Tracey Iglehart, a teacher at Rosa Parks elementary school in Berkeley, California, did not expect Donald Trump to show up on the playground.

This was, after all, a school named after a civil rights hero in a progressive California enclave, with a melting pot of white, African American, Latino and Muslim students.

That has not stopped some children from channeling and adopting the Republican presumptive nominee’s xenophobic rhetoric in playground spats and classroom exchanges.

“They said things like ‘you’ll get deported’, ‘you weren’t born here’ and ‘you were born in a Taco Bell’,” said Iglehart, 49. “They may not know exactly what it means, but they know it’s powerful language.”



Hearing it in Rosa Parks elementary, of all places, came as a shock. “Berkeley is not an area where there are Trump supporters. This is not the land of Trump.”

They may not know exactly what it means, but they know it’s powerful language Tracey Iglehart

Yet the spirit of the GOP presidential candidate has surfaced here and, according to one study, in schools across the country.

An online survey of approximately 2,000 K-12 teachers by the Southern Poverty Law Center found toxic political rhetoric invading elementary, middle and high schools, emboldening children to make racist taunts that leave others bewildered and anxious.

“We mapped it out. There was no state or region that jumped out. It was everywhere,” said Maureen Costello, the study’s author. “Marginalized students are feeling very frightened, especially Muslims and Mexicans. Many teachers use the word terrified.” The children who did the taunting were echoing Trump’s rhetoric, she said. “Bad behavior has been normalized. They think it’s OK.”

Stavros Metropoulos, 6, sits with a sign protesting an appearance by Donald Trump in Birch Run, Michigan. Photograph: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

More than two-thirds of the teachers in the survey reported that students – especially immigrants, children of immigrants and Muslims – have expressed worries about what might happen to them or their families after the November election. More than half reported an increase in uncivil political discourse, and more than a third observed an increase in anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant sentiment.

The survey, conducted in March and April, was not scientific. It was based on teachers who chose to respond, not a random sample. Nevertheless, it provided useful data and telling examples, Costello said.

A North Carolina high school teacher reported having Latino students who carry birth certificates and social security cards to school because they fear deportation. A Tennessee kindergarten teacher said a Latino pupil, told by classmates he will be deported and trapped behind a wall, asks every day: “Is the wall here yet?”

Incidents in the classroom and on sports fields have made headlines in recent months.

A mother in Fairfax, in northern Virginia, posted on Facebook that two of her son’s third-grade classmates pointed him out because of his dark skin as one of the immigrants to be sent home under President Trump.

A friendly soccer game between Beloit Memorial and Elkhorn high schools in Wisconsin in April turned ugly when some girls yelled “Donald Trump, build that wall” at players of color on the field.

Students from Andrean high school in Indiana brandished Trump signs and chanted “build that wall”, “no comprende” and “speak English” at the largely Latino students of Bishop Noll Institute during a basketball game in February.

At a basketball game in Iowa, students from Dallas Center-Grimes chanted “Trump, Trump, Trump” at Perry high school, which is nearly half Latino.

“It’s a hate word,” said Joe Enriquez Henry, Iowa chapter president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “Those in the white community with a racist slant are now jumping on the bandwagon using the name Trump and the phrase Make America Great Again to tell people of color, especially Latinos, you are not welcome here.”

Salvatore Callesano, a graduate student in Hispanic linguistics at the University of Texas, said such rhetoric transmitted coded messages. “The phrase ‘build the wall’ indexes Donald Trump and his ideology. It’s been repeated so much it has been picked up by the kids. It’s a covert way of being anti-Hispanic. The people who use it are highly aware of what it means.”

There is mixed anecdotal evidence about Trump’s impact on the children of liberal parents.

A father of four children in the Palisades, a wealthy neighborhood in west Los Angeles, was taken aback when he accompanied his 12-year-old son on a camping trip with scouts. “They were all supporting Trump, saying he was great, repeating his lines.” The father, who asked not to be named, inferred rebellion, not racism. “I think they did it to annoy the parents.”

Fights have broken out between Trump supporters and protesters outside of rallies across America

Costello, the survey author, said Trump seemed a perfect candidate for seventh-grade boys. “They like his loudness, rudeness and brashness. If I was a liberal parent I wouldn’t worry about my children becoming arch-conservatives suddenly. It’s more about this shiny new object. It’s his celebrity.”

Phillip Carter, who researches sociolinguistics at Florida International University, and has a chapter on Trump and Hillary Clinton in a forthcoming book, said Trump’s iconoclasm, New York accent and inappropriate language could seem rebellious to white, monolingual boys.

Plenty of children, however, seem to share the disdain of liberal parents for a candidate who has called Mexicans rapists and threatened to ban Muslims from entering the US and to kill the families of suspected terrorists.

[They] use the name Trump and the phrase Make America Great Again to tell people of colo​r, you are not welcome here Joe Enriquez Henry

“I said something to my fourth-grade son the other day which pissed him off and he said ‘stop being a Donald Trump’,” said Oscar de la Torres, a school board member of Santa Monica-Malibu unified district. “It was instead of saying ‘stop being an asshole’.”

According to Carter, the children who repeat the real estate mogul’s taunts tend to be from families and communities that share and mediate such sentiments. “Trumpism is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a much larger problem beneath.”

The linguistic professor said comments such as “build the wall” and “this is America, speak English” damaged Latino children. “It’s as if they have a toxic identity that needs to be walled off.”

In Berkeley, most people view Trump negatively, said Iglehart, the teacher. But the manifestation of Trump-type taunts sounded alarm bells. “This feeling of not belonging has a negative impact on school performance and learning.”

On the same day Trump visited nearby San Francisco, Iglehart and her colleagues held a district-wide “teach-in” on immigrant rights and tolerance. They printed 1,000 posters illustrated with a butterfly and the phrase “we all belong in Berkeley” printed in English, Spanish and Arabic.