Washington, D.C. (The Spokesman-Review) A Spanish teacher at West Valley High School was fired after using a racial slur in a passage from To Kill a Mockingbird.
After a video showing Matthew Mastronardi reading a chapter from the classic novel that featured Mastronardi using the N-word went viral online, the superintendent of the West Valley School District asked the school board not to extend Mastronardi’s teaching contract.
In an interview on Friday, Mastronardi stated, “As a literature lover, I wanted to just respect authorial intent.”
He heard a group of his beginning Spanish students on April 17 talking about a book they were given for their freshman English class that had several instances of the slur. Through the eyes of a white youngster whose father is defending a Black man who was wrongfully convicted of raping a white lady, the novel, which is set in 1930s Alabama, examines racism and injustices in the criminal justice system.
The pupils informed Mastronardi that whenever they come across the slur in the text, their English teachers at school pause. When a student requested him to read a chapter that featured the slur, he said that he disagreed and would read it aloud if it were in his class. He was unaware that his voice was being recorded by one of his students.
Although you can still read from a book, I attempted to make it a teaching moment that calling someone this is improper if it’s done in a discriminatory way. Mastronardi stated that it is your right as a reader to do so. Every phrase was carefully chosen by the author to convey the true feelings of the time, and when we remove those words, we disassociate ourselves from her intentions.
Following Mastronardi’s use of the slur, his students can be heard shifting in their seats and giggling in the 8-second footage.
We must face the past. Mastronardi told The Spokesman-Review, “We shouldn’t erase it as some sort of cosmetic guilt to make ourselves feel better about it today.” We must expose it, and we must face it. We must research it. We must give it some thought. We must comprehend it. I wanted to do it for that reason.
A West Valley student who was active in the association’s youth council contacted the Spokane chapter of the NAACP to the event. According to Jaime Stacey, the vice president of the NAACP Spokane chapter, the word’s usage prioritizes whiteness and white people’s perceptions of its use, which is insensitive to the feelings and experiences of Black students at West Valley and the larger community.
According to Stacey, the teacher’s lack of cultural humility is extremely concerning for the Black pupils under their supervision in their classroom. Beyond awareness, cultural respect necessitates responsibility, introspection, and a readiness to decenter oneself in situations where harm is known to occur, such as a classroom.
Mastronardi was in his third year of teaching Spanish at the Millwood school as a temporary employee of the school district. According to state legislation, a teacher’s contract may not be renewed by the district administration during the first three years of employment.
After exchanging disciplinary documents and Mastronardi’s rebuttals, the district gave him notice of nonrenewal on May 7 for a number of reasons, including parental concerns, bad judgment, and doubts about your capacity to be a positive role model for pupils.
Mastronardi shared his incident on Twitter on Wednesday, and it received over 2 million views. He was also highlighted by a number of media outlets. He claimed that the district placed him on administrative leave and prevented him from attending the final day of classes as a result of the attention. Just across the hall from his brother, Andrew Mastronardi, a Spanish instructor in the West Valley, quit right away.
He said he is proud of his brother for sticking to his principles in the face of professional criticism, calling his nonrenewal unfair and an overreaction. He has been a teacher for seven years, but he is unsure about his own course of action in the same circumstance.
According to Andrew Mastronardi, “I’m not sure how I would have done that.” Perhaps I’m not as brave or moral as he would have been.
The high school English department has reached a consensus on how to approach the book, which has been a part of the freshman English curriculum for at least 15 years, according to West Valley Superintendent Kyle Rydell. The word was frequently skipped over or referred to as the N-Word by the English teachers of those years.
Discussions involving such a delicate word, according to Rydell, ought to have remained inside the confines of English schools, where educators are taught to address the slur while taking into account the students and the historical context in which it was used.
According to him, we don’t want instructors who aren’t teaching English Language Arts to take on a paragraph or a subject that isn’t covered in their curriculum since it won’t be done with the same respect as one of our qualified ELA teachers.
Christine Coulston, an eight-year English teacher and previous teaching leader for the English department at West Valley, said her department makes an effort to make sure students are comfortable with the content, including asking parents to let their children skip the novel if they so choose. There was never any such incident in Mastronardi’s classroom.
According to Coulston, who works at the district office, “that’s really important to us, that we’re making sure that we’re bringing in that diversity that’s so important, but also that we’re doing it in a safe way where kids feel heard and understood.”
Although she never used the book in her classes, she claimed that her colleagues always used it sparingly, leaving out the term itself but enclosing it in the lesson that it is disparaging. Without the well-built barriers of her English teacher friends, she wondered why the passage would be discussed in a Spanish class.
At Rogers High, Stacey teaches leadership as well. As a teacher, she has been asked to speak in English classes about the book and the dangers of that particular word. While she acknowledged the importance of To Kill a Mockingbird in teaching history, she suggested it would be more acceptable to either use the shorter word or refrain from using it altogether.
Since that word was used to demean a whole group of people, hearing it spoken, especially in its nonslang form, causes some degree of trauma and harm, according to Stacey.
One student initiated an online petition to reinstate Mastronardi after learning that he was out at West Valley. As of Saturday night, it had amassed more than 2,000 signatures from both inside and beyond the West Valley. In response to his job loss, Mastronardi also launched an online campaign, which as of Saturday night had raised roughly $5,000.
The Mastronardi brothers’ departure caused some students to become outraged. Chance Dharo, a sophomore, compared Matthew Mastronardi to a father figure who gave him life lessons that went beyond Spanish.
He said something that might have completely altered my perspective: Is it true? And is it really necessary to say it? Dharo added that he considers his words before speaking.
The brothers are unsure of their next course of action and intend to protest the school board’s decision at their upcoming meeting, which will take place at the school district office on June 25 at 8 a.m. The board will consider Rydell’s suggestion that Mastronardi’s contract not be renewed. They will miss the job where they worked directly across the hall from one another, although claiming that their strong Christian faith gives them comfort in knowing that God is in control of every circumstance.
Matthew Mastronardi has no remorse for what he did.
“I have a clear conscience,” he declared.
