Show Them All the Beauty They Possess Inside

By Joanna Miller in News on May 9, 2006 7:27PM

Chicagoist really hates it when people get paint on our clothes, and yes, it has happened more than once. But when it does, we try not to make racial slurs in front of children. We’re real humanitarians like that.

One teacher at Aspira Haugen Middle School in Albany Park, apparently, is not. According to students in her seventh-grade art class, the teacher became angry when she found paint on her jacket and told the class that “all Mexicans are criminals," and that "Mexicans were only born to clean floors and bathrooms.”

And then she led them in a rousing rendition of “The Greatest Love of All.”

Actually, that was when “the whole class started to cry.”

Is it just us, or does paint on the clothes seem like a standard occupational hazard for a middle school art teacher? Maybe you wear a smock, and you don’t have these problems. Or maybe you try to not be such a bigot.

Aspira is run by a nonprofit group “committed to the self-determination of Latinos through education.” Well, now its students and their parents are determined to have the offending teacher fired, ASAP.

Principal Jose Velazquez wants everybody to take a deep breath and chill out for a minute so both sides of the story can be heard.

We think that’s a good idea, because we’re really curious to know what a paint-splattered jacket has to do with crime and cleaning floors. Hopefully, she can clear that up.

Image via cbs2chicago.com