In mid to late March, a social studies teacher at Hampton Middle School in Hampton, Georgia asked his students to write a “letter to the lawmakers” in order to “pressure [them] to have stricter gun laws in the United States.”
Blue Lives Matter, which was first to report the story, gave us permission to use the image they obtained of the assignment:
[[{“fid”:”31912″,”view_mode”:”default”,”fields”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:”Gun control assignment.”,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:”Image via Blue Lives Matter”},”type”:”media”,”field_deltas”:{“1”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:”Gun control assignment.”,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:”Image via Blue Lives Matter”}},”attributes”:{“alt”:”Gun control assignment.”,”title”:”Image via Blue Lives Matter”,”class”:”media-element file-default”,”data-delta”:”1″}}]]
R.A.F.T Paper
Role of the writer: You are a concerned student at Hampton Middle School.
Audience: You are writing to the lawmakers of the United States.
Format: You are writing a letter.
Topic: You are trying to persuade lawmakers to have stricter gun laws to help prevent another school shooting from taking place.
For this assignment, you are writing a letter to the lawmakers of the United States. The purpose of this letter [is] to pressure lawmakers to have stricter gun laws in the United States. Your letter should contain at least five complete sentences. Make sure that you use proper grammatical skills when writing your letter.
When William Lee, a parent of one of the Hampton Middle School students, saw the assignment after asking his son about his social studies homework, he was troubled.
Speaking with Fox News, Lee said: “My biggest concern was, what was the intent of the assignment? You know, I found out that it didn’t have anything to with what they were supposed to be learning in that social studies class … it only gave them one perspective from which to write, and that in itself I didn’t think was appropriate.”
Lee added that he was also concerned because he didn’t know if the letters were actually going to be sent to anyone.
When asked how the teacher, Corey Sanders, reacted when Lee told him that his son wouldn’t be handing in the assignment, Lee replied: “He said it was ok, that my son would not receive any negative grade.”
The Daily Wire reached out to Hampton Middle School, as well as Sanders personally, for comment. As of publication, we have received no response.
Fox News did receive a comment from the Henry County School District, which reads in part: “We do not condone the actions that transpired. It has been handled appropriately with the teacher to ensure they know this is not acceptable and won’t happen again.” The district added, “We would never approve of a politically biased assignment or directive given by a teacher.”