. The video abruptly ends. “That should never be brought up in a classroom, like, ever,” Adrienna Wyatt, a concerned parent, shared about the incident.
Wyatt shared that the daughter of a family was the student who recorded the classroom incident. She and the girl’s mother chose to share the disturbing incident online, which garnered over 40,000 views.
The parent expressed hope that the video’s release would serve as a means to hold the staff members accountable for their actions. “People need to be held accountable for this, and it’s not okay to make kids feel a certain way while they’re in your classroom,” she said Wyatt.
While some parents shared the same disturbed notions surrounding the incident, others downplayed it. “A lot of people are saying ‘Oh it was a joke. You don’t know what they were saying before.’ But what kind of joke inside a classroom setting has to deal with those types of racial slurs?” Wyatt asked.
Following the publicized incident, the Walton County School District released a statement stating: The behavior captured in the video does not reflect the values of Walnut Grove High School or the Walton County School District. Immediate action was taken, and the teacher involved is no longer employed by Walton County Schools.
It is unclear if the students who were seen laughing and cheering in the video received disciplinary action.