FREMONT - A Kennedy High School English teacher is on leave this week after using a racist term for blacks - apparently by accident - while addressing some students in her class. Teacher Malti Massey let the word slip while using the rhyme `eeny, meeny, miney, moe` to choose a student to take a note to the main office earlier this month. Current versions of the old rhyme use the word `tiger` instead of the offensive term.

Two of the students who overheard the exchange are black. Realizing she had said something inappropriate, the teacher immediately apologized. She then explained that she had learned that version of the poem as a child in another country - India, students said - and hadn`t realized until then that it contained the derisive word.

Attempts to reach Massey were unsuccessful. Whatever the reason the word was said, it never should have been uttered by a teacher, the two black students and their parents said. They say they want to see the teacher reprimanded in some way. Despite their outrage, neither family is convinced that Massey, who they said is an Indo-American, is racist...

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