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Katie Rinderle is the first known public school teacher to be fired under Georgia’s trio of censorship laws. Friend, Katie Rinderle is the first known public school teacher to be fired under Georgia’s trio of censorship laws passed in 2022. The grounds for her firing? Rinderle read the international best-selling children’s book My Shadow is Purple to her fifth grade gifted class at Due West Elementary School in Cobb County, Georgia. Rinderle had recently purchased the book by Australian author Scott Stuart at the school’s Scholastic Book Fair. Before she read it, the students voted on a variety of books Rinderle offered and overwhelmingly chose My Shadow is Purple, which was nominated for a 2023 Australian Book Industry Award. After the reading, the class discussed the book’s message of acceptance of oneself and others and embracing diverse and complex identities and experiences. Watch Rinderle talk about her unjust termination in a video interview with the SPLC here. Georgia passed a trio of censorship laws last year — while Rinderle is the first known teacher to be fired under the laws, she will not be the last to be terminated, advocates say. These laws are the Protect Students’ Rights Act, commonly known as the “divisive concepts” law; a “Parents’ Bill of Rights;” and one known as the “harmful to minors law,” which allows for the removal or restriction of materials parents deem “pornographic” or otherwise harmful. Together, the laws censor class discussion, give parents the right to refuse instruction they disagree with and ban “offensive” reading materials from school libraries. To this day, the district has never answered Rinderle’s main question: What exactly does “divisive concepts” mean? “School districts label certain topics ‘pornographic’ and ‘divisive,’” Rinderle said. “Yet when I asked [school administrators] what ‘divisive concepts’ means, they said they didn’t know and told me they would research it. They never told me.” Rinderle isn’t taking the situation lying down. She is working with her union, the Georgia Association of Educators and the Goodmark Law Firm to fight her unjust termination. “It’s so important to teach children to be supportive of each other, true to each other and to themselves,” Rinderle said. “The lives, experiences and self-identities of students should be validated and celebrated. Children are especially harmed when they are not made to feel loved, appreciated and validated for who they are and their uniqueness.” Sincerely, Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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