13-year-old student given ‘most likely to become a terrorist’ award at US school

Award was meant as 'a joke'

A seventh-grader, who achieves good grades and has never had discipline issues, on Tuesday, received a "most likely to become a terrorist" award from her teacher.

Lizeth Villanueva, has been in her school's academic honours programme for two years and has always performed well.

The awards ceremony was held at Anthony Aguirre Junior High School in Channelview, Texas, near Houston. A group of teachers had handed certificates to students giving each different awards.

The 13-year-old said her teacher had "just laughed" when she handed her the signed certificate - a day after a terrorist attack in Manchester shook the world.

Lizeth's mother, however, didn't find any humour in the situation. “I was upset and very mad when I saw the award, I was surprised because my daughter has been doing well in the honours programme,” she told the Washington Post. 

Neither was Lizeth laughing.

According to Lizeth, two honours classes' students had been brought together for the fake mock ceremony. Other awards that had been distributed included "most likely to cry," given to a girl and "most likely to become homeless," given to a boy.



There were a total of three teachers in the room who had found humour in the awards and their titles according to Lizeth.  The spokesperson for the school, Mark Kramer, said that the awards were a “poor attempt to poke fun” and weren't "well thought out.”

The principal of the school personally apologised, later, at a meeting at school.

Meanwhile the school district issued a statement that read “The Channelview ISD Administration would like to apologise for the insensitive and offensive fake mock awards that were given to students in a classroom. Channelview ISD would like to assure all students, parents and community members that these award statements and ideals are not representative of the district’s vision, mission and educational goals for our students. The teachers involved in this matter have been disciplined according to district policy and the incident is still under investigation."

Lizeth's mother had said she wanted the teachers fired or they would "continue doing the same thing.”

However, her Lizeth herself hasn't returned back to school ever since the incident stating she "feels uncomfortable" doing so.

This article originally appeared on The Washington Post