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During the 2020 fall semester, Kali Fontanilla—a high school English language teacher working in the Salinas, California, school district—noticed that many of her students were failing one of their other classes: ethnic studies. This was at the height of the pandemic, and instruction was entirely online, leaving many students in the lurch. Still, Fontanilla thought it was odd to see so many Fs.

Salinas has a majority Mexican population; all of Fontanilla's students were Hispanic and were learning English as a second language. Education officials who propose adding ethnic studies to various curriculums—and making it mandatory, as the Salinas school district did—typically intend for privileged white students to learn about other cultures. There's a certain irony in requiring members of an ethnic minority to study this, and an even greater irony in the fact that such students were struggling intensely with the course.

"My students are failing ethnic studies," says Fontanilla, who is of Jamaican ancestry. "I would say half of them are failing this ethnic studies class."

This made Fontanilla curious about what the course was teaching. All of the high school's teachers used the same online platform to post lesson plans and course materials, so Fontanilla decided to take a look. She was shocked by what she saw.

"This was like extreme left brainwashing of these kids," says Fontanilla. "Critical race theory all throughout the lessons, from start to finish. The whole thing."

Critical race theory, or CRT, has become a flashpoint in the debate about what kids ought to be learning in public schools. Originally an obscure, left-wing body of thought that mostly appeared in graduate schools, critics charge it with influencing diversity workshops for major corporations, training seminars for teachers, and even K-12 curricula. Parental concerns about CRT became a major flashpoint in the 2020 Virginia gubernatorial race. After winning the race and taking office, Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin's first act was to ban CRT.

Many adherents of CRT deny that it's taught to primary education students, and the mainstream media have been quick to line up behind such claims. That's why Fontanilla's discovery was so significant.

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Slides from lesson plans provided by Fontanilla confirm that the ethnic studies course references critical race theory by name.

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"The kids don't even want this stuff," says Fontanilla, noting that the ethnic studies course replaced a much more popular health class—in the midst of a pandemic, no less. "Most of them are just like, 'Why do we have to take this class?'"

They would have to direct that question to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state's Democratic-controlled legislature, which decided to mandate ethnic studies for all public schools. Newsom vetoed a previous mandate, which came under fire because the proposed curriculum included "jargon such as 'cisheteropatriarchy' and 'hxrstory,' and refers to capitalism as a form of power and oppression alongside white supremacy and racism," according to Cal Matters.

The legislature re-worked the ethnic studies proposal, and on October 8, 2021, Newsom signed the mandate into law. Beginning with the class of 2030, all public high school students in California will now have enroll in the same sort of course that Fontanilla's students already took.

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Fontanilla decided that district parents had a right to know what was in the curriculum, and took steps to obtain the lesson plans so that she her job would not be at risk if she leaked them. She contacted an attorney for help, but when they finally received the documents, the district had omitted the slides that included the words critical race theory.

She decided to write a letter to the school board in protest of the ethnic studies curriculum. It was read aloud at a meeting on June 22."I do not appreciate constantly being pandered to and treated differently because of the color of my skin, especially since I did not have the freedom to not go along with it," Fontanilla wrote, warning that the curriculum was an attempt at left-wing indoctrination. The statement elicited cheers from other parents attending the meeting. In response, the school board prohibited anti-CRT comments at its next public gathering.

"You know it's something evil when they get so nasty defending it," says Fontanilla.

While she has received much praise for speaking out, Fontanilla has also endured considerable online harassment, including threats of violence. One told her to "have fun being a token black friend to racist conservatives your whole life."

"They're all basically white liberals," she says of the harassers.

Fontanilla had already decided that she could not remain a teacher in the school district; she and her husband decided to move to Florida, where she hoped to find a better job. The twin experiences of remote instruction during the pandemic and race-focused education has left her feeling cold about the teaching profession. She recalls that during the summer of 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, the Salinas administration informed its black teachers—Fontanilla included—that they would be honored with a gift.

The gift, it turned out, was a mask bearing the message: Black Teachers Matter.

"I would never wear it in front of my students," she says. "I think especially if a kid isn't into Black Lives Matter and I'm wearing this Black Teachers Matter mask, that kid automatically knows they can't speak up in my class."

The gift also included an "I Love Being Black" sticker, and a letter with an ancient African greeting that "acknowledges the god in me and stuff like that."

Catherine West Lowry is a senior lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. For the past 13 years, she has taught introductory accounting—a "dry and difficult subject matter," in her words.

To make the class more exciting, Lowry has for years let students make funny videos for extra credit. Some of these have been shown in class. A parody video from 2009 was particularly popular and has resurfaced in subsequent years.

Last semester, when Lowry showed this specific video, many students laughed at it. But at least a few were offended and complained to the administration, which subsequently relieved Lowry of her teaching duties.

The video in question is in the style of the popular Downfall parodies. Downfall, a 2004 German film that depicts the final days of Adolph Hitler and his inner circle, includes an extended scene of Hitler screaming at his subordinates that is rife for parody. People change the subtitles so that Hitler is ranting about something else: Here's a meta example about the parodies themselves, and here's one where Hitler realizes Pokemon aren't real. Lowry's students made one where Hitler is enrolled in the course and receive a bad grade.

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Dean Anne Massey removed Lowry from her teaching position and attended the class's next session to inform students. Many took the news poorly, shouting "bring back [Lowry]." They eventually walked out in protest.

Massey did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the university told the Chronicle that the video was objectively offensive, and had no place in the classroom.

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