A conservative parents group that pushes for book bans is sharing videos on how to pressure your child's teachers

• Utah Parents United is a conservative Christian group that pushes for education reform in Utah.
• Utah Parents United released a training video that teaches parents how to confront teachers.

A parent group in Utah that has campaigned to ban books it doesn't like published a training video on how to pressure teachers into changing their curriculums while still "preserving the relationship" between the family and the school.

Utah Parents United is a Christian parents group that advocates for book bans as well as legislation that gives parents more power to make changes to school curriculums. In March 2022, the group launched a political action committee to further expand its reach into education in the state, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

As part of that effort, the group created a two-hour training video that aims to teach parents "how to have uncomfortable conversations with your teacher or principal." The video was published on their website, which also includes other informational packets and presentations. All these resources cover how to pressure teachers to conform to parents' views on their children's education.

Jen Brown, the director of Utahns for the Constitution, starts the video by sharing personal anecdotes of how she encouraged less "screen time" in the classroom for her kids. She says that her son now gets paper books in class even when other children use screens because she was worried her son was playing games.

"I have learned in this time that we really have to be advocates for our children," Brown says in the video.

"I would have said 'let me just show you a couple of the state laws about parental rights' and that 'I am in charge of my son's education' and that 'we also have the right to be given a commensurate assignment for whatever reason, basically,'" Brown added.

Some of Brown's tips for calmly pressuring educators include keeping the tone of your voice "kind," never resorting to personal attacks, expressing how the information presented to your child makes you feel, and arriving prepared with laws to back up your position.

Brown urges parents who see content that is "inappropriate" in their child's education to "not let it go" because "that's where we can have a lot more force."

"A lot of teachers will make a change because they don't want confrontation," Brown adds.

Parents' rights laws in Utah

Utah has become a haven for conservative parents in recent years, passing laws like the Sensitive Materials in Schools Act, which bans "pornographic or indecent" material from schools and school libraries. Critics of the bill say it has been used to disproportionately target books written by people of color and books with LGBTQ+ themes.

One parent, who opposed the law, used it to get the Bible banned from schools in Davis County after complaining that it included "incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide." Republican State Rep. Ken Ivory, who sponsored the bill, originally called the parent's complaint a "mockery," but later changed his tune and agreed after the school district banned The Bible.

Book bans and other course material objections from conservatives have swept the country in recent years, first starting with objections to the supposed teaching of "critical race theory," and later targeting any content deemed "inappropriate" or "sexual," which is typically aimed at LGBTQ+ material.

Annie Massey, a parent in Utah who leads part of the video training, says in the video that she "fell in love" with Utah's parents' rights laws after moving to the state from Alaska because "they really are on our side."

"This one is so beautiful. When I first read it, I came to tears," Massey says in the video when reading a section of the law.

At one point in the video, Utah Parents United Public Relations Director Corinne Johnson shows an assignment from one of her children's classes that included art related to the Black Lives Matter movement and the murder of George Floyd.

In an email to Insider, Johnson said that her daughter's art teacher asked the students to choose their favorite piece of art and explain why they liked it, which Johnson said made her daughter uncomfortable.

Johnson says in the video that the object of the assignment was to have her child choose their favorite piece of art from the pieces presented. The page presented by Johnson asks the reader so "study each image carefully" and then asks, "What do you think each artist communicates."

Johnson says she complained to her child's school about the assignment but wishes she had more training at the time because she would have asked to see the teacher's entire curriculum.

"You can see the curriculum for your teacher's class for the entire year, and track every assignment, and see what's going into this teacher's curriculum," Johnson said. "This is an assignment she's chosen. There's an agenda. She's asking these children to identify with something that they may have a conscience, a belief against."