A part-time teacher at Morton High School in Illinois is under fire for allegedly making bigoted remarks and creating a "harmful and uncomfortable" environment in her American Problems class. According to CIProud, student accounts of her problematic behavior go back to at least 2009.
Speaking to CIProud, district's superintendent Dr. Jeff Hill said the teacher, Kim Johnson, is currently being investigated.
"I think that she is exacting and hateful is the way that I could put it," Maya Phan, 2017 Morton High graduate, said. "I don't think there are any words that can quite accurately describe the amount of damage that she has done as an educator."
According to Phan, Johnson used her class's open debate forum to debate topics such as race, abortion, gay marriage, immigration, etc., as a means to express her own bigoted views.
"She claimed to have a very impartial role and it very much quickly turned into her spewing her own opinions," Phan said. "Her opinions were often very hurtful and very much either racist or homophobic and she would say it in front of everybody in class not knowing whether people are LGBT+ in the classroom."
"She basically said that people that looked like me, she wouldn't have any problem if I got stopped at an airport for no reason because it's a better use of police allocation and funding," Phan said. "She proceeded to ask me if I was gay in front of the entire class. She warned a boy to be careful at a college party because girls like to cry rape."
Other past students of Johnson's gave similar testimonies to CIProud.
Andrew Irwin, who took Johnson's class back in 2009, said she made similar comments.
"I signed up for American Problems with the intention and the hope to learn about the problems that were facing America, and it was very early on in the semester that Kim Johnson shared with our class that she thought being gay was a choice," Irwin said. "And it was at that time that it became clear to me that there wasn't going to be a lot of productive learning going on in that classroom."
Those making the allegations are pushing the district to action in order to spare future students from having the same experience they did.
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