A US woman has been fired from her position as a web experience coordinator for her local school district after she drew attention for correcting a student’s spelling and grammar on Twitter.
As part of her role, 33-year-old Katie Nash was tasked with managing the Frederick County Public School district’s social media accounts in Virginia.
When a student tweeted to his school on January 5 asking if school could be cancelled “tammarow”, Katie replied, “But then how would you learn how to spell ‘tomorrow’? :)” from the school’s official account.
Her tweet was retweeted more than 1000 times.
Nash told Frederick News-Post she had been told not to tweet after the attention her tweet garnered, but she continued to tweet calendar updates and other news alerts to the FCPS TWitter feed.
A district spokesman later said Nash was no longer employed with the local school system.
“Students have been tweeting at us, but I wasn’t really sure what I should be doing or not doing. I sort of assumed there would be a follow-up conversation” with district officials, she said.
"I think a conversation about how we engage with students would have been completely appropriate and I would have welcomed that," she said.
Despite the shock, Katie said she had no hard feelings towards her former employer over the incident.
“I don’t want to be a distraction to the school system and the goals they have for overarching achievement,” she said.
Top Comments
Unless there were other issues that we haven't been told about and as such the school were looking for a reason to get rid of her, my guess is that she was sacked because the parents of the child complained. I would bet money on it. A very dear friend of mine made a narky comment about a difficult child in her class to a few of the other teachers and the principal. It wasn't very professional, but it was just a comment in passing outside the staffroom, after school had finished. Teachers do this sort of thing all the time and the principal had absolutely no issue with it until she realised that the mother of the child had overheard and was baying for blood. My friend lost her job too.
And "no one takes away ur education" is completely acceptable? Right, got it now.