Teacher Takes To Facebook To Badmouth Student With Learning Disability

Teacher resigns after Georgia school district confronts her about badmouthing student on Facebook

A Georgia teacher is out of a job after posting derogatory statements on Facebook about one of her students who has a learning disability. Not sure what’s more disturbing: that a teacher has such awful things to say about one of her students, or that she’s so dense that she posts those things to her 400 friends on social media.

Jennifer Lynch teaches several Latin classes for Fulton County Schools. She teaches beginning through honors courses. On the last day of school before the winter break, one of her students — who is allowed extra time to finish tests because of a learning disability — took a little too long for Lynch’s liking. She was apparently antsy to get her holiday break started, and took to Facebook to complain about the student, in a series of derogatory posts uncovered by 11 Alive:

“Ugh, thanks a lot, kid, for finally coming to finish your effin’ final more than THREE HOURS after school let out and almost TWO HOURS after the principal said teachers could leave.”

“To make it worse he’s giving regular updates on how many questions he has left. And I’m over here like: [She posts a meme that says “Look at all the fucks I don’t give. They’re falling from the sky!]”

“Holy (expletive), he’s finally gone. I get to go home now. Only 5.5 hours after school let out and 4 hours after we were told we could leave.”

Okay, we get it. You’re annoyed. This is the kind of thing you text to your best friend — the one who knows you’re not actually a horrible person (we hope). This is NOT the kind of thing you put on a Facebook page. Facebook is not private. When will everyone learn that? The posts continue:

“On the way out, he says, ‘isn’t it funny? I’ll be the last student to walk through the doors of JCHS in 2015.’ No, that’s not funny. That’s tragic. Your life is tragic. Everything about you is tragic. You’re Romeo and Juliet. I want to be sad for you, but at the end of the day, we’re all better that you’re not around.”

“He has some (expletive) disorder: one of those ‘we don’t know what his disorder is and we don’t want him to be labeled, so we are not going to find out, but we want academic accommodations anyway’ disorders. So anyway, he gets an extra hour for each final. But, instead of spreading those hours out over three days of finals… he decided to finish all six on Friday afternoon.”

It’s an unreal expectation to think teachers aren’t human: they’re certainly entitled to get annoyed. And to be fair, sitting in a classroom for four hours after you were told you could leave does sound very annoying. However, it’s a very real and appropriate expectation to insist that teachers aren’t flat-out insulting the kids in their class in a public forum. That shows a lack of judgment that’s inexcusable in someone who’s in charge of molding young minds.

Lynch resigned after the district questioned her about the posts. The district said in a statement about the incident “We are appalled at the social media posts and the disrespect shown to a student. Ms. Lynch… decided to resign her position and is no longer employed by Fulton County Schools. FCS does not monitor the personal social media of our staff but employees are accountable for the use of good judgement.”