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Teacher trying to salvage her name

A Springstead High teacher who nearly lost her job after accusations of racism says her interests and actions belie the claims.

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
Published July 17, 2005

LAKE PANASOFFKEE - As she hurries from one small room to another in her tiny house near the edge of the lake, Deborah St. John rarely mentions the paintings of birds or her faded furniture. She wants to talk about her books.

Dozens of books are stacked everywhere - on shelves, on chairs, on the ground. A copy of a recent New Yorker magazine, a stack of magazines about mythology and another cluster of books dominate her sofa table. In her bedroom, a huge tower of hundreds of books climbs more than halfway to the ceiling.

Look, she says, pointing out Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, a praised novel about race. It's in a stack with Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night. She points out a book of Holocaust poetry, with numerous poems bookmarked by thin paper slips.

Then there are her Jonathan Kozol books about racial inequalities in education. And The Souls of Black Folk, a book by W.E.B. Du Bois, a man who helped found the NAACP.

Are these the kinds of books that a racist would own? St. John doesn't think so.

Still, she has been accused of that by some students who said she told them that black students should apply to black colleges and read books by black authors. Now St. John is fighting for her reputation.

Top school district officials responded to the accusations by making St. John sign a "last chance agreement" in April so she could keep her job as an English teacher at Springstead High School. She was also suspended with pay for three days and without pay for seven days.

St. John said everyone told her to keep quiet after the agreement. Ignore the publicity and stain in the personnel file and just get on with life, they said.

But St. John says she wanted to get her side out so people could know what kind of person she really is.

St. John, 47, has curly brown hair, wears big glasses and speaks with a soft voice. She moved to Lake Panasoffkee, in Sumter County, because she loves nature. During an interview with the Times on Thursday, she wore a green T-shirt tucked into blue jeans as she talked about her respect for books and other cultures.

She said she gave up lunch periods last school year to tutor a Chinese student. She helped Middle Eastern teachers at Hernando High with their English a few years ago.

"These are not the acts of a racist teacher," St. John said.

St. John began her account of the events that nearly led to her firing by talking about her family and childhood. She says her best friends growing up in suburban Maryland came from Israel and Poland, and she has "always been curious about other cultures."

As a member of the high-IQ society Mensa International who studied Latin and ancient Greek in college, St. John had the credentials to go far in Hernando schools. Since 1993, she has held various teaching jobs in the county, including a position at Hernando High School.

Throughout that time, St. John said, she never had complaints about the lesson that several of her freshman English students at Springstead took issue with last year.

She had taught the lesson for 20 years, using pretty much the same words every time, St. John said. It had been suggested to her by a black teacher.

In the lesson, she asked students to write letters to colleges. She says she encouraged black students to write to at least one historically black college and female students to write at least one letter to an all-women college. St. John said she wanted students to take "a look outside the mainstream colleges."

But St. John said two black girls in the class protested, and insisted on being called "African-American." She said both girls disliked her and wanted out of the class because she separated them after they "had been caught cheating."

"They were very blatant about it," she said.

St. John says she sets high standards for students, even ones taking lower-level English classes. She points out a zero she gave on one assignment, admonishing the student for not using complete sentences in her answers.

One girl "got bent out of shape," St. John said. The other girl "called me a racist, . . . was very very in my face."

Soon, the parents of the two girls started complaining, St. John said. She noted that three assistant principals at Springstead had dismissed various complaints against her.

But complaints persisted, St. John said. And she says she dealt with other problems as well.

St. John said she got lewd phone calls at home. A student followed her around Publix singing "There will always be racists." Another black student she couldn't identify shouted obscene names at her at a gas station.

"These two little girls were trying to fan it as much as possible," St. John said.

St. John's case was eventually referred to top school district officials this spring. The district's investigative file includes written accounts of what happened from various students in her class, though it withholds the names of students.

The accounts differ in some details. But the main grievance revolved around St. John's assignment in which she told black students to write to a black school. Several students said that St. John argued when they complained about her use of the term "black." She told them that she used that word while growing up.

Parents had even more detailed complaints. They accused her of discussing "different shades of skin color" and "relations with slaves."

Those allegations were bogus, she said, but the growing stack of complaints made her feel she was "being railroaded."

District officials responded by assessing a stiff penalty. In addition to the suspension and "last chance agreement," they required St. John to complete various types of training, including sensitivity training.

St. John said she could not comment on the judgment of district officials, but added that she could not afford to challenge the district with a lengthy legal battle. She does, however, feel free to comment on the students' accusations.

"I just feel like . . . I've really been put through it," St. John said.

Still, she also believes that the two girls didn't know the impact their accusations would have on her life. She thinks they just wanted to be transferred to another class because she was a tough teacher.

"I don't think these little girls ever wanted it to go this far," St. John said. "I don't think they expected this."

Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or 352 848-1431.

[Last modified July 17, 2005, 01:05:20]