Teacher suspended for AI-written question that had racial slur, Arkansas school says

Rhiannon Saegert, The Charlotte Observer on Apr 2, 2025

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A teacher who was facing termination has been suspended after including a question with a racial slur in it on an English test at a school in Arkansas.

Robert Taylor, an 11th grade teacher at Northside High School in Fort Smith, was teaching lessons on the book “Warriors Don’t Cry,” a memoir written by one of the nine Black students who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

During a Fort Smiths Public Schools school board meeting March 31, Taylor said he didn’t read the slurs in the book out loud, and thought they were important to the lesson.

“(Author Melba Beals) put those words in there to show everyone how horrible that was for her,” Taylor said during the meeting. “And we’re studying this in a classroom, where it’s in context, where they know what this lesson is.”

The test question asked students to identify alliteration in a quote from the book. Board members and the school district’s human resources representatives questioned if using the slur was a constructive way to teach that concept.

Taylor said the question was generated by a school-approved AI tool.

School administrators initially recommended terminating Taylor. Instead, the board voted to suspend him for 90 days without pay during its March 31 meeting, which lasted five hours. The suspension is effective immediately.

Melba Beals, the author, said in an interview with KATV that Taylor’s lesson wasn’t in the wrong.

“I don’t want to hurt that teacher, because that teacher has decided that he is going to give a gift to young people who are going forward,” she told the outlet. “He was trying to explain something to them, so they won’t call somebody that. So go bless him, my goodness, take his job away, for what? Take my job away, why don’t you.”

Taylor has been teaching for 23 years, according to KATV.

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