W. Va. Teacher Suspended After Suggesting Abusers of Disabled Teen ‘Could Have Been Obama’s Children’
Once again, Twitter got someone who’s meant to mold the minds of the future in trouble for being racist.
A West Virginia teacher was suspended with pay from her position as a social studies teacher at Huntington High School after administrators were informed of a series of tweets she made referencing Muslims as “the enemy” and claiming that the four abusers of a disabled white teen in Chicago “could have been Obama’s children.”
The teacher, who was later revealed to be Mary Durstein, was then asked to delete her “pigpen63” Twitter account that had a history of these kinds of comments going back to 2015.
“The tweets that you have seen—those are things that we do not adhere to,” Cabell County Superintendent Bill Smith said, according to The Herald-Dispatch. “We believe that all children are welcome here—all adults as well—in Cabell County schools. We want to make sure that is clear to our students and clear to the employees that work for us.
“We expect the same conduct on social media that we do in the classroom,” Smith went on to say. “We don’t want to deny teachers the access they can have to the internet or Facebook and all the other stuff they want to have, but they need to be cognizant of who they are speaking to. And when what they say interferes with the educational process, it becomes a problem.”
The students who reported the racist tweets were supported by the school administration, which applauded their effort.
“(The students) did the right thing by reaching out to us and letting us know,” said Jedd Flowers, director of communications with Cabell County Schools. “We want the message to our students to be that all kinds are welcome at Cabell County Schools. We embrace diversity. Inclusion is essential to everything that we do.”
Flowers claims that the school system is investigating whether or not Durstein violated the code of conduct. If it’s proven that she did, further punishment may be in order.
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