A Michiana mom says a school lesson plan went too far and now she says her daughter is afraid to go back to school.
Risa Howard says her daughter came home from school crying Friday and she was surprised to find out why.
Howard says her 2nd grade daughter was really upset about a lesson the school says was about bullying.
"She said, 'let me have all my purple dots in the front row and all my red dots, you guys have to go in the back,'" says Seven Year Old Alonna Howard about her experience at school.
Alonna says her teacher at South Side Elementary School divided the class, giving half the students red dots and the other half purple dots.
Alonna got a red dot, so she says she was denied special privileges.
"We went to the small bathroom. We had a small drinking fountain and the kids that got to go to the big stalls they got a big drinking fountain, we got a small," says Alonna.
Alonna told her mom she perceived the different treatment to be about race.
Alonna says she was so upset about the treatment, she started crying and her mother wasn't happy.
"Makes me mad. Then when she doesn't want to go back to school, and she's begging me today not to go to school and crying in the office telling the principal that she doesn't want to be there," says Alonna's mom, Risa Howard.
Howard herself met with the school's principal Tuesday.
We talked with Superintendent Wayne Stubbs who tells us the lesson wasn't about race it was about bullying.
He says it was based off of the popular Dr. Seuss book The Sneetches.
The book is said to be a satire on discrimination.
Stubbs says the teacher has used the lesson plan for 12 years and it is appropriate for second graders.
Howard just doesn't see it that way.
"It's one thing to teach them about it or read a story or watch the movie, but not to use my kid as an experiment or an example of it," says Howard.
Some other Concord Community Schools parents say the lesson taught the opposite of what it should teach.
"Honestly I'm livid about the situation. Children should not be segregated. They should not be taught how to bully each other. We have been teaching our children for years to treat everyone equal and all this lesson did was teach our children to bully others," says Autumn Morris who has children in Concord Community Schools.
Superintendent Stubbs says that he stands by the lesson, and that teacher will continue to use it. He did say though that it might be tweaked in the future.
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