NEW YORK CITY (TND) — A middle school teacher in New York City has become the latest example in a series from Project Veritas exposing educators who claim to push politics on their students.
Ariane Franco, a middle school English teacher in New York City, was caught on camera by Project Veritas explaining how she spent “a good two months” teaching her students about why protesting is important and how to organize a protest “in strategic ways.”
“This is what I told my students, I said, ‘Guys, there’s strategic ways to do this [protest].’ You want to – I brought up, like, crazy organizations that have done this. Like, they chose which places to throw bricks in. They chose – and they didn’t do it in their own neighborhood. They didn’t do it to the black and brown communities. Doing it to our own community does not make sense,” Franco can be heard saying in the video. “You got to go after the people who it’s not directly affecting … Throw it [a brick] at the people that are actually doing the things that [need to] change.”
Franco can also be heard in the video admitting she tells her students not to stand up during the Pledge of Allegiance and that, at one point, she even changed the words of the pledge.
“Like, I tell them – like my kids, we don’t stand up for the Pledge [of Allegiance]. We do the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, but we keep on our business,” Franco can be heard saying. “It was a class decision at the beginning of the school year. They’re not talking about me, so I’m not standing up, you know?” Franco continued.
“At one point, when I first started challenging it [the Pledge of Allegiance], I had my kids change the words,” the middle school English teacher added.
Franco told the undercover reporter that she used to kneel in class to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement as well, something she indicated students later followed her lead and did too.
Project Veritas, a right-wing media group that primarily does undercover reporting, has now released four separate exposés about teachers and administrators pushing their ideological preferences in school.
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The National Desk (TND) reached out to the New York City Department of Education for comment, but did not immediately hear back. If a response is received, this story will be updated.
