Short Take: How Not To Have A Personal Chat With Trump

Some people just don’t get how Twitter works. And some of those people get paid to teach.

Teacher Georgia Clark told Fort Worth school district officials she didn’t realize her comments about illegal immigration were public when she reached out to President Donald Trump on Twitter.

How else would one have a private, personal chat with the President of the United States if not on Twitter?

Clark, an English teacher at Carter-Riverside High School, was placed on administrative leave with pay last week after a series of posts caused a backlash on social media. She urged Trump to pay attention to illegal immigration and specifically called out her campus.

“Mr. President, Fort Worth Independent School District is loaded with illegal students from Mexico,” read one of the posts linked to her account. “Carter-Riverside High School has been taken over by them.”

That she held these views is one thing. That she was clueless enough to think she could twit them and nobody but Trump would know about it is, well, beyond idiotic.

Clark told an investigator with the school district that she had a Twitter account and that her Twitter handle was @Rebecca1939.

The investigator presented Clark with copies of the posts and asked if they were hers.

“Ms. Clark acknowledged the Tweets were hers, but she thought she was sending a private message to President Trump,” the summary report states. “Ms. Clark stated she did not realize the Tweets were public.”

Is it wrong for a teacher to harbor such feelings toward her students? It seems impossible for her to do her job of teaching students, even if her personal policy preference is that undocumented immigrants not be here or not be allowed a public education. She’s a teacher, not a policymaker, and she’s being paid to teach students whether it pleases her that they’re in her classroom or not. She doesn’t have to like them, but she still has to teach them. What are the chances that her denigration of their status furthers their education? Slim to none, and actually not even slim.

While some might point to the First Amendment, to Clark’s free speech right to express her disdain for students of Mexican heritage, it ends at the point where it negatively impacts her ability, as a public employee, to perform her job. She can hate “illegals” all she wants. She just can’t do so while keeping her job as their teacher when the former makes the latter untenable.

Beyond her feelings toward the students she’s charged to teach, there is another problem. Twitter just isn’t that hard to figure out, and her inability to grasp that public twits to Trump could be seen by, well, anyone who wanted to see them is just beyond stupid.

And when the backlash caught up to her, as it most assuredly would, she became the victim of her own ignorance, at least as far as she was concerned.

When Clark was shown a post in which she included her phone numbers, she told the investigator she had received messages calling her a “racist b—-,”the summary states.

Clark said she filed a police report and planned to consult an attorney before submitting a written statement.

How dare anyone call the “racist b—-” a racist bitch? But it gets worse. This isn’t the first time Clark’s inability to not spew her hatred of “illegals” in the classroom bit her in the butt.

Eighteen student witnesses made statements in that case. A co-worker on campus also told the district Clark used racist language when referring to students. That internal review began Nov. 7, 2013, and closed on Jan. 3, 2014.

In November 2013, Clark was accused of calling a group of Hispanic students “Little Mexico.” She also reportedly called a Caucasian student “white bread,” and separated the class by race, according to the reports.

“The Mexicans on one side and the white and black people on another side,” one student told the district’s Office of Professional Standards in 2013. “She had told the Mexicans that (they’re) Mexico and that the white and blacks are America.”

What became of her conduct?

[Clark] was recommended for termination by a review committee after she was accused of using racist language toward students. She was kept by the district after the United Educators Association helped her find a resolution with the district, the records state.

What is meant by “find a resolution” when a teacher segregates her class into Mexico and America isn’t clear, but aren’t teacher unions grand? After all, without them, no one as mind-numbingly stupid as Clark could possibly hold her teaching job while expressing her hatred of her students, again, this time to the president in public on Twitter.

13 thoughts on “Short Take: How Not To Have A Personal Chat With Trump

          1. Fubar

            When matters most grave, consequential,
            I discuss with the greats presidential,
            There’s often no time
            To find the right rhyme.
            So I skip them unless they’re essential!

  1. B. McLeod

    One thing that is all but certain is that the children she is supposed to be teaching understand Twitter better than she does.

  2. B. McLeod

    NBC News reports that Clark is now unemployed, by an 8-0 vote of the district board at a special meeting yesterday evening.

  3. Jim Tyre

    See, Scott, you really do understand Twitter. It’s too bad that job at Twitter that came open while you were gone filled before you returned. It would have been a great new career for you.

Comments are closed.