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Roughly 60 people, including parents, teachers, and students, spoke during the Sequoia Union High School District Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday night, Jan. 17, many in support of an ethnic studies teacher who is accused of teaching a one-sided, biased and anti-semitic lesson plan about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war to her students in early November.
Chloe Gentile-Montgomery taught a controversial lesson at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton on Nov. 3. Around half of the people who spoke during the public comment portion of the Wednesday meeting supported Gentile-Montgomery, who teaches ethnic studies and U.S. history at M-A.
Her lesson plan on the Israel-Hamas conflict has led to a petition calling for the school district to “ensure students are not subjected to discrimination and indoctrination from an educator who seems intent on spreading her biases to students from her position of power as their teacher,” according to the petition.
The petition accuses Gentile-Montgomery of being biased by teaching a lesson plan propagated by anti-Semitism. But tensions rose during Wednesday’s meeting from the personal harassment Gentile-Montgomery received fueling a divided response from the community.
‘Counter narratives’
“The main intention of the lesson was to address the questions my students were asking and teach them how to look at the news in general. There are several different perspectives and narratives, and we need to look at multiple sources to understand what is happening,” Gentile-Montgomery said. “In the lesson, I wasn’t asking (the students) to conclude the conflict; we were just looking at the news, which was the main idea, and we were identifying dominant and counter-narratives.”
The lesson plan appeared in a petition calling for the termination of Gentile-Montgomery, which received more than 500 signatures in support, according to Dr. Tabia Lee, director of the Coalition for Empowered for Education. The organization directs its donations to the nonprofit Jewish Institute for Liberal Values. The petition explains how the lesson plan is biased.
While Lee doesn’t have a child in Gentile-Montgomery’s classroom, she is concerned the lesson was inaccurate, outside the realm of the California Education Code’s curriculum and had an anti-Semitic bias. Her goal is to inform and educate the public, Lee said.
Images of a puppet on strings and a map of Palestine’s territory shrinking over the decades were pictured on the lesson plan and noted as offensive by multiple community members like Noah Glaser, who said the lesson appeared one-sided and inaccurate.
“The imagery of the Jewish puppet master controlling the world was just one of the images that was unironically displayed in this one-sided lesson that essentially reduced millions of people,” Glaser said.
While Gentile-Montgomery said she apologizes for the image of the “puppet master” on the lesson’s slide, she said it was a lesson created by another teacher who taught a more extended version.
“I didn’t look at it close enough and see how that would relate, but in no way was I trying to say Israelis control the media or anything like that,” Gentile-Montgomery said. “It was more an image of people in power, but I feel bad for that and could see how that can be misconstrued.”
She added that she doesn’t need to turn in a weekly lesson plan to be reviewed, and she is free to teach the curriculum as she feels fits best.
‘Publicly attacked’
During the Wednesday meeting, multiple people mentioned that other teachers weren’t scrutinized to the same degree as Gentile-Montgomery, attributing her treatment as unfair because she is Black.
Gentile-Montgomery echoed those comments, adding that she is the only Black credentialed teacher at the school.
Instead, students like Ebony Freeman said she is disappointed in the school’s administration for not sticking up for Gentile-Montgomery when they have stuck up for other teachers accused of worse behavior.
“I am standing on behalf of my teacher, who I have watched be bullied, cyberattacked, stalked and overall not defended by almost everyone in the community and it makes me sick,” Freeman said. “If you feel offended by the slides, that is your right, and I will not stop you from expressing yourself. However, there is a line that all of you have crossed, and that can not be defended.”
In November, Gentile-Montgomery said she was harassed incessantly via e-mail, her school mailbox and was surprised by “disturbing images” that were posted outside her classroom.
Colleague Melissa Díaz, who teaches ethnic studies at Sequoia High School and also helps develop the ethnic studies curriculum for the district, said she wrote a letter to support Gentile-Montgomery. The letter received more than 300 signatures, 140 of which come from staff and alums of the district, Díaz said.
““”We ask the board to make a public statement that condemns the harassment of teachers and develop a protocol to support when teachers are being publicly attacked,” Díaz said. “The message, absent a statement from the board of administration, is that teachers shouldn’t teach lessons on Israel or Palestine out of fear of retribution from community members with political agendas. This sets a dangerous precedent for our ability to engage students and current events and threatens our ability to prepare students to participate in a democracy.”
‘The message, absent a statement from the board of administration, is that teachers shouldn’t teach lessons on Israel or Palestine out of fear of retribution from community members with political agendas. This sets a dangerous precedent for our ability to engage students and current events and threatens our ability to prepare students to participate in a democracy.’
Sequoia High teacher Melissa Díaz
When asked to comment on the circumstances surrounding the controversy, Arthur Wilkie, SUSHD public information officer, did not address the question. Instead, he said the district is dedicated to educating its nearly 9,000 students.
Gentile-Montgomery took a leave of absence from teaching on Nov. 20 for mental health reasons. She said she plans to return to work when she feels safe.
“I just miss my kids,” Gentile-Montgomery said.
The Oct. 7 Hamas attack killed around 1,200 people and captured about 250 hostages, most of whom were civilians, according to the Associated Press.
The AP reported on Jan. 15 that 100 days into the war, Palestinian officials said the death toll in the area has surpassed 24,000.