An 8-year-old second grader at Talbott Elementary School in Colorado Springs, Colo., is in big trouble for using his imagination after he said a cloud looked like a gun.
His teacher filed a behavioral report against the boy after he drew a picture of a gun, after the teacher told him to look up at the clouds and draw what he saw,
reports CBS affiliate KKTV.
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"Draw a picture of what you see in the clouds from your imagination," 8-year-old Kody Smith told the television station about what the teacher has said. "That picture is a gun," he continued, pointing to the gun he drew.
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But his teacher, who has not been identified, was not happy with Kody's drawing, and took him to the office before reporting that he was exhibiting behavior disruptive to the school's entire learning community.
While his parents are concerned that the incident will remain on the little boy's permanent record, Widefield School District officials said it will not be.
"Our primary responsibility as a school district is to ensure safety of all staff, students and community," the district said in a press release. "We exercised an age-appropriate reaction to an incident. The student's education was never disrupted nor is this incident on the student's permanent record. Our response was in line with routine procedures focused on school safety."
But Kody's parents said they are not happy with the action.
"It hurts that he was so scared for being penalized for his imagination," his father, Jeff Smith, told KKTV. His mother, Angel Rivers, told the station she does not believe her son did anything wrong.
"He’s 8 years old," Rivers said. "He was doing exactly what he was told to do for the assignment."
The incident is just one of many occurring nationwide as schools exhibit sensitivity on anything concerning guns, including last year when a 5-year-old Maryland kindergartner was
suspended for 10 days for bringing a cowboy-style, orange-tipped cap gun onto his Calvert County, Md., school bus.
In addition to the 10-day suspension, school officials interrogated the boy for approximately two hours, during which time he urinated in his pants, before they called his mother and making her aware of the situation.
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Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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