Parents of several Alabama third-graders are pushing back against the popular wisdom that words can’t hurt after their children were given end-of-year gifts that described some as “gloomy,” “awkward,” and “cruel.” 

As a gift celebrating their promotion to fourth grade, teacher Bernice Young gave each student in her class at Owens Elementary School in Athens, Alabama, a framed picture made up of the student’s name centered in a descriptive word cloud.

On each cloud, Young put the child’s name as the biggest word in the center. Surrounding the child’s name were words others students had picked out to the describe their classmate. 

In one child’s picture, words like “silly,” “cheerful,” and “helpful,” are prominent, but also included were words like “rude,” and “gloomy.”

Parents expressed outrage on social media Wednesday, saying the gifts constitute bullying by the teacher. 

Parent Tonya Nicholson said she was upset to see words like “rude,” “gloomy” and “cruel,” mixed in among the more positive descriptors. 

“If you know my baby, she is so self-conscious,” Nicholson said. “The child was scared of her teacher all year — (the teacher) is just a big bully.”

Owens principal Cleo Miller would not comment on the incident other than saying “social media sometimes blows things out of proportion.”

Nicholson said one of the worst parts of it was when her daughter asked if she was “a bad kid.”

“She brought it up and asked why her teacher said those things about her,” she said.

Nicholson’s daughter told her the pictures were part of a project her classmates did at school.

Young, who according to the school’s website has been a teacher at Owens for eight years, sent parents an apology explaining the class activity.

“The word art that was sent home with some students was a character train synonym activity. Each student was given a list of old words and had to use one new synonym from the list. The students picked the words that they would not use as a group. The words were picked based on an incident they experienced with the student. The activity was not meant to hurt anyone. We talked about how words can hurt and we talked about each word as a group, and the meaning behind each word. The students enjoyed sharing their experiences. I truly apologize to everyone that was hurt because of this activity because this was not intention. It was enclosed in a heart because of my love for each student.”

“The thing is, she was blaming it on the children,” Nicholson said. “I don’t understand her reasoning even after her apology.”

Nicholson said there were students in Young’s class who had no negative words on their pictures.

Nicholson blames Young for her child’s hurt feelings because she said the teacher must have seen the negative words while making the project for each student.

“She made those signs so she chose the words that went on them,” she said. “I know enough about computers to know how those programs work.”

Angel Vanderford’s son, also a student in Young’s class, showed her his picture that was made mostly of negative words such as “untrustworthy, rude, awkward, angry and unkind.”

Vanderford said her son had tears in his eyes when she picked him up from an after school program.

“He showed it to me and said, ‘There’s not a nice word on here,’” she said, adding the hardest part of the incident was watching her 9-year-old cry. “We’ve had problems all year long about kids bullying him.”

Neither Nicholson nor Vanderford want their children’s fourth-grade promotion pictures on display.

“It was a gift and it would’ve been an awesome gift had the negative words not been chosen,” Nicholson said. “It would’ve been an amazing gift to have. As it is now, it will probably go in the trash. Maybe we’ll put it up as an example of what not to do, but I don’t want to look at that every day.”

Vanderford said she left her son’s picture at the Limestone County Board of Education.

“I told them I wasn’t keeping it,” she said.

Vanderford added Young called her at home Wednesday night to apologize.

Limestone County Superintendent Dr. Tom Sisk issued the following statement: “We have addressed this matter with the teacher as soon as we became aware of it. The teacher has addressed this matter with the parents. We have taken steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”

Tobin writes for the Athens, Alabama News Courier.