A Texas school teacher is facing dismissal after a viral video of her telling students to call pedophiles “persons attracted to minors” was posted online. But the students came to her defense. In a unanimous vote Tuesday by the El Paso ISD school board, Amber Parker, a former English teacher at Franklin High School, was fired after an 18-second video was posted online in August, KFOXT14 reported. “Stop calling them that. You’re not allowed to label people like that. Stop it, Diego,” the teacher can be heard saying in the video. “We’re not going to call them that. We’re going to call them MAPs. Minor Attracted Persons. So don’t judge people just because they want to have sex with a 5-year-old.” A student who was in Parker’s English class at the time of the recording told the report that her words were taken out of context and that they were part of a discussion exercise about the class reading of “The Crucible.” “He was expressing how ridiculous it is that we can’t call people pedophiles. We should probably start calling them MAPs because it might be offensive to them. The class agreed,” Franklin High School junior Ryann Ruvalcaba said. on KFOXTV. Parents also voiced their concerns about the video, with some saying they want a full investigation into the matter. “You want to see the full video and get the content and everything but … that statement alone is very troubling,” parent Thomas Deason told KFOXTV. “It’s not a good 18 seconds, but I think I need the context and to know what the whole conversation was before I can weigh in to see what’s going on, but I see a lot of students have come to her defense. parent Laurie Edwards said in the report. According to the local news outlet, the school board voted unanimously Tuesday after an investigation into the incident to proceed with the termination of Parker, who was on administrative leave. “This is the beginning of a process, and we will move forward with it and wait to see the outcome of the process.” El Paso ISD board president Al Velarde told KFOXTV. “The investigation has been completed, but there is a procedure set out by the TEA that we must follow when it comes to dismissing an employee.” While the board voted to terminate Parker from her position, she still has the option to appeal the decision, according to KFOX14. “The process is just starting. There will be hearings and so forth that will be available to the teacher, and so we’re just waiting for the process,” Velarde told the outlet. According to KFOX14, board trustee Daniel Call, who once defended Parker, changed his mind after the investigation was completed. “He shouldn’t have swerved as far as he did,” board trustee Daniel Call told KFOX14. “Hypothetically, I could have the best lesson plan in the world. But if I don’t follow the lesson plan and deviate in certain areas, I shouldn’t be teaching or talking about the lesson plan is kind of pointless.” “Personal opinions on really sensitive issues don’t belong in the classroom,” Call told KFOX14. “It’s up to the families to provide education on some of these really sensitive issues. It’s not the school district’s role to do that.” Last year, Allyn Walker, an assistant professor at Old Dominion University, resigned after receiving backlash over their research on minor-attracted people in a book titled “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity.” NBC Reports. In an interview with the Protasia Foundation, Walker defended their research saying they use the term “persons attracted to minors” because of the negative stigma associated with the phrase “pedophile”. “I think we tend to want to categorize people with these attractions as evil or morally corrupt. But when we’re talking about non-offensive MAPS, these are people who have an attraction they didn’t ask for. And one that they would often do anything for to change. But they find that they can’t change these attractions. And more importantly, the people in my study didn’t act on them,” Walker told the Foundation.
