by being put on paid leave for the rest of the school year. What next? Gift certificates for Spas and restaurants?
What a shameful thing for those teachers to do.

It’s difficult to teach about slavery in this country, but that assignment was just plain wrong. We need a national model curriculum for teaching this unfortunate and revolting part of our country’s history rather than having teachers download miscellaneous stuff from the Internet. Most history textbooks whitewash slavery while perhaps not glorifying but spending far too much time on the battles and the people of the Civil War and Southern excuses for maintaining the abominable practice of slavery. Spending more time helping children learn about and understand the economics of slavery, which really is based on feudal models of land owners (the wealthy) and serfs (the poor essentially tied to the land owner and that land), would better prepare them for analyzing history.

Using examples of slavery from ancient times just exacerbates the problem by making slavery seem acceptable because it was not just the US that allowed it. It’s even in the Bible, so it must be okay!

The OP stated the students were studying Mesopotamia.

Yes, we need to do a better job teaching about Chattel slavery as it applies to America, and how American Slavery differed from indentured servitude or slavery as practiced in ancient civilizations.

Teaching students about Mesopotamian slavery isn't the problem. Writing from a historical person's perspective isn't the problem. This was a poor choice for that strategy--better to use it in an unit on Immigration at the end of the 19th century, or from Lewis or Clark to the folks back home.

That said, what a stupid assignment.

The teacher is gone so why sue? School districts get their money from the property taxes of everyone in that area. So the lawyer feels everyone should pay even though the dimwit who did it no longer works there?