The Idaho Teacher Who Refused to Back Down

The classroom poster that led to international headlines and eventually Sarah Inama’s resignation says simply, “Everyone is Welcome Here.” Under those letters are 10 raised hands, in skin tones that range from dark brown to pale pink. 

The message is clear. It is what it says. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Native, or some combination of the above: You are welcome in this classroom. This teacher values you. She thinks you’re important. 

For kids who don’t need to hear that message, the poster probably blended into the background, says Inama. For them, it’s like, ‘okay, whatever,’” she says. But for some students, the message needs to be seen and said. “If they help some students know that I’m a teacher who wants everyone to feel welcome, then that’s why I have them up,” she says.  

Without the hands, the poster would have been okay, the district’s chief academic officer told Inama this spring. But with the hands, it violated a West Ada School District policy, enacted in 2022, which requires all classroom displays, posters, flags, etc., to be “content neutral.” 

Last month, Inama, a middle-school world civilizations teacher, resigned from her suburban Idaho district because of the poster—or really, because of what the poster revealed to Inama about the people she worked for. Looking back, her resignation probably was inevitable.

The real cliffhanger in Inama’s story came months earlier—during a crisis of conscience she experienced in February—when Inama first took the poster down at her principal’s order and then asked herself, why am I doing this? What kind of message does this send to my students? Aren’t public-school teachers supposed to welcome everyone? Isn’t that essential to a public education?  

These are questions that many NEA members, across the U.S., are asking these days, as anti-diversity, anti-inclusion laws take hold in states. But based on the thousands upon thousands of emails sent to Inama and to West Ada school board members, most Americans already know the answer: They want all students to be embraced and valued. They want teachers like Inama for their children. 

There Was No Good Reason

Nobody actually complained about Inama’s poster. Ever. It came to her principal’s attention in January after parents at another West Ada school complained on social media about a different bulletin board—one with rainbows on it. Following their complaints and the bulletin board’s removal, West Ada’s chief academic officer, Marcus Myers, told all of West Ada’s principals to “open your eyes to what’s hanging on the wall,” Myers said on an Idaho podcast, The Ranch.  

In late January, Inama’s principal came to her classroom during lunch and told her to take the poster down. Inama felt “very, very sad,” she recalls, but she did it. Her principal told her: “We’re just trying to protect you if something were to happen.” To Inama, “it seemed like they were trying to pre-emptively appease somebody with exclusionary beliefs.” 

Laying on a back table in her classroom, the poster caught her students’ eyes, and they asked Inama why she took it down. “And I was just like, ‘I don’t even know,’” she recalls. She didn’t have a reason, she realized, or at least no reason that wouldn’t sound racist and hurtful to the non-white kids in her Lewis & Clark Middle School classroom. 

“I literally felt like I had let them down,” she says. “I was thinking, ‘I don’t agree with this.’ To me it’s blatantly discriminatory and it’s blatantly allowing people w/exclusionary views to affect my classroom and my students, and I felt sick about [my students] even knowing that."

Inama knows her students trust her. She works hard to build relationships with them. When she looked at their faces and heard their questions, she thought to herself, 'I’m doing them such an injustice by being complacent. Whatever reason the district has, I don’t agree with it.'

Eventually the 35-year-old decided: “I can’t even.” So, one weekend, in early February, Inama returned to school with her husband and her 1-year-old baby, and she put the poster back up.  

'This Is Not Political'

The message in Inama’s poster—with its “everybody is welcome here” statement and its display of skin tones—is pro-diversity and pro-inclusion. Nationally, these are hot-button topics, as some politicians deliberately twist inclusive education efforts and fuel a manufactured crisis.

In reality, inclusivity is just good teaching. It’s not political. “There are a lot of people today, in this environment, who are confused, infuriated, and terrified about what is being considered political,” Inama told Idaho Education Association’s Mike Journee in a recent podcast. “What’s making people frustrated is that things that are not controversial are being considered political at this point. And that’s where we have to start standing up and drawing a line, and saying, ‘This is not political.’”    

Since the first Trump administration, at least 18 states have passed laws to prohibit “divisive concepts” in schools. This spring, six states went a step further, notes Education Week, considering laws that would “require the dismantling of school district offices devoted to improving outcomes for students of color, students from low-income families, students with disabilities, English learners, and LGBTQ+ students.” This new legislative approach feels “much more aggressive,” Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy at EdTrust, told EdWeek.

Meanwhile, as one of its first official acts, the White House told school districts and public colleges this past winter that it would withhold federal funds if educators persisted in “DEI” efforts. In April, NEA attorneys won an injunction, blocking the administration from carrying out its threats.

The fact is most Americans appreciate diversity. They want equity and inclusivity in public schools. “I’ve been saying to folks, ‘Say the words.’ Just say the words,” NEA President Becky Pringle told an interviewer recently. “Diversity. That is the strength and the uniqueness of the United States of America. Equity is just a way to make sure that every student gets what they need, when they need it. And inclusion is part of the fabric of this nation, so that we can see each other, and we can see ourselves.

“That’s how we build a just society.”

“These Are People’s Children!”

After Inama rehung the poster, she emailed her principal. In that email, she wrote that his request to remove the poster “goes against everything that we work towards and the type of community that we dream to have at our school. Is not everybody welcome here?” “We (help students learn) by making them feel safe,” Inama continued, according to Idaho Ed News. “We do that by making sure they have food. We do that by building relationships with them. And, most importantly, we do that by making sure that they know that they are all welcome there and we want them here … With that being said, I have put my sign back up.”

Today, when Inama thinks about how she felt, sending that email to her principal, her frustration returns. “These are people’s children!” she says. “These are people’s kids who we promised to care about and teach.”

Quickly, her principal returned to her classroom and told her that if she didn’t take the poster down again, she’d be considered insubordinate and he’d have to get district-level officials involved. She didn’t—and they did. 

Looking back, Inama is grateful to her union building reps who came and sat with her during those meetings. “I just couldn’t believe the words coming out of [administrators’] mouths. I needed somebody to sit with me and hear it, too.” Indeed, this experience has solidified the value of union membership, she says. “It’s nice to be in a community of educators supporting educators. It’s nice not to feel alone.” 

In late February, the chief academic officer and the district’s legal counsel told her that the poster violated the district policy as well as the state’s 2021 ban on critical-race theory. 

“Your Students See You”

Until this all happened, Inama was mostly known to her students—and only her students—for her passion for ancient irrigation systems. “I think a lot about pre-history,” admits Inama, “like how people lived as hunter-gatherers in the Paleolithic Era and then discovered farming and they’re no longer just picking stuff they find. I’m always like, ‘guys, this is the biggest change in human history!’ And they’re like, ‘okay, nerd,’ which is true. I try to get them as excited as possible about irrigation.”

But then, in March, an Idaho TV station reported the story of the poster—and it went viral. Suddenly, everybody knew about the Idaho teacher and her poster and “email began raining down,” notes Idaho Ed News, which published some of the notes sent to West Ada school officials. 

“I am a sixth grader attending [a local school]. I am disappointed to hear an inclusive sign is being taken down… I think all races should be welcome.” 

Or this email, sent from a parent to school officials: “Opposing this sign is giving validation to the idea that racism is okay and tolerated. Schools should be safe places for all children, not just white children.” 

Among the hundreds of emails reviewed by Idaho Ed News, only three supported the poster’s removal. Meanwhile, Inama also was receiving many hundreds of encouraging emails and “like thousands and thousands of letters and packages,” she says. “I haven’t been able to respond to all of them, but I’ve read every single one… and I was surprised by how much support I got from people all over, in our community, in our country, from all over the world. It turns out people believe in the message that everybody should be welcomed unconditionally.”

"Thank you for standing up for bigotry and hate,” wrote one former student to her. “Your students see your fight and there are many who will never, ever forget what you’ve done for them.”

What's Next for Inama

Yes, in the end, Inama resigned. Over the spring, administrators had revealed their “ideas and ideals,” and they surprised and disappointed Inama. “After I went back and forth with the principal, the superintendent, the people at the district office, I was just like, ‘I don’t align with these people at all.’ And I was very surprised by that. This all seemed so, I don’t know any other way to put it, so racist and so negating of our duty as educators to work with children.”

In the end, she realized, “It’s hard to work for people who you feel are fundamentally immoral.”

She’s not the only educator to conclude the same. In March, Anthony White, an information specialist and union member at W.T. Sampson Elementary and High School, a Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) school in Cuba, resigned over a directive to remove books from the school library, People reports. 

“Every library interview I've ever had, including the one for DoDEA, [asked] ‘How do you promote and celebrate diversity amongst students and staff?’" White told People. "That's who we are. It's what we do. So, it was just really bewildering to have all of this messaging and these orders come down.”

(In May, the Federal Education Association, which represents educators at DoDEA schools, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Additionally, the American Civil Liberties Union has sued over the removal of books from DoDEA school libraries.)

Inama is sorry to leave her Lewis & Clark students. But she has a new job. This past spring, in support of Inama, educators in nearby Boise bought and wore t-shirts that said, “Everyone is welcome here.” This fall, she is joining them as a junior-high teacher of world studies. 

Her former students signed the back of her poster before she left.