Having taught in public high schools for 33 years, I can say without a doubt that Fitzgibbons had no business teaching in any school. I had students of every race, socioeconomic class, sex, sexual orientation, etc, and I thought they were all deserving of the best education they could receive.

A few years before I retired, I had a white female student who came to the school to do some substitute teaching. I remembered her, but I had no idea of the impact I had had on her until she showed up in my classroom one day after classes ended. She told me she’d married, her “preacher” husband had been very abusive to her and their kids, so she divorced him and decided to go to college. One of her professors had asked why she’d decided to go to college at her age, and she told him what I’d told her and my other students years before—-that they could do whatever they wanted to do if they were willing to invest the time and effort into it. It brought tears to my eyes because I had no idea that she, or any of the other students, understood what I was trying to tell them.

Now, as many of you know, I’m a black female. If I’d had the same attitude toward some of my students that Karen Fitzgibbons appears to have toward some of hers, this former student would not have come back to the school to credit me with making a difference in her life. No way this would have happened. The young lady is now in medical school and doing well, and I’m very proud of her. Teachers should be in the business of building students’ self-esteem, and not in the business of telling them they can’t be successful because of who they are, their race, their parents, or their adverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Stereotyping and scapegoating should not be something any teacher engages in, whether s/he teaches in a public/private school.

I think the Frenship ISD made the right call in firing Karen Fitzgibbons, but I think the district should expect her to file a lawsuit. I can imagine Fitzgibbons is very upset at losing her job, but she has only herself to blame. She permitted her emotions to outweigh her commonsense and went to a public forum to reveal her true feelings about black kids, lumped them all in the same category, and let her hatred of them fly, unfettered.

She might be able to get some assistance with her lawsuit, if she’s a NEA or AFT member, but something tells me she may not be affiliated with these organizations because in some states, they’re considered to be unions. If Fitzgibbons is a right-winger, I can’t see her wanting to have anything to do with a union, so she’s probably not a member of either organization. If not, she can expect zero support from either organization if she files a lawsuit against FISD. Although I was a teacher in GA, and GA is a right-to-work state, I was a member of NEA because I knew the organization would help pay the costs of a lawsuit if I ever needed it to. Thankfully, I never needed those services.