Teacher’s ‘War Dance’ Prompts PETA Offer of Popular Lessons in Understanding

The TeachKind Kit Helps Educators and Students Appreciate ‘Otherness’ and Challenge Assumptions

For Immediate Release:
October 22, 2021

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

After students at John W. North High School filmed a teacher seeming to mock Native Americans by chanting and dancing in headgear, PETA’s humane education division, TeachKind, sent a letter to the school principal today, urging her to implement TeachKind’s free social justice curriculum designed to encourage empathy toward others—regardless of race, gender, sexual identity, age, ability, or species.

“TeachKind’s resources help educators set an example of compassion for everyone,” says PETA Senior Director of Youth Programs Marta Holmberg. “These lessons can help teach young people how to reject oppression and bigotry and be more open to getting along with ‘others’ of all kinds.”

In its letter, TeachKind notes that developing empathy for animals can be a key step toward rejecting In its letter, TeachKind notes that developing empathy for animals can be a key step toward rejecting discrimination and violence against all sentient beings, including humans from other cultural backgrounds and religions. With bullying and youth violence rampant in school communities today, it’s vital that educators be equipped with the tools and training to encourage students to embrace diversity.

TeachKind—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit TeachKind.org or follow the group on Facebook or Instagram.