Pornography Shown To 7th Grade Students Accidentally During History Lesson

A Michigan middle school teacher accidentally played pornography in front of a seventh grade class.

Although the incident took place on March 13, it was recently reported by local news media. Principal Zeina Jebril of O.L. Smith Middle School, Dearborn, said an unidentified substitute history teacher mistakenly played the X-rated clip while trying to show a video of Lewis and Clark expedition to the class.

The teacher was trying to access a video from a website on a school district computer when the clip suddenly started playing. The video screen in the front of the classroom lit up with pornographic images for 30 to 40 seconds before the teacher could turn it off.

Jebril said strict action was taken against the teacher responsible after the authorities were made aware of the incident.

“The substitute teacher was immediately removed from the class and interviewed by myself and our school resource officer," she said, Detroit News reported. "Both our human resource office and our technology department began an investigation into this incident. I even spoke directly with a few parents who had children in the classroom. This very unfortunate, isolated event was addressed and appeared to be resolved."

The substitute teacher, who was contracted by a company which provides educators to all of the district schools, will no longer be able to teach at any Dearborn institutions, Jebril said. She said that officials were also working with their technology department to upgrade the district’s filtering software to ensure such incidents never happen again.

"There are 21,000 students in the Dearborn Public Schools and more than 2,600 staff members," she said. "This means there are millions of computer sessions in any given week. I provide this information not as an excuse for what occurred, but to provide context of the volume of traffic on our network each day. As fast as filtering software is updated and improved, there are those working just as fast at attempting to by-pass that software."

David Mustonen, communications director at Dearborn Public Schools, told Fox 2 Detroit on Wednesday the incident was an isolated instance and that there was no evidence suggesting anyone was pranking the teacher.

"In this particular instance it appears there was some sort type of loophole - one time too many - but very isolated. Are we looking into this particular instance are we making sure this doesn't happen again, yes, absolutely,” he said. "Do we need to scrap everything and start over? No, nowhere near that. The substitute teacher that was in the classroom was unaware that this video was there.”

The district added that a letter informing parents of the 29 students who witnessed the “unfortunate and rare occurrence” was sent by the school and emotional support was made available for adolescents who might have been affected by the images.

In January 2018, a group of fifth grade students aged between nine and 10, at the Croft Academy, Walsall, West Midlands, in the U.K., were accidentally shown pornography during the screening of the movie “Paddington Bear.”