Chicago 8th Grader Says She Was Made To Draw Pro-Nazi Poster

Chicago IL

10 March, 2022

12:44 AM

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By Louis Keene, The Forward March 10, 2022 It was a decidedly perplexing social studies assignment, even before Gladys Shelby's teacher told her she didn't have to draw swastikas to get a good grade. As part of a unit on the Holocaust, Shelby, an eighth grader at Eliza Chappell Elementary, a public school in Chicago, had to design her own Nazi propaganda poster. Shelby is the only Jewish student in her class, and she told her teacher the assignment made her uncomfortable. The teacher's response didn't help. "Obviously, I didn't just mean drawing a swastika," Shelby said. "I meant writing hate speech towards my people." Gladys Shelby, 14, had to make Nazi propaganda posters for a social studies assignment. Assigned Feb. 24, the poster project was the latest of a series of off-putting moments during the unit, and the final straw for Shelby's mom, Scarlett Herrin, who then contacted the teacher seeking an explanation. She expected the teacher to apologize and to commit to removing the lesson from the curriculum. Instead, the teacher said the students who drew the posters had misunderstood the assignment. The Chicago school system is now looking into the incident, and, according to Herrin, the principal acknowledged Monday that the teacher made a mistake and informed her that Shelby can expect a letter of apology. But Herrin said the school's slow response compounded Shelby's distress over the assignment, and led some other students to blame her daughter, mistakenly, for trying to get their popular teacher fired. The teacher, Tiffanie Reschke, did not respond to a request for a comment. The school's principal, Joseph Peila, directed questions about the incident to a Chicago school district spokesperson. "Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is committed to fostering safe and supportive learning environments that celebrate, honor, and respect all members of our diverse school community," the spokesperson, Brian Evans, wrote in an email. "The District is investigating this matter." In an interview, Shelby described the teacher's approach to Holocaust education as "troubling." The class read an excerpt from "Mein Kampf" and had to answer questions about it — unusual in American schools — and never complemented Hitler's book with any Jewish Holocaust literature, such as "Maus" or "The Diary of Anne Frank." Considering her Jewish background was well-known in the class, Shelby thought she might be called on to offer her perspective. Her classmates, she said, frequently glanced at her as the Holocaust was discussed. But when she tried to pitch in, she said Reschke would undermine her. "I'd say something about 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, because she's never once said that," Shelby said. "If I said something like that, she'd be like, so were a lot of other people." Shelby thought she might be called on to offer a Jewish perspective. But when she tried to pitch in, she said the teacher would undermine her. When it came to the propaganda poster, which was a group assignment, some of her non-Jewish classmates were offended, too. Shelby said a Black classmate told her that if she had received such an assignment about Black people, she would have left the school over it. Another classmate texted her that they felt guilty about having done the assignment. Herrin, 34, said that on a phone call the next day, the teacher told her that the lesson came from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and that the students had misunderstood what was supposed to be an assignment creating informational boards about the effects of Nazi propaganda. "Two separate units of class that are not together did the same project and over half the posters ended up like" Nazi propaganda, Herrin said. "It's just like, you're scapegoating the kids." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum does share lesson plans and other teaching materials relating to the Holocaust, including some related to Nazi propaganda. But none listed on its website involves an assignment like the one that Shelby said she received from Reschke, in which students are instructed to make their own antisemitic signs. During the same call, Herrin said Reschke tried to reassure her of her social justice bona fides by informing her that she had adopted Black children, an assertion Herrin found irrelevant and dismissive. When she escalated her concerns to the school's administration, she said Peila, the principal, was out of office, and the vice-principal did not take action. Peila scheduled a meeting with Herrin and Reschke upon his return. But Reschke called in sick the day of the meeting, and the meeting was not rescheduled even after the teacher returned to class a few days later, Herrin said. Instead, Herrin met with the principal on Monday without Reschke there. That meeting, Herrin said, went well: Peila acknowledged the teacher's mistake and said an apology letter from Reschke would be forthcoming. But she said that the teacher's four-day absence — and her proclamation to students upon her return that she wasn't being fired — caused some of Shelby's classmates to believe she was trying to get the teacher fired. "Had they addressed this immediately, I think we would not be having this conversation," Herrin said. "We would have said, 'Oh, this was a mistake,' but instead, the teacher dug her heels in initially, and then it turned into this." As for the posters, they were still in Reschke's possession as of Tuesday. Herrin said the principal assured her they would not be graded. The incident recalls a Holocaust lesson at a Washington public school in December, when a library instructor had third-graders reenact Nazi killings in pretend gas chambers and mass graves and had a Jewish student play Hitler. That teacher, who was not publicly identified, allegedly made antisemitic comments during the period, saying that "the Jews ruined Christmas." The teacher was placed on leave by the school for an unknown length of time. The Forward, founded in 1897, is an independent, nonprofit digital newsroom hosting and driving the American Jewish conversation. Sign up for our free daily newsletter of Jewish news, culture and opinion; follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; and click here to support Jewish journalism with a donation.