Meet Kayla Renee Parker, a UT student who, in her blog, wrote about how she challenged her professor about a question on her quiz which got marked wrong, and in the end, the whole ordeal cost the professor her job.
The test question was,”Historical research on African-American families during slavery shows that:” and Parker marked C which read “black family bonds were destroyed by the abuses of slave owners, who regularly sold off family members to other slave owners.” The answer, according to the professor, was D which read “most slave families were headed by two parents.”
Parker then expressed that she was concerned about how her history was being portrayed in class.
The disagreement began when Parker says she got the question wrong and asked her professor for more research. She says there were arguments over email, in the hallway, and she presented her take on the makeup of African American families during slavery in front of the class.
Parker says things just kept escalating.
“Had the question been as is and I had received a response that proved to me she was listening, and she was trying to hear, and she would do some additional research, research that didn’t come from textbooks in the 1960s and 70s, I would’ve been totally satisfied.” “I will always want to speak truths to power if it brings this kind of outcome,” Parker later added.
She did have one final thing to say to her professor, “I wanted to have one final thing to say to her and it was that I forgive you for taking my focus last semester,” said Parker.“I don’t forgive you though for being willfully ignorant while teaching students because it’s incredibly irresponsible,” she said.
Her professor, who has remained unnamed, was fired back in April, however, she is still being paid out through her contract which ends in July.