Mother furious after teacher confiscates daughter’s drawing of pig for being ‘inappropriate’

The pitfalls of drawing formal attire on a pig.

A mother has gone viral after revealing a drawing her daughter's school deemed "inappropriate" and threatened to write the 11-year-old up for. In a TikTok video that has been viewed more than 820,000 times, Sierra Carter explained she'd had a bust-up with Hanover-Horton Elementary School over the drawing of a pig wearing a bowtie. Another pupil had suggested the neckwear looked like "boy parts". The Michigan mother captioned the video, "I can't make this crap up", and explained how she had received a call from the school with her daughter's teaching explaining, "my daughter had drawn something inappropriate in art class".  

@sierraleann30 I can’t make this crap up.#bullies #angrymom #kidprojects #bowtie ♬ Collide (sped up) - Justine Skye

The teacher explained that a fellow classmate had seen something in the formal attire the pig was wearing - A penis. Sierra said: "A little boy had come up to her and made her aware that he thought my daughter drew ‘boy parts’ on her pig project. "So, she went over and asked my daughter for all of her papers, to which my daughter kind of nervously laughed."  

@sierraleann30 Replying to @victoriaupdike ♬ Colors - Stella Jang

Sierra said her daughter had explained to the teacher "right away" that the bow tie, was exactly that. The principal was then called in. When Sierra was called to the school, she was passed her daughter's drawing. "As soon as I look at it, I'm like 'are you fricking kidding me?' I literally slammed my hand down on the table," Sierra said in the video. "Like, why are we sitting here right now and why was there a big deal made out of this? "It’s a fricking bow tie," she added. Sierra said the principal's first thoughts were to "write up" the matter, but he later decided against it, choosing instead to put the drawing into a folder in case of any similar "future instances". "My daughter has never been inappropriate, she has never even talked about ‘boy parts’ or ‘girl parts’," the mother concluded. On TikTok user commented: "I’d tell them I was mad that they sexualised my child’s drawing off of what a young boy said. They should be ashamed." Another wrote: "Since when are 'boy parts' at the neck!? I’d be meeting with the superintendent." The school's superintendent, John Denney, later told Today that staff at the school had handled the situation with "compassion" and "discretion", and lamented that a "one-sided narrative has been created on social media". He added that: "Nothing has been placed in any student’s school records related to this matter." The controversy led to Sierra making t-shirts featuring the pig available.