The mother of a 10-year-old Tacoma, Washington student says a teacher scolded her son for expressing admiration of President Donald Trump.
The incident: Elsy Kusander told Seattle radio station KTTH she hit record on her cell phone camera on Friday after she overheard Brendan Stanton, a technology education teacher at P.G. Keithley Middle School, excoriating the president during an online learning lesson.
According to Kusander, Stanton’s rant came in response to her son naming Trump as a person he admired.
- “The example that was shared in the chat, which I went ahead and erased for us, was not appropriate, right?” Stanton is heard saying in the video recorded by Kusander.
- “Especially as that individual has created so much division and hatred between people and specifically spoken hatred to many different individuals, okay?,” Stanton added.
- “Again, that individual has spoken hate to many individuals and I don’t think is an appropriate example for a role model that we should be admiring,” he said.
Confronted: Kusander challenged Stanton on his comments, an exchange she also captured on video.
- According to Kusander, Stanton initially misrepresented his remarks, only to change his tune once she revealed she’d been listening in and recording the classroom conversation.
- “I do try to keep politics out of the classroom… because students have different opinions, right?” Stanton told Kusander.
Stanton apologized for his choice of words and said his “purpose was in bringing us back to the conversation of computer scientists and the positive role that they’ve played in our history.”
- He also offered to apologize to Kusander’s son.