Maugham Elementary School Adolf Hitler assignment controversy

In early April 2021, a fifth-grade teacher at Maugham Elementary School, a public grammar school in Tenafly, New Jersey, instructed a 5th grade student to dress up as Adolf Hitler and to write a first-person essay from the perspective of the Nazi leader touting his "accomplishments" as a part of a class assignment. In May 2021, the details of the school assignment became known to the public, leading to outrage in the community, which has a substantial Jewish population. After initially defending the teacher and the school's actions, the board of Tenafly Public Schools suspended the teacher and the principal of the school with pay and opened an investigation into the incident.
Background
Tenafly, New Jersey is a borough within Bergen County, New Jersey. Bergen county has one of the largest Jewish populations within the United States, and Tenafly is nicknamed "Little Tel Aviv" owing to its particularly sizeable Israeli and Jewish populations. Greater than 3% of households in the borough speak Hebrew at home.
Assignment
A fifth-grade teacher working at Maughan Elementary School created and assigned was a "character development project" in which students would be asked to write from the perspective of notable individual. Students were directed to dress up as a historical figure and to write an essay from that historical figure's perspective. These characters included Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong, and Jim Carrey. News regarding the essay and the student dressing up as Hitler emerged during a time where targeted antisemitic violence within the United States had been on the rise. At the time, the school's superintendent wrote that "it is unfair to judge any student or teacher in this matter" and that those outraged by the assignment had taken the assignment "out of context." The district stated that the assignment was to focus on a historical figure that personified good or evil. The regional director of the Anti-Defamation League for New York and New Jersey expressed shock that a student had been given this assignment and publicly condemned the teacher for issuing it. Another local Jewish community leader told the newspaper that "egardless of the educational intent here, the teacher failed to recognize the profound impact this can have on students, family members and others in our community who could perceive this project as condoning or even glorifying the atrocities of one of the most evil individuals in world history."
A petition was circulated in support of the teacher who had issued the assignment and many parents spoke in support of the student, teacher, and principal during a school board meeting that took place shortly after the controversy began. In an opinion piece published by The Record, writer Mary Chao said that the outrage over the assignment was described by Asian-American parents as the result of cultural misunderstanding.

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