by Chris Peterson
Twenty-five years. That’s how long Ted Curry taught at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco. Twenty-five years of guiding students through opening nights and auditions and missed cues and standing ovations. Twenty-five years of building trust, building confidence, and building a program that mattered. And then, in the middle of a school production, he was fired.
The official reason? That he missed two school events because he was sick. That’s the story the administration is sticking to. But Curry says the real story began years earlier, when he did what we say we want teachers to do. He spoke up.
In 2006, Curry reported a disturbing incident: a colleague allegedly trapped a student backstage and blocked him from leaving. The school did nothing. No follow-up. No consequences. The teacher stayed. Curry stayed. But he never forgot it.
Fast forward to 2023, when a former student filed a lawsuit alleging he was abused by that same teacher back in 1996. Curry cooperated with the investigation and repeated what he had shared in 2006. Within days, he says everything changed. He was pushed out of meetings. A less-experienced assistant was hired without his input. And then, one night, he got a text from the principal that he describes as threatening. That was when he knew. He says he told his partner, “I’m going to be fired. It’s just a matter of when.”
That moment came on February 11, 2025. Curry was called into a meeting, given the news, and escorted out by security with boxes in his hands. No farewell. No chance to speak to his students. Just silence.
And for what? For telling the truth? For supporting a student? For not keeping quiet when he was asked to look the other way?
This story isn’t just about one drama teacher. It’s about the quiet and dangerous message schools send when they punish people for doing the right thing. St. Ignatius says this had nothing to do with the abuse investigation. But that is hard to believe when the timeline tells a different story. When someone speaks up, and retaliation follows like clockwork, we have to call it what it is.
Curry has filed a lawsuit seeking more than ten million dollars. He’s not just fighting for his reputation. He’s fighting for every teacher who has been told to stay in their lane, every whistleblower who was cut out of the loop, every educator who had to choose between their job and their conscience.
He told SFGATE, “My mornings are still melancholy. Who am I now?” That line stuck with me. Because so many teachers see their work not as a job, but as a calling. To lose it like this isn’t just about employment. It’s about identity.
And it’s about students, too. Because let’s be clear: drama teachers are lifelines for a lot of kids. They’re the ones who stay late, who notice when something’s wrong, who make space for creativity, for queerness, for expression, for being seen. When you lose someone like that, when you fire someone like that, the ripple effect is enormous.
This fall, Curry will testify in court. He’ll talk about what he saw, what he said, and what happened next. And all of us should be watching closely. Because how this ends will say a lot about whether schools are willing to live the values they claim to teach. Whether they protect their students. Whether they support their staff. Whether truth still has a place on their stages.
Theatre is supposed to be about honesty. About courage. About holding up a mirror. What happened to Ted Curry is a drama without a curtain call. But maybe, just maybe, it can be the beginning of something better.
