The incident happened on September 30 at the Barnett Junior High School. Bunn was quickly put on paid leave and will be able to resume her duties after an investigation from the school district.
Shirley Bunn, has admitted that her insensitive remark was not a slip-of-the-tongue, but that she was provoked into making it, by a student who, with a history of bad behavior in class, was repeatedly interrupting it, thereby wasting his time, her time and everyone else’s time.
Bunn was distributing Title 1 forms to her eight grade students and one disruptive student kept telling her “I’m Mexican. I’m Mexican” and requesting the form in Spanish. Bunn claims that she then told the student that a Spanish-language form was available in the office. But the student kept saying “I’m Mexican”.
Bunn quickly told the student “Go back to Mexico”.
Her statement, “”It was almost instantaneous. I thought, ‘God, I don’t believe that came out of my mouth,” prove that she regretted making that remark – also that she was at the fag-end of a very hard week only made her irritation more and resulted in her aberrant reaction.
Bunn, a two time winner of the “Teacher of the Year” award, says that she immediately regretted saying those words. Last week Jess Rickman III, an examiner of the Independent Hearing Examiner, said in a 23-page opinion that Bunn should be allowed to keep her job. But his report is just a recommendation and Bunn’s fate will be decided by the school board next month.
Should the teacher get her job back? Let us know what you think.