Substitute Teacher Reenacted George Floyd Murder at Minnesota High School

Students said the teacher, who claimed to be a police officer, also said “police brutality isn’t real.”

A Minnesota high school is investigating reports that a substitute English teacher reenacted the murder of George Floyd, restraining a student during class, an email sent to parents and shared with The New York Times said.

The substitute teacher, who taught four classes of 10th- and 12th-grade English students on Monday at Woodbury High School, about eight miles southeast of St. Paul, will be barred from teaching in the district following the episode, the statement said. The teacher’s name and other personal information were not included in the school’s communications.

“This reported behavior is reprehensible,” the principal of Woodbury High School, Sarah Sorenson-Wagner, said in the email message. “I am embarrassed, and I am sorry this happened to our students.”

The substitute teacher, who told students he had been a police officer, told “sexist jokes” and made “racially harmful comments”; gave students “specific names of people he arrested”; and “put a student on the ground in front of the class” in an effort to re-enact the murder of George Floyd, the school said. He also said that “police brutality isn’t real,” according to the school.

Although the teacher spoke in detail about his police work, he had never served as a police officer in the state of Minnesota, the school’s email message said.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Woodbury Police Department said that the teacher had no affiliation with Woodbury Public Safety. In its statement, the Police Department said, “We are disturbed by the preliminary information of what occurred.” The police said they were working closely with the school district and that they would “investigate this incident to the fullest extent, while showing compassion to the students impacted.”

A photo posted publicly on Facebook by a woman who said she was the parent of a Woodbury High School student shows an adult male squatting with one knee on the body of a male student.

The student is lying face down on a tile floor with his arms outstretched and his face turned away from the camera. The man, whose face is not visible, is wearing a lanyard with a name tag or credentials.

The parent said her child had sent the photo to her following the episode.

In the school’s letter, officials said they were reporting the matter to the Minnesota Department of Education and the state’s educator licensing board. They said that the teacher had been sent to the school by a substitute staffing service and that he had been barred from “stepping foot on any district property” in the South Washington County School District. The superintendent also signed the school’s letter.

The staffing service, Teachers on Call, said the teacher was no longer employed by the service and called his actions “unacceptable.” In an emailed statement, it said all of its employees undergo “rigorous” screening including a background check and fingerprinting, adding that the substitute teacher had passed.

Woodbury High School has around 1,980 students. According to a fact sheet posted by the school for the 2023-2024 academic year, its student body is 58.1 percent white, 12.8 percent Asian, 11.5 percent Black and 9.4 percent Hispanic.

School officials said they were providing resources for students affected by the substitute teacher’s actions, and that they had met with each of the classes.

On May 25, 2020, Mr. Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin, then a Minneapolis police officer, who arrested Mr. Floyd and knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes as he lay in the street. Mr. Chauvin was found guilty of two counts of murder and sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2021. Mr. Floyd’s death, which occurred just south of downtown, ignited months of protests in Minnesota and across the country.

“I specifically want to acknowledge racial harm that occurred when the substitute teacher reenacted the prone restraint that resulted in the murder of George Floyd,” Principal Sorenson-Wagner wrote.