“Republicans are worse than Satan worshippers”- GHAPS teacher . GHAPS shifts left of center.

In 2018, GHAPS hired a speaker, by the name of Calvin Terrell, to come "train our high school and middle school students" under the guise of “Anti bullying”. Calvin Terrell, who was paid roughly $15k by GHAPS, makes his living off CRT propaganda (white privilege narratives, anti police, military, fireman narratives and down with the patriarchy etc). You can search his name and find him online or look at his social media business page to see what he espouses.

In 2018, He dressed like a Shaman, had long dread locks , and claimed he was from the streets of Kansas City. I investigated his claims and found that both his parents were, in fact, highly educated doctors. He grew up economically privileged and attended college. His father and mother divorced and his father moved to California to practice medicine there. His mother married a white man. He was not raised as an underprivileged black man from the south.

When I found out he was coming to “train our high school and middle school students”, I was curious who he was, so I looked him up and found his business page on Facebook under “Calvin Terrell: Consultant, speaker, Trainer & Soul Warrior. (It is, as of this blog entry a fb page with the heading “decolonize”). His current website can be found here:

https://www.calvinterrell.com/?fbclid=IwAR19SLUna4YeizfsYjIJQ3vTD6QFgIIj--ziRUE0okAvVmYJVROyvrqVX18

and here:

https://www.facebook.com/officialCalvinTerrell/about

I also came across a problem he had in Massachusettes at a school assembly where he created trauma in the students with autism…here is a glimpse of that story

Here is their news story on the event:

https://www.eagnews.org/2014/10/unvetted-radical-anti-bullying-speaker-leaves-middle-schoolers-very-traumatized/

In 2018, when I trying to understand who the person coming to “train” our kids was, I was shocked to see statements like this on his business page :

I had shared these screen shots of this person coming to train our kids and they started circulating among parents. Parents started calling the school and opting their kids out of the assembly. At one point, a friends middle school child at Lakeshore came home and said her teacher read an email that let them know these things weren’t true and that their parents were lying, effectively throwing the parents under the bus to their own kids.

I called Lakeshore middle school to ask if the kids were told their parents were lying to their own children about Calvin Terrell. The secretary told me she “hoped so”. When I told her they weren’t lying and the screenshots were accurate, that I had shared them…she transferred me to Mary Jane Evink. Mary Jane had emailed the teachers telling them to read this notification to their students that the things shared about the upcoming speaker weren’t true. There was one glaring problem. They WERE true.

Later, when I pressed Mary Jane Evink on this issue of telling the students their parents were lying to them, another parent and I, during a meeting with her and now alleged embezzler Brian Wheeler, were told that she had spoken with Calvin Terrell about this. Then she looked me straight in the face and told me that Calvin Terrell’s Facebook business page had been hacked by Russian bots. I was speechless for a moment at the discernment of the woman in front of me telling me one of the most absurd things I’ve ever heard in my life, and the realization that she was in charge of my kids curriculum.

It should be noted, that because of the community uproar about bringing this speaker in to train our kids, parents were invited to a Calvin Terrell Q&A to ask questions. There was great scrutiny over what would unfold. Waiting for that event, I was standing in the hallway waiting, when a teacher, not knowing who I was, had a conversation with me. He said “I’m just waiting for all the parents with tiki torches to show up”. He must have had a stereotypical image in his mind of what any parent who was concerned over Calvin Terrell might look like and I didn’t fit that stereotype. When I asked why he would think that and told him who I was, he got very uncomfortable and told me he wasn’t allowed to speak to me and excused himself. During the Q &A assembly, two large women with purple hair screamed “You’re a Nazi!” at me. I found it amusing because I’m Jewish.

Another parent and I asked to be part of the assembly audience and were initially denied. We pressed until they would allow only two of ten parents that were asking to attend. Because of the intense scrutiny, Calvin did drop a few things here and there knocking Christianity and saying things like “America, land of the free home of the brave, more like land of the thief, home of the slave”. But he intermingled those sentiments with fun antibullying segments for the kids and mostly strayed from his white privilege narrative.

My high school son received a special invitation to be “trained” by Calvin Terrell in a closed session with other handpicked students. My son declined.

Now, the prior fall season , my son, who was 16 years old at the time, was in the young republicans club at GH high school. It was a small group that struggled to find a teacher to sponsor them.

That fall, seven months before the Calvin Terrell assembly, he was walking through a neighborhood handing out Republican campaign fliers for his club. He saw a former teacher he'd had during 8th grade standing outside on his lawn. My son was walking by and said hello, then handed his former teacher a campaign flier . The teacher was shocked and asked my son if it was a joke. My son responded he was a Republican, in the young republicans club at school, and they were “stumping” for the upcoming election .

The teacher proceeded to tell him how much he hated republicans. In fact, he said, he hated republicans SO much, that, he had a daughter, and it was his preference that he’d rather she date a Satan worshipper than a republican.

My son realizing that he was now worse than a Satan worshiper in this former teachers eyes responded “well, okay, it was nice to see you”. And then he went on his way.

Later that day, he relayed the story to me. I didn't think much of it except for what an idiot this teacher must be to say something so ridiculous to a student and that I was proud of my son in the way he’d handled it.

The next spring, when parents were concerned over Calvin Terrell being brought “to train their kids” and they were started calling the schools and excusing their kids from attending, it was well known to teachers and my name was out there for sharing the screenshots of Calvin Terrell. The Lakeshore teachers, of which this teacher worked, knew what was going on and knew who I was.

That SAME teacher, who implied my son was worse than a Satan worshipper, actually came to the highschool just days ahead of the Calvin Terrell assembly, found my son in his classroom, and in front of all of his classmates said " hey you're going to the Calvin Terrell assembly right?" My son said "I'm not sure, why?" and his teacher said in front of the classroom of students "Because you're the republican, and you , of all people, should be the one going to this assembly". This assembly was sold as an antibullying assembly. My son had NEVER had an issue bullying anyone, in fact he's a super nice kid and would be the first to help someone out with special needs or a person other people didn't like...his younger brothers were in the special needs program for years and my son is just sincerely a nice person.

When in talks with Mary Jane, I relayed this experience to her, she told me I was lying. Then she asked the teacher and he admitted it. Andy Ingall , our superintendent called me and asked if I EXPECTED an apology. I did not think it was my position to demand an apology...I told him I really just wanted them to to have adults who run our schools recognize how wrong that was and then perhaps they could work with faculty to ensure stuff like that didn't happen again, that they would hold faculty accountable for saying stuff like that. I suspect that never happened because I never heard from them again on that.

I did a FOIA request 2 years later on this incident out of curiosity (2020)...this is the email exchange I was sent on this matter:

I never complained about his teacher being a "liberal" teacher...I did recommend they train faculty to not say things like this to their students because its wrong and they hold a position of authority over their students. I understood, politically, the nation and community was divided and believed it was important to educate our staff on appropriate ways to respond to students. We teach our kids to respect the authorities placed over them, so it’s expected from us, that the teachers won’t bully or abuse their authority. I was attempting to have them enact change to ensure we didn’t cultivate an environment like this for the kids in school and to hold the teachers accountable when they did.

I was alarmed to see them tell the teacher he did nothing wrong because my son took a chance by “putting himself out there”. Then I was equally appalled at the grammar of the woman in charge of my kids curriculum. I have since pulled my kids from the school.

Superintendent Andy Ingall asked me “If I expected an apology”. I did tell him that an apology that is forced isn’t really a true apology. That apology never came and that’s quite alright. I was hoping they would learn from it, hold their teachers accountable, and perhaps train other staff to not do the same. That also never happened. Instead, staff got more heavy doses of left wing CRT professional development training. It caused their choir director to quit.