Tamara Brayboy was stunned this month when her 10-year-old daughter said a teacher threw a marker toward her and narrowly missed her eye.
Brayboy’s daughter said the same fifth-grade teacher at Pembroke Elementary School, Angelica Allen, threw her shoes at two students, one of whom was wearing a hearing aid.
Now Brayboy wants Allen out of the school. She filed for a temporary restraining order on September 8 in hopes of keeping the teacher away from her daughter.
“I feel like the schools have failed our kids and put them back in dangerous ways,” Brayboy told Border Belt Independent. “The safety of my child is not at interest. That’s my fight.”
The special victims unit of the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the alleged incidents, Chief Deputy Damien McLean told Border Belt Independent.
Allen did not respond to an email from Border Belt Independent. Pembroke Elementary principal Portia Brazelton did not return a phone call. A woman who answered the phone at the school on Tuesday referred questions to Jessica Sealey, spokesperson for Public Schools of Robeson County. Sealey said she could not immediately comment or respond to BBI‘s public records request for Allen’s personnel information.
In her request for a protective order, Brayboy wrote that Allen told students on the first day of class that she was known to throw objects and flip desks to get students’ attention. “At this time, I feel like she is a threat to my child and every kid she comes into contact with,” Brayboy wrote.
Brayboy wrote that on September 1, Allen allegedly threw a shoe that hit a fifth-grade student with a hearing impairment in the back while he was switching classrooms.
The student’s grandmother, Donna Kamalu, told Border Belt Independent he wears a hearing aid in his left ear, and teachers use a microphone when he is in class. She suspects that Allen was trying to get her grandson’s attention by throwing a shoe at him.
Kamalu said she didn’t find out what happened until she saw that Brayboy had posted on social media about it. “This was a surprise because everything was normal when school started,” she said. “I had to find out about this on Facebook, and that’s when he told me.”
The next day, on September 2, according to Brayboy and Kamalu, Allen threw a shoe at another student. That parent did not respond to a request for comment from Border Belt Independent. The same day, Brayboy’s daughter tried to drop a marker she was using into the center of the round desk she shared with classmates but missed. Allen then took a marker from her own desk, threw it toward the girl, and said, “I made it,” according to Brayboy.
“She made the comment as if she accomplished what she meant to do when she hit my child, which is a form of bullying,” Brayboy wrote in the request for a protective order.
Brayboy and Kamalu said they met with school administrators, who assured them they would investigate the allegations.
Allen has taught fifth grade at Pembroke Elementary since August of 2023, according to a Facebook post from the school the same year. She graduated from The University of North Carolina at Pembroke with a degree in elementary education.
Kamalu said she thinks firing Allen would be “harsh,” but she hopes the teacher is suspended.
Brayboy said students should not have to worry about being harmed by teachers.
“This shouldn’t be happening in our school,” she said. “And this shouldn’t be happening to our children.”