A concerned mother from Michigan recently turned to her TikTok account to share the news that her eleven-year-old daughter was the subject of mistreatment at her school.
The child, who had drawn a picture of a pig, was confronted by authority figures at the school who confiscated the drawing because the pig’s stylish tie looked a bit too much like a penis.
Now, mom Sierra Carter is sharing her outrage at her child’s art teacher, who became concerned by the drawing of the pig because of the tie the animal was wearing in the picture.
The drawing, which the eleven-year-old girl entitled “Piggie,” featured the farmyard animal waving its arms. The girl also added a speech bubble with the pig saying, “Hi.” The art teacher at Hanover-Horton Elementary School immediately took offense to the girl’s drawing and confiscated it because they thought the drawing depicted male genitalia.
Since the drawing was confiscated, Sierra Carter has had meetings with the teacher, a social worker, the school principal, as well as the school’s superintendent, but the issue remains on the girl’s permanent record.
The school continues to hold onto the “offensive” drawing to keep it on Carter’s daughter’s record.
Sierra turned to TikTok because she wanted to see if people agreed with her.
And thousands of people did, proclaiming that what the school was doing to the eleven-year-old girl’s drawing was downright “shameful.”
The school’s superintendent, John Denney, called the situation “unfortunate.”
He said that the social media exposure has created a “one-sided narrative that has been created on social media that paints our staff in a negative light.”
In her TikTok video, which has accumulated more than 800,000 views, Sierra speaks candidly to the camera about the situation with her daughter’s drawing at school.
“I got a phone call from my daughter’s teacher – she is in fifth grade; she is 11 years old.
Her teacher told me that my daughter had drawn something inappropriate in the art class and that a little boy had come up to her and made her aware that he thought my daughter drew ‘boy parts’ on her pig project.
“She went over and asked my daughter for all of her papers… My daughter told her teacher straight away that she drew a bow tie.
But the teacher proceeded to take all of her papers from her, and then she said she had to give my daughter’s project to the vice principal of the school.”
Sierra was called in for a meeting.
In her video, she continued:
“I get there this morning, and they take me into a conference room, and I sit down with the teacher and the social worker for the school.
They hand me her art project that was just ‘so offensive,’ and as soon as I look at it, I’m like: ‘Are you fricking kidding me?’
“I literally slammed my hand down on the table, and I said:
‘To be completely frank with you, I am p****ed. Why are we sitting here right now? And why was there a big deal made of this?
It’s a fricking bow tie.’ They tell me that when they gave it to the principal to ask him what his thoughts were on the whole thing, the first thing that he said was ‘write her up.’”
Social media users rallied around the family.
Do you think this fifth-grade girl’s drawing is inappropriate?
