DETROIT — An Oakland County teacher has been placed on administrative leave after she assigned classwork that depicted former President Barack Obama alongside primates.
The picture assignment asked "Which of the following are primates?" and showed the head shot of Obama, America's first Black president, among several animals.
The Roeper School leadership acknowledged the racial offense, saying it was caught after it was distributed to its upper school class last week.
Carolyn Lett, the school's director of diversity, said the worksheet went out May 11 and, the morning after, the school received a letter from a parent disturbed by the content of the homework.
"The following morning, we were alerted that this went out, we discussed it ourselves and immediately spoke with the teacher," said Lett, who has worked at the school for 29 years. "This is not anything we've seen before and nothing we're used to."
The worksheet went out to two introduction to biology classes, to a total of about 30 students. It was incorporated into a 130-page lesson plan, originally from Duke University, titled, "Apes, monkeys, and lemurs, an introduction to primates."
"It was a mistake and all the more surprising since we've been committed to training our staff," said Clay Thomas, school board chair with three daughters at the school. "It come as a great shock to our entire community, especially considering our history."
School leadership apologized in a statement, saying the curriculum was "completely inconsistent with our school's philosophy and mission. The teacher has taken responsibility and admitted the mistake of not properly vetting the resource. She has been placed on administrative leave."
Roeper has lower school and administrative offices in Bloomfield Hills, and a middle and upper school on Oakland Avenue in Birmingham. Leadership said the school was founded in 1941 by George and Annemarie Roeper, who, after fleeing Germany to escape Nazi persecution, established our school with the goal of educating children to become thoughtful, humane adults.
The school said it is implementing a more thorough review process of curriculum and continuing professional development for faculty and staff in diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. The development will specifically focus on racial bias, administrators said. Counseling and support resources are being made available for students.
"We will continue to educate our teachers and support our students to prevent something like this from ever happening again," Thomas said.
