Anna Schumaker*, a substitute teacher in Pennsylvania’s Shaler Area School District, is blowing the lid on woke education programs in the district in an exclusive interview with IW Features.

“It’s harming the kids in so many ways,” Schumaker said.

Schumaker said she was removed from the substitute teacher list for Shaler High School after posting critically in a local conservative Facebook group regarding a fellow teacher’s decision to take students to a Pride event. 

The teacher, Abby Nilson, teaches a “sustainability” class, which, according to the school’s website, mostly focuses on innocuous community activities like encouraging recycling and learning about the area’s environmental needs. Yet in June 2024, the class’s public Facebook page posted pictures of Nilson and two of her high school students making seed balls for local birds at a Pride event. 

Schumaker shared the image in a conservative Facebook group, saying she saw it as “information” to which community members had a right.

“But people have had opinions about it, of course, and apparently someone told the teacher that I shared this. Because I shared these posts from their social media I am not allowed back at the high school,” Schumaker said.

It did not seem to matter to the school that the images of Nilson and her students at the Pride event were originally shared on a public page. 

Schumaker has since filed a misconduct complaint against Nilson with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, which found that “the allegations contained in the complaint, even if proved to be true, would not warrant professional discipline.” 

A misconduct complaint was also launched against Schumaker herself.

Ultimately, both teachers were cleared by the state Department of Education. Yet, Schumaker is still barred from substitute teaching at the high school.

Nilson’s “sustainability” class isn’t the only course with questionable motivations taught at Shaler. As recently as the 2024-2025 school year, an elective course called “The Language of Activism” was offered to high schoolers in the district. 

“‘The Language of Activism’ course explores the role that literature, language, writing and the media have had in social justice movements throughout American history from the American Revolution, Abolition, Women’s Rights, Labor, Civil Rights, Anti-War, LGBTQ+, to current-day activism,” the course description reads. 

A syllabus for the course provided to IW Features shows students are instructed to study a litany of leftist causes in the class’s final unit, including, “Occupy Wall Street, The Environmental Movement, Black Lives Matter (antiracism), March for Our Lives, #NeverAgain, #MeToo, #TimesUp.”

Shaler Area School District also works closely with the LIGHT Education Center, an acronym for Leadership in Genocide and Human Rights Teaching, founded by former Shaler school teacher Nick Haberman. Haberman, who taught social studies at Shaler for 18 years, writes on his LInkedIn that, “All LIGHT-related activities center compassion, human rights, positive mental health, and the three principles of EIB (Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging), helping students to build safer and more compassionate schools and communities.” 

Haberman also serves as the “Coordinator of Civic Engagement and Anti-Hate Education” at Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU), a branch of the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Haberman’s organization LIGHT works with AIU and the Pennsylvania FBI on “anti-hate trainings” to identify “what is hate speech, how to report it, and what to do when you witness it.” Haberman made these remarks outlining the organization’s goals during a May 2025 “Eradicate Hate” summit put on virtually by the AIU.

“Benefiting from a unique partnership with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, Shaler area students were the first in the country to implement LIGHT,” a video posted by the AIU in August 2023 says. While many of the issues mentioned in the video surrounded efforts to counter anti-semitism and anti-Jewish violence, footage in the video also focused on Pride imagery. 

For example, LIGHT posted on Facebook in October celebrating “National Coming Out Day” as well as “LGBT history month.” 

The group celebrated Pride Month on its Instagram page in June. 

Despite the organization’s commitment to combatting anti-Jewish sentiments, LIGHT’s creative director, Nicole Cmar, has expressed public support for Palestine on multiple occasions, attending protests with signs that express support for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

The madness is about to head to the schoolboard, as local activist Daeja Baker is running for the board with the enthusiastic endorsement of the local Democrat Socialists for America. She received the group’s endorsement in April, as the Pittsburgh DSA wrote on Instagram that, “Daeja has been an ally to the DSA for a long time, so we are thrilled to see her seeking election to represent a district that can use her incredible skills.”

“At the meeting where we endorsed her, she spoke of her interest in supporting all students, especially students of color, ESL learners, students with mental illness, and queer students,” the socialist group wrote.

Like many other school districts around the country, Shaler Area School District sadly began to radicalize after the death of George Floyd in 2020. 

By 2023, the school had announced that it would shift to graduation gowns in the same color for both boys and girls in the name of racial and “gender identity”-related “inclusivity,” as a direct response to Floyd’s death. “

We had a group of alumni and students that reached out to me and the school board [after Floyd’s death]. They wrote a letter to us and they challenged us to think about diversity and inclusion and how we treat marginalized students or minority students in this school,” school superintendent Dr. Sean Aiken said at the time. 

In 2024, Libs of TikTok revealed that Shaler schools had issued a “gender support plan” that detailed how students could secretly change their name and pronouns at school. This plan also mandated that teachers and staff call students by the name and pronouns associated with their self-declared “gender identities” without notifying or asking parents.

But there are many in the school district who disagree with these policies, according to Schumaker.

“I think they’re scared to speak out because of the backlash,” Schumaker said of her former colleagues at Shaler. “I also think some of them have given up… [they] don’t like what’s going on, but [they’re] afraid [they’ll] lose [their] job[s].”

Seeing how the school has treated Schumaker, it’s not hard to see why.

*A pseudonym has been assigned to protect the storyteller’s privacy.