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CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Fifteen hundred miles from the Deep South, in a central Wyoming middle school, a Confederate flag and a racial slur were scrawled on a bathroom wall.
In a rural town 100 miles to the north, a teenager stood up in an assembly and gave an impersonation of Donald Trump that left a Latina student in tears. On the other side of the mountain range, in another small, tight-knit community, a middle-school student created a project on the Alamo that suggested serious violence toward Mexicans.
Each of these incidents happened this semester in a Wyoming school and was reported to the media. Each was handled by the administrators of the respective schools in similar ways. They were addressed quickly and individually as behavioral issues, with school leaders declining to engage in a class or school-wide discussion on intolerance. In two of the cases, teachers who pushed for greater action reported reticence and hostility from their administrations, the Casper Star-Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/1VgYJma).
Diversity in Wyoming is supposed to be taught in social studies and language arts classes as part of statewide standards. But it's rare that students have the opportunity to take it as a stand-alone course. One of the few classes that probe issues like race and social injustice is taught in the one region of Wyoming where the minority population is the majority: the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Experts in education say that is not surprising given the disparity of opinions at the university level on whether diversity training is a necessity for educators. From middle school to the undergraduate level in Wyoming, diversity is a hot potato that no one wants to hold too long.
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Heather Pasquinelli first heard about the Confederate flag graffiti at Wind River Middle School from the janitor who scrubbed it from the bathroom wall. He wanted to make sure the teacher's two adopted children were faring OK at the school. They are both African American.
The language arts teacher asked her principal about the incident and was told it had been taken care of.
A few weeks later, a sixth-grader brought Pasquinelli a sheet of paper he'd found in the printer tray in her classroom.
"Say yes to more dead black people," it read.
She lost her breath.
"Mrs. Pasquinelli, did you print this?" the child asked.
The student responsible was turned in by classmates, and the principal and family addressed how to move forward. But the conflict swelled, and Pasquinelli's subsequent discussions in her classroom denouncing hate speech and intolerance were frowned upon by the administration, she said.
Pasquinelli's superintendent, Diana Clapp, said she disagrees with Pasquinelli's interpretation of the administration's response.
In the case of the graffiti, it was removed promptly. In the case of the printout, and subsequent issues with the Confederate flag, parents and principals spoke with the student, Clapp said.
As a school in the third most diverse district in the state, Wind River has escalating repercussions for hate speech and actions, and a definition of what those terms mean in its handbook, she said.
However, when these incidents come up, they aren't necessarily ideal moments to teach about intolerance, Clapp said.
By the time a child does something offensive, it becomes a disciplinary matter, she said. It can't be broadcast to the rest of the school, hobbling the opportunity for further discussion, she said.
The place for that discussion is in the classroom with a teacher who is prepared.
When asked if her district could benefit from a class on diversity, the superintendent said yes, if the teacher has the skills to handle difficult subject matters and the curriculum is strong.
It's hard to do it right, she said.
It's also hard to deal with racism, she admitted.
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Experts in education in Wyoming say there is a distinct reticence toward multiculturalism, diversity and social justice in curriculums, even at the university level.
Even the term "social justice" offends some, who say it is politically loaded.
"Based on my own experience, there is a lot of resistance to exposing anything to do with cultural diversity — that kind of curriculum that is going to tell you how to treat someone who is different than yourself," said Lydiah W. Nganga, a professor of elementary and early childhood development at the University of Wyoming.
Many undergraduates studying to be teachers appear to believe that diversity is not important for educators planning to work in Wyoming, she said.
But Nganga disagrees.
"Teaching to diversity is good teaching. When you are teaching to diversity, you are taking care of the whole child," she said. "Even if you have one child that comes from a culturally different background, you still need to take care of that child in your class."
Diversity training goes beyond race. It's about teaching to families of different socioeconomic backgrounds, children from different cultural backgrounds and children with special needs, for example, she said.
Though Nganga infuses diversity training into her classes, that approach is not ideal, she said.
"The reality is at the moment we really don't have that requirement (at UW-Casper)," she said. "Because we don't, it is better to do something than not to do anything at all."
One of the few high school classes in the state where teenagers are encouraged to interact with the complexity of racism and social conflict is taught at Wyoming Indian High School in Fremont County School District No. 14, about 20 minutes from Wind River High School.
It's a night class based on a nationally respected curriculum, "Facing History and Ourselves." It encourages discussion on the social construct of race and the history of civil rights movements and helps students draw parallels to the modern day and the Native American experience, said teacher Colleen Whalen.
After more than a decade teaching the class, the teacher is convinced of its importance in Wyoming.
"I'm concerned with the push on test scores that civil rights curriculum is losing out," she said. "I believe every school in Wyoming should have some type of diversity education or civil rights education."
Looking at these difficult themes is a balancing act, but the course has helped her students engage in the world and find legal, nonviolent ways to protest inequality, she said.
It's a powerful curriculum, and not just for the students on the reservation, she said.
"Even though Wyoming seems to have a predominantly white population, we are part of the world," she said. "The kids are going to go out in the world. We have the people of color that have always been in Wyoming."
One of Whalen's students, Phillip Mathews, is graduating from high school in May. The 18-year-old said he believes that diversity classes can make students more aware and help different types of people find a mutual understanding.
"I think it would really help if it was taught in all schools," he said. "It's easier to teach a kid than to change an adult."
It was eye-opening for him to look at the Black Panther movement and the civil rights era, to understand where those movements failed and where they succeeded. Those histories are not simple, he said.
"Worlds are not all sunshine and rainbows. It's more of the gray line between all of it," he explained. "There's usually something good that's happening, and on the other side there's something bad.
I think these classes will help kids understand those sides and learn how to walk the middle line."
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For Pasquinelli, the disconnect between her views and those in the administration became overwhelming. Her teaching strategy was called into question as being one-sided. The administration told her before beginning a unit on the Holocaust that she would have to script her discussion questions and win approval from the principal before class.
Pasquinelli is a teaching fellow for the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and the unit is one she's taught for years.
There were vocabulary words in her curriculum, like bigotry, that she was encouraged to leave out so as not to incite further contention on issues like the Confederate flag, she said.
"OK, we don't talk about bigotry, because we don't want anyone to be uncomfortable?" she asked. "That is my biggest issue — the idea that teaching tolerance is optional."
The teacher grew up in a racist environment and had to learn how to deal with these things on her own. As a result, she wants to encourage kids to be advocates, to stand up for others and to challenge the beliefs they bring to school. She is unapologetic about condemning intolerance in her class, she said.
Clapp said she could not comment on personnel or student disciplinary issues but did say that scripted questions are not unusual.
Pasquinelli quit her job recently at Wind River because of the incidents and the administration's response. She will move her two Wind River children to another district. Next year, she will teach at Wyoming Indian High School.
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Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com
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