January 9, 2012

Chicago teacher says he was fired for writing a book about his affair as a student with a teacher

by

Bronzeville Scholastic Institute

“A former teacher is suing the Chicago public school district for more than $300,000, claiming administrators fired him in 2009 after a parent took issue with his memoir, entitled Gabriel’s Fire, which recounts his own relationship with a teacher in his youth,” according to a report in the Chicago Tribune. Luis Aguilera,author of the memoir, taught Spanish at the Bronzeville Scholastic Institute, in the Chicago Public School system, the nation’s third largest public school system.

The book recounts Aguilera’s coming of age on Chicago’s South Side, where at 13, he “began an affair with one of the teachers at the local elementary school,” according to a description of the title from the publisher, the University of Chicago Press. A parent had expressed concern over Augilera’s relationship with her daughter, and her fears appear to have been directly related to the content of the book.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

The lawsuit — filed last week in U.S. District Court in Chicago — names Chicago Public Schools and seeks damages, including for alleged discrimination and the violation of Aguilera’s free-speech rights. It also requests an order reinstating Aguilera as a teacher.

“This is an issue of free speech,” Aguilera’s Chicago attorney, Deidre Baumann, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “He was retaliated against and treated differently because of the parent’s clear dislike of the book … that colored everything else.”

The school library acquired a copy of the book when it was first published in 2000. According to the Tribune report:

By January of 2009, months before Aguilera’s firing, the librarian was allegedly told by a school official to deny students access to copies of Gabriel’s Fire, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims an official report before Aguilera’s firing alleged unspecified, “inappropriate” comments by him to the student. While she declined to discuss specifics of the alleged comments, his attorney said Aguilera neither said nor did anything inappropriate.
 

Valerie Merians is the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

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