A warning!-----My French Teacher Was Beloved for 25 Years. Then She Was Asked About Hijabs. | The Free Press

After Spence fired beloved French teacher Anne Protopappas, “overnight, I felt demonized, discredited, disqualified, and delegitimized,” she said. Now she’s suing the school. - By M.J. Koch

Protopappas’s firing stems from a May 2023 incident that took place in her Advanced French class, which was being taken by eight Spence seniors.

• Out of the blue, according to the complaint, one student asked, “Why did France ban the hijab?”
• Protopappas said she responded by thanking the student and then giving the class some background about why the French law banning hijabs and all other visible religious symbols in public K-12 schools was in accordance with the country’s belief in secularism, or laïcité. She said she invited the class to consider the pros and cons of this law, which came into being after a nationwide debate in which some Muslim women advocated to protect young students from family pressures to wear the veil.
• According to Protopappas’s complaint, the student who had asked the question, Sarai Wilks, “unexpectedly burst out of anger and displayed an uncharacteristically emotional and intensely personal reaction to the discussion, focusing on how unfair the French law was to her friend from her former school on the West Coast who wore the hijab.”
• Sarai is not just any student. She is the daughter of the head of school, Felicia Wilks, who began her tenure in July 2022...