Students placed Bible on teacher's desk; teacher blasts students on Facebook for taunting her
-- From "Teacher may lose job after derogatory comments about her students on Facebook" by T. Keung Hui, McClatchy Newspapers 2/16/10
A middle-school teacher in Wake County, N.C., may be fired after she and her friends made caustic remarks on a Facebook page about her students, the South and Christianity.
Melissa Hussain, an eighth-grade science teacher at West Lake Middle School in Apex, was suspended with pay Friday while investigators review her case, according to Greg Thomas, a Wake schools spokesman. The suspension came after some of Hussain's students and their parents objected to comments on her Facebook page, many of them revolving around her interaction with her Christian students.
Hussain wrote on the social-networking site that it was a "hate crime" that students anonymously left a Bible on her desk, and she told how she "was able to shame" her students over the incident. Her Facebook page included comments from friends about "ignorant Southern rednecks," and one commenter suggested Hussain retaliate by bringing a Dale Earnhardt Jr. poster to class with a swastika drawn on the NASCAR driver's forehead.
On her Facebook page, Hussain wrote about students spreading rumors that she was a Jesus hater. She complained about her students wearing Jesus T-shirts and singing "Jesus Loves Me." She objected to students reading the Bible instead of doing class work.
Parents said the situation escalated after a student put a postcard of Jesus on Hussain's desk that the teacher threw in the trash. Parents also said Hussain sent to the office students who, during a lesson about evolution, asked about the role of God in creation.
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