Melissa Tempel’s first-grade class at Heyer Elementary School in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, spent weeks preparing for their upcoming spring concert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tempel and her co-teacher, bilingual instructors at the school, wanted the concert to have a theme of unity and world peace. Among the songs they selected: “It’s a Small World”, sung in Spanish, and “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The students were also set to perform “Rainbowland,” a 2017 duet by Miley Cyrus and her godmother, Dolly Parton, with lyrics advocating for inclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tempel began rehearsing with her students as soon as another school staff member suggested the song, and Tempel and her co-teacher approved it. Her first graders, she said, need all the time they can to memorize the songs before the concert, just before Mother’s Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“My students loved it right away,” Tempel told CNN of her classroom reaction to “Rainbowland.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But one day after the students learned the song, Tempel said the school administration asked him to remove “Rainbowland” from the concert. In a statement, the district said she asked for the song to be removed because its lyrics “could be considered controversial” under a school board policy on controversial topics in the classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Wouldn’t it be nice to live in paradise, where we’re free to be exactly who we are?” Cyrus and Parton sing. \u201cTo live in Rainbowland, where you and I go hand in hand. Oh, I’d be lying if I said this is okay, all the pain and hate that’s here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melissa Tempel’s first-grade class at Heyer Elementary School in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, spent weeks preparing for their upcoming spring concert. Tempel and her co-teacher, bilingual instructors at the school, wanted the concert to have a theme of unity and world peace. Among the songs they selected: “It’s a Small World”, sung in Spanish, and “Here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6116,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[2102,2101,2104,2100,2103],"class_list":["post-6115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-dolly-parton","tag-miley-cyrus","tag-school-district","tag-song","tag-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6117,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions\/6117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}