Online Petition Calls for Teacher’s Firing over ‘Absolutely Pathetic’ Comment on Year 2 Student’s Worksheet

A dad has taken issue with a “rude” comment that his son’s teacher wrote on his maths worksheet, leading to an online petition calling for her to be fired over the incident.

Chris Piland, from Pennsylvania in the US, posted a photo of his son Kamdyn’s math test on Facebook recently, as he slammed his son’s teacher for her comments.

“Absolutely pathetic he answered 13 in 3 min! Sad,'” she wrote alongside an image of a sad face that she drew.

The teacher, identified as Alyssa Rupp Bohenek, had written the remarks across the top of the boy’s test with a red pen.

Before we go any further, we’d like to add that US second-grade students are roughly the same age as Australian Year 2 students — about seven or eight years of age.

The angry dad’s post gained traction on Facebook and a petition soon started circulating calling for the Valley View School District to fire the teacher, who happens to be seven months pregnant and expecting a child in June.

While this homework may be appropriate for this age group to complete (maybe even in just three minutes) the language used by the teacher on the worksheet is entirely inappropriate. I know I would be LIVID if my child’s homework came home with something like that written on it, and I would not hesitate to take it up with the school immediately.

Unsurprisingly, many people have been shocked by the teacher’s message.

Commenting on the petition, one woman wrote: “I don’t even have a child and this is sickening to me. This is so beyond unprofessional and just wrong.”

Another added: “No teacher has the right to write such awful comments on a young child’s work.”

Clearly, people are passionate about this matter, but creating a Change.org petition calling for her firing is a bit much, honestly. This reeks of a witch hunt, and these petitions rarely actually promote change, especially in cases like this. Even with over 18,000 signatures.

Chris has since posted an update to say the school board is investigating.

He wrote: “Thanks to all the efforts and support of the dedicated people who signed and shared this petition, I’m happy to announce that the teacher in question is currently being investigated by the Valley View school board.”

School superintendent Rose Minniti said: “It’s a personnel issue and the results of that are not going to be dictated by social media. It’s going to be dictated by the facts and evidence.

“As always with everything, we’re going to try to do what’s best for the students and what we need to do for the employee under investigation.”

Source: Facebook/Chris Piland and Change.org