Fifth Graders Asked To Portray Slaves For School Assignment; Principal Identifies Issue As A Mistake!

#Cousins ; a Washington D.C elementary school is currently receiving backlash for issuing an insensitive and inappropriate assignment to fifth grade students involving slavery!

According to CNN NEWS Lafayette Elementary School forwarded a lesson plan pertaining to the Civil War and Reconstruction era; which lead to students being asked to portray enslaved people.

School officials have since come forward to state that the incident derived from students reading an article titled “ A Nation Divided.” The students were to then within small groups take notes from the required material and either create a dramatic reading, live picture or podcast.

Officials have indicating that Black students were asked by other students to engage in harmful and inappropriate role playing. Such as “a person of color drinking from a segregated water fountain and an enslaved person,” states the School’s representative.

Lafayatte Elementary has since then forwarded a public apology. Stating that the lesson will not be provided in the future and that they made the mistake of not throughly reviewing potential issues the assignment could create.

“We deeply regret that we did not foresee this as a potential challenge in role playing so we could set appropriate parameters to protect students.”

Reports read that Lafayette Principal Carrie Broquard referred to the incident as a mistake within a letter forwarded to parents.

“At Lafayette, we believe in the importance of teaching painful history with sensitivity and social awareness. Unfortunately we fell short of those values in a recent 5th grade lesson.”