An Iowa teacher’s mistake tells parents what some already know

For years, I thought the poster children for school choice in Iowa were Iowa children. I was wrong. The poster child for school choice is a teacher in the state’s largest school district.

On Friday, Nov. 10, three days after left-leaning candidates swept almost all of Iowa’s hotly contested school board races, a fifth-grade teacher at a Des Moines elementary school posted a photo on the social media site Instagram that resulted in severe backlash.

Teacher’s inappropriate post causes outrage

In the photo, the teacher stands in her classroom, posing with one hand on her hip and a pleased-looking smile on her face. She wears a T-shirt that appears to bear the name of her school, screen-printed in a striped pattern using colors of the LGBTQ pride flag. Over the T-shirt rests a lanyard also bearing the name of the school, sporting her DMPS employee ID badge.

Printed in large text, a caption overlays the photo: “Every day is another opportunity to force kids in public schools to be gay.”

Read that a second time if you need. But yeah, she actually wrote that. And then posted it to her Instagram.

It was a sarcastic joke, mind you — one that went over like a lead balloon. But speaking of sarcasm, here’s a piece of insight: Apparently when you post something to social media, people might actually see it.

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In our hyper-connected digital world, a single Internet post can be seen and shared by millions in a matter of moments, an occurrence called “going viral” to describe the proliferation of views at breakneck speed. Sure enough, someone saw that ridiculously inappropriate joke. Before long it caught the attention of the popular social media account known as Libs of TikTok.

Teacher’s inappropriate post goes viral

Libs of TikTok exists to draw attention to leftists’ social media posts that range from absurd to outrageous. Without question, this qualifies as both. Hours after the teacher posted her joke to Instagram, Libs of TikTok shared it with 2.6 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), captioned “This is an actual elementary school teacher in @DMschools” (the username of the district’s own Twitter account.) To date, it has received almost 9 million views on the Libs of TikTok page.

The district addressed the incident swiftly. In a statement that same day, Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts said “This was a poor attempt at humor and sarcasm. And as we know, attempts at humor and sarcasm, especially online, can be easily misunderstood. The employee was wrong to make this post, has realized it was a mistake, and has removed it. The district's personnel office will address the matter with them.”

The teacher’s social media accounts appear to have since been deleted altogether. A spokesperson confirmed Thursday that the teacher still is a district employee.

Viral post teaches hard lessons

I’m not looking to rub her face in this. She is surely dealing with immense shame and embarrassment that most can’t appreciate, even though many at some point in their lives — including me — have also made ill-advised social media posts that they hope nobody remembers or saved. Her ill-advised post has been copied over and over. At any time in the coming months and years, anyone new could stumble upon it, get angry, and make things miserable for her and the district. Every time she looks at her infamous photo, the smiling woman in it will say to her, I’m about to ruin your career.

Unfortunately, to every parent concerned with teachers pushing LGBTQ ideology, the smiling teacher in the photo is saying, I don’t respect you. I don’t respect your kid, either.

That’s harsh, but accurate. That kind of sarcasm isn’t born from nothing. Even if a momentary lapse in judgment, the teacher’s original post was directed at someone. And parents know that.

So, what now? Will DMPS recognize what needs to be done to restore trust where it’s been lost? The district can’t deny that some of its teachers don’t respect some parents. A teacher’s own actions now say so. But some parents already knew.

Meanwhile, every other district should take note — especially districts celebrating the recent rejection of school board candidates running on parental rights platforms — and consider whether a version of this same teacher exists in their schools. Ideology-weary parents have already considered the same. They probably already have their answer.

That notion’s not far-fetched. A sitting legislator — one representing me — tells us so. Molly Donahue of District 37 is also a public school teacher, bouncing between multiple Cedar Rapids district schools over the last decade. Forget her constituents for a second — I wonder if Sen. Donahue ever considers whether those whom she attacks on her social media might include her own students and their parents. I wonder if she even cares. I feel sorry for any kid who suspects that their teacher hates them and their family. Especially because of politics.

So, you’ve got a tone to set, school boards. You’ve got a culture to foster. Your mandate comes with higher stakes — in our new era where state per-pupil dollars follow the student to any accredited school, many students who find a less-than-optimum culture in the classroom now have the new financial means to look elsewhere. Making sure your staff members aren’t signaling their disdain for certain parents isn’t just a culture issue. It’s a financial one.

Does Libs of TikTok share blame?

Nothing will improve DMPS’ culture if they can’t agree where accountability should be placed. In his statement, Dr. Roberts also took a shot at Libs of TikTok, describing its sharing of the post as an attack from “an online anti-LGBTQ group” which “created countless and unnecessary disruptions, including harassment and even threats,” toward the employee and the district at large.

To be crystal clear, not for one second has this teacher’s mistake warranted any sort of violence or threats thereof. Period.

But, colloquially speaking, freaks are gonna freak. And in our digital era, where information is constantly at our fingertips and communication is instantaneous, the degenerates can make their threats with scant effort — a terrible reality of our hyperconnected world.

Still, district officials seem to imply that the blame for increased security measures taken in light of the backlash belongs to Libs of TikTok — specifically its creator, Chaya Raichik, a former New York Realtor who maintained the account anonymously due to concern for her own safety.

It seems Raichik’s concerns were justified — she was “doxxed” (a term for maliciously exposing personally identifying information) by Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, whose stated intent was “running a story exposing the woman” behind the account. Lorenz went as far as linking Raichik’s real estate license containing her full name and business address. By comparison, the caption of the Libs of TikTok post sharing the screenshot of the Des Moines teacher’s joke identified only the district. The teacher’s username was part of her own original post, already available to anyone seeing it before Libs of TikTok shared it.

Tell that to DMPS, though, where an abundance of safety precautions are attributed by spokesman Phil Roeder to “ … the well-documented disruption this anti-LGBTQ group has triggered elsewhere around the country."

So blame the messenger for someone else’s reprehensible message, one that DMPS families deserved to know about? I don’t know about that. In 2015, a barrage of death threats forced an Indiana family to shut down their pizzeria after an ABC affiliate in Indiana falsely reported that the restaurant had become the first under a new religious freedom law to deny service to same-sex couples Lefty outlets HuffPost and BuzzFeed repeated them. Blame the messenger?

No. Whackos come in all shapes, stripes, and shades — and all ideological persuasions. They don’t need a purpose. Just an occasion.

This is about the message, its silent truth trumpeted out loud amid even just a momentary lapse of judgment: Some teachers have entrenched themselves in the LGBTQ culture wars. And they don’t care how it affects your kid.

Are public schools forcing kids to be gay?

“This shouldn't need to be said,” continued Roberts’ official statement, “but perhaps it must: our schools and teachers are focused on providing a quality education to our students, which does not include encouraging or forcing any student to identify with any specific sexual orientation.”

It does need to be said. No matter how ridiculous it may sound, a solid argument to the contrary was handed on a silver platter to any and every parent who worries, quietly or not, that their child’s teacher might be an activist masquerading as an educator.

Your job now, school boards, is to not roll your eyes at them when they balk about their kid’s biology teacher stating that some kids “go through the wrong puberty.” Or when their kid’s English teacher seeks a show of hands of who in the class supports “a woman’s right to control her own body.”

Yes, the liberal left solidified their control of school boards in 2023. Their endorsed candidates sought the approval of voters — and got it. But now those school boards have to seek the approval of parents whose children fill their classrooms.

Should they fail to earn it, what wasn’t evident on the ballot will become crystal clear when parents take their kids — and their dollars — elsewhere.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com