Teacher Filmed Screaming at Kids. Then Came the N-Word

In the first 30 seconds of the video, the Baltimore teacher grabs a student by the hood of his shirt and screams at him to leave her class. Then things take a turn. The video shows the unidentified white female teacher calling her classroom of mostly black students "idiots," and telling them if they don't get an education, they'll end up being "a punk-ass n----- who's going to get shot." Viewers can see and hear the students' shocked reactions. School officials confirmed that the incident, captured on a video the Baltimore Sun says has been viewed more than a million times, happened on Tuesday at Harlem Park Elementary/Middle School. The teacher, a second-year science teacher who'd come to the school via an alternative certification program, which includes diversity training, has been fired.

The teacher "engaged in verbally abusive behavior and made racially charged comments directed at students," a school system statement notes, with Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises saying she was personally "appalled." The New York Times reports the video, taken on a cellphone in an eighth-grade class, was sent to New York Daily News columnist Shaun King by a reader; the video went viral after Erica Gales Deminds, mom of a student in the class, posted it online. Deminds tells CNN while she's "utterly disgusted" by the video, she was also surprised, as the teacher was one of her son's favorites whom she'd met several times. (A Texas teacher apologized for an offensive class nickname.)