A Seattle teacher canceled a virtual class at the last-minute, telling students the internet service in the forest wasn’t up to the job, according to one mother.
Jenny Feldman on Wednesday tweeted what she said was a screenshot of the teacher’s email to her daughter’s middle school language arts class earlier in the day.
- “I am current living in the forest, and so when our power goes out, it is for most of the day,” the email said. “My internet (from a hotspot) is enough to respond to messages but not host live class.”
- “Well this is new,” Feldman quipped, tagging Seattle’s public school district.
In a followup tweet, Feldman, who according to her Twitter bio works “in tech,” said: “Srsly. What are we teaching public school kids about the importance of their education right now? The more they see themselves as the last priority, the more they are going to check out.”
Feldman did not identify the teacher or her daughter’s school and did not immediately response to request for comment.
Teachers gone wild?: Seattle Public Schools is one of many school districts that has yet to return to in-person classes since the fall, when more than 50 million U.S. children were told to stay home to study due to the coronavirus pandemic.
- Widespread and prolonged distance learning has bred tensions between fed-up parents and teachers, whose unions have generally opposed reopening school buildings.
A study of 10,000 American school districts published last month found essentially no connection between the status of schools and COVID-19 case rates.
- Instead, the main predictors of a school being closed were the strength of teacher’s unions and opposition to President Donald Trump in the district.
Anyway, data has increasingly shown that schools do not appear to be major sources of coronavirus transmission, as Trump has long argued.
