SUGAR LAND - A middle school teacher has been put on paid administrative leave after allegedly calling a 12-year-old student a terrorist, Fort Bend ISD officials confirmed Friday.

Waleed Abushaaban, a seventh-grader at First Colony Middle School, is one of the latest Muslim students to say he faced discrimination because of his religion.

Waleed, a well-spoken young man who wore a button-down dress shirt and navy slacks, said the teacher reprimanded him after he began laughing during a class movie Thursday afternoon.

"I was just laughing, and the teacher was like, 'I wouldn't be laughing if I was you.' So I said 'Why?' And she said, 'Because we all think you're a terrorist,' " he said at a news conference Friday.

After her statement, Waleed said his classmates began laughing and taunting him with insults, such as "You have bombs" and "I can see the bombs."

The pre-teen said he was crushed by the insult from the teacher and response from his classmates.

"I was upset, and I felt like that they all were looking at me and they were laughing at me," he said.

Waleed said his parents had talked to him previously about bigotry and had given him simple advice about how to respond when people make anti-Muslim statements: "Ignore it."

Fort Bend ISD officials acknowledged the comment was insensitive and described it as an "isolated event."

Similar instances have surfaced around Texas within the past year.

About six months ago, a student made international headlines when his North Texas high school called the police and suspended him for bringing to school a homemade clock, mistaking his project for a bomb.

In December, two University of Texas at Austin students went to a cafe, where a fellow diner accused them of carrying a gun. He told one of them she should "go back to Saudi Arabia where she came from."

'Zero tolerance' urged

Husein Hadi, the family's attorney, said they wanted to raise awareness about discrimination.

"Her one statement, out of line, out of context, provided a reaction from kids who don't know any better," Hadi said.

Community activist Quanell X, who organized the news conference Friday, said he is calling on the district to require sensitivity training to students and employees.

"That kind of ignorance being celebrated and promoted in a classroom says that that kind of enlightenment and education is desperately needed," Quanell said. "Have the same zero-tolerance policy for the administration and this teacher's inappropriate behavior as you would have for this young kid."

A statement from Fort Bend ISD said the district doesn't support the teacher's actions, and when administrators learned what happened, they "immediately removed the teacher from the classroom" and put her on paid administrative leave, pending the district's review.

"While the teacher reports her statements were made in the context of trying to make a point about negative stereotypes, district officials do not believe that the teacher exercised the appropriate sensitivity expected of the district's educators, and do not believe that the statements were made in a manner that is in keeping with the district's Core Beliefs and Commitments," the statement read.

The teacher is classified as "probationary," which means she is either a first-year teacher, a first-year teacher to Fort Bend ISD or a teacher with less than five years of experience within the last eight years for a one-year term, according to Nancy Porter, a spokeswoman for the district.

Difficult talk for parents

According to a survey from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one in five California public school students said they felt discriminated against by a school staff member.

For some Muslim parents, instances such as Waleed's push them to make a difficult decision about how to talk to their children about handling anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Yusra Abou-Sayed, 29, thinks it's too early to have this talk with her eldest son, Yousef, 6, and her three younger children.

"They're completely oblivious to what's going on, and I'm trying to keep it that way," she said.

Abou-Sayed went to Clements High School in Sugar Land, close to First Colony Middle, and is a teacher.

She said she was disappointed to hear something like this happen at a school in the diverse city of Sugar Land.

But for now, her priority is to build Yousef's confidence in himself and his identity, she said.

'He can be both'

"We want him to know that he is an American-born citizen, to an American-born mother, but he's also a Muslim," she said. "The two aren't exclusive of each other. He can be both, and there's nothing wrong with that. He doesn't have to feel like he has to hide his religion."

Quanell asked students to make an effort to welcome Waleed back to school, to let him know he's "just as American as the rest of us are. Nobody can send a stronger message of tolerance than the students themselves."

Waleed went to school Friday and plans to remain at First Colony Middle.