We must insist teachers show ethical fitness in and out of classroom

A Springfield kindergarten teacher’s social media posts with violent language have sparked community concern.
The guest opinion argues that identity-safe classrooms are essential for children to feel secure enough to learn.
Educators have an ethical responsibility to prevent harm and create an inclusive environment for all students.
Recent local reporting has raised serious concerns about a kindergarten teacher at Maple Elementary School in Springfield whose social media posts included violent and dehumanizing language directed at immigrants, Muslims, disabled people, and political opponents. The school district has responded, as it should. But the larger question before our community is not only how one employee is disciplined. It is what we believe children in Lane County are owed when they enter a public classroom.
Kindergarten is not a neutral space. It is often a child’s first sustained encounter with authority outside the family, their first experience of whether school is a place where they are safe to belong. For 5-year-olds, safety is not an abstract policy goal. It is something they feel in their bodies — in tone of voice, facial expression, word choice, and silence.
This is why identity-safe schools matter.
The idea of identity safety is not ideological or new. It grows out of decades of research on stereotype threat by social psychologist Claude Steele, which demonstrated how learning and performance are undermined when students fear being judged through negative stereotypes about their identity. Building on this work, educators Dorothy Steele and Becki Cohn-Vargas developed the framework of identity safety to describe what classrooms look like when those threats are actively reduced — through affirming relationships, inclusive practices, and clear signals that every child belongs. Identity safety is not about lowering standards; it is about creating the conditions in which all students can meet them.
An identity-safe classroom is one where a child does not have to hide or downplay who they are in order to learn — whether that identity involves race, language, religion, disability, immigration history, family structure, or gender expression. Identity safety is not about politics. It is about whether a child’s nervous system can settle enough for learning to occur.
When an educator publicly expresses violent hostility toward entire groups of people, the issue is not whether they can “separate personal views from professional duties.” Teaching is not a mechanical task. It is a relational practice. Children — especially young children — are constantly reading adults for cues about who is valued and who is suspect. They learn who is safe long before they learn how to read.
This moment calls Springfield and Lane County to look beyond compliance and toward ethical responsibility.
Oregon has long prided itself on inclusive values in education. Districts are required to follow equity policies, anti-discrimination laws, and professional standards of conduct. In Oregon, educators are held to professional and ethical standards overseen by the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, which emphasize dignity, equity, and the obligation to protect students from harm — principles that must be lived, not just written. Policies alone do not create safety. Ethical teaching requires more than technical skill; it requires an awareness of power.
For years, educators have emphasized culturally responsive teaching — recognizing students’ cultural backgrounds as strengths rather than deficits. That work remains essential. But the present moment demands something more explicit: ethically responsive teaching.
Ethically responsive teaching begins with a simple premise: educators hold immense power over children, and power carries moral obligation. It asks teachers to examine not only how they teach, but how their beliefs, fears, and unexamined assumptions shape the learning environment — especially for students already made vulnerable by history, policy, or public rhetoric.
This is not about ideological litmus tests or thought policing. It is about harm prevention. Schools do not exist outside society’s violences — but they are not helpless in the face of them either. Classrooms can reproduce harm, or they can interrupt it.
Public schools in Springfield serve children whose families come from many places, speak many languages, worship in different ways, and live with different abilities. For those children, school may be the one place where they should not have to wonder whether an adult sees them as a threat.
A child who is scanning for danger cannot fully attend to letters, numbers, or stories. Identity safety is not an “extra.” It is the precondition for learning.
As a community, we should insist that those entrusted with young children demonstrate not only instructional competence, but ethical fitness for the role — supported by sustained professional learning and clear boundaries that reject dehumanization.
The measure of a school system is not only how it responds to crisis, but how clearly it affirms that every child belongs.
T. Anil Oommen is an assistant professor of education and writer based in Lane County. Oommen is currently on sabbatical in Kerala, India, where religious and linguistic pluralism are part of everyday life.