BY NATASHA BARSOTTI — A middle-school teacher in Mexico has been fired after screening the film Milk for her students in a class addressing sexual orientation and human rights, Queerty reports.
Cecilia Hernandez, a civics teacher at Lomas Hill School in Cuajimalpa, showed her seventh- and eighth-grade students 30 minutes of the film, whose screening, she says, was included in an approved lesson plan. But school administrators said the Oscar-winning film about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the US, was much too adult.
Mexican news website Proceso says Hernandez claims to have chosen the film after her students, who were presented with other options, decided they wanted to see Milk because it is based on a true story. The report also says that Hernandez advised her pupils before starting the film that it contained scenes that could make them uncomfortable.
The following day she was escorted by two security guards to the principal’s office and was told she was fired. In an email, principal Annette Muench de Labardini reportedly told Hernandez that the “lack of tact and the disrespect you have shown students today is unforgiveable.” She said she also felt disrespected since the lesson plan “did not say you were showing this filth.”
Hernandez has filed a complaint with the national discrimination board even though she says she doesn’t want her job back.
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