A Prince George's County middle school teacher is in hot water over an assignment she gave her social studies class. She wanted them to define a list of derogatory words as a lesson in tolerance, but many parents did not tolerate the assignment.

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Eighth-grader Marquis Quigley still can't get over the lesson. "We never had an assignment like that before," he said.

Quigley's U.S. history teacher at Drew-Freeman Middle School -- he identified her as Theresa Dudley -- wrote six words on the board Tuesday, and told her students to define them.

The list of words included: "bastard, S.O.B., wimp, wuss, sissy," and one that cannot be shared on a family website. Students were stunned.

"I thought, like, "Wow, is she really teaching this to us?" Quigley said.

Marquis' mother, Janiece Trimble, saw the words, too, and was outraged.

"I heard these words, but I don't think it was school-appropriate," she said. "I thought they were really offensive and I thought this shouldn't be something that be given to your kids from a teacher."

School officials say Dudley meant well. She'd used a lesson from the website Teaching Tolerance, founded by the Southern Poverty Law center, to try to address derogatory name-calling she'd overheard kids use in school halls.

"Unfortunately, while admirable, there was inappropriate language that was used as part of that lesson," said Darrell Pressley, a spokesperson for Prince George's County Public Schools. " And again, that lesson was not approved by the administration."

A letter went home to parents calling it an "unfortunate situation". Dudley serves as the school's social studies department head, according to its website, and also on the board of directors of the Prince George's County teachers' union.

Parents say Dudley has been placed on administrative leave, but district officials will say only that it's a personnel matter and is under investigation. Meantime, Theresa Dudley has not been in the classroom, since the incident.