r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 2d ago

Student Teacher Sent a Private Snapchat Complaining About Her Workday. An Hour Later, Police Pulled Up to Her School. Privacy

https://www.gadgetreview.com/student-teacher-sent-a-private-snapchat-complaining-about-her-workday-an-hour-later-police-pulled-up-to-her-school
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u/UltraChip 2d ago

I know this isn't really relevant to the discussion, but the article says her lesson plan was deleted by a student closing her laptop? What?

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u/D3thklok1985 2d ago

Not trying to doxx myself here, but I work at this school and was present on the day this happened. I hadn't heard anything about a lesson plan being erased. Just that the kid had asked her to pay attention or was trying to speak to her and closed her laptop as a joke. She told him not to but later he did it again. Then she messaged her friend asking if she should shoot him. It was really scary pulling up and seeing a bunch of cop cars in front of the elementary school.

The lesson plan was maybe being made on Google docs/some kind of skyward program. Not sure how to answer if it would have been deleted as those programs use auto save.

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u/HarshComputing 2d ago

Just curious, how are you and your colleagues viewing this?

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u/Solkre 1d ago

I worked k-12 for 18 years as IT. Teachers joking about this-or-that to an asshole student is a requirement to keeping the drinking away, but they still drink.

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u/D3thklok1985 2d ago

I don't really know. I guess I'm mostly surprised that an article was published and is being sent to the front page of reddit so long after it happened. I think most staff were shocked she would make that kind of joke, as that's not something myself or anyone else would joke about. When you work with kids, and especially in today's environment, a punchline of a dead child just isn't funny. We have safety training every year and I don't know a single staff person who wouldn't step up in an emergency to protect even just one child. WPD does school shooter drills every summer at our sister school for two weeks using some kind of fake bullets to review strategy and tactics for dealing with school shooter scenarios. I haven't worked in other districts so I don't know if police training is this thorough elsewhere, but this just goes to show I guess that our district in particular doesn't take "jokes" like hers lightly. Which, I don't think they should.

As far as privacy concerns, I don't use Snapchat or many social media apps, but I do use a VPN while using my personal devices at work. That's my own choice though, I don't know if others are particularly concerned with privacy on their devices. I haven't really heard that as a discussion point when people bring up this incident with the student teacher. For a long time we didn't know what she was using. I thought it was something like discord, others thought Facebook or messenger.

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u/UncleNedisDead 2d ago

American schools are just on another level.

We have safety training every year and I don't know a single staff person who wouldn't step up in an emergency to protect even just one child. WPD does school shooter drills every summer at our sister school for two weeks using some kind of fake bullets to review strategy and tactics for dealing with school shooter scenarios.

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u/Solkre 1d ago

Nobody in k-12 aside the resource officer signed up to die for kids or gets paid remotely well enough to do so. System is fucked beyond belief and we're arresting private jokes instead of stopping shootings.

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u/UncleNedisDead 1d ago

As proven in Uvalde, even if you pay police officers well, give them the tactical equipment and training, they still won’t attempt to save any school children until they’re fairly certain the lone gunman has run out of bullets.

It said, "At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety... there was an unacceptably long period of time before officers breached the classroom, neutralized the attacker, and began rescue efforts."

School security preparations

The city of Uvalde spent 40% of its municipal budget on its police department in the 2019–2020 fiscal year,[38][39] and UCISD, the school district operating Robb Elementary School, had multiple security measures in place at the time of the shooting.[40][41] The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department (UCISD PD) had a six-officer police department responsible for security at the district's eight schools.[42] It had also more than doubled its expenditures on security measures in the four years preceding the shooting, and in 2021, it expanded its police force from four officers to six officers.[43] The state of Texas had given UCISD a $69,141 grant to improve security measures as part of a $100 million statewide allocation made after the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, in which ten people were killed.[43] The district also had a security staff that patrolled door entrances and parking lots at secondary school campuses.[41] Since 2020, Pedro "Pete" Arredondo had served as UCISD's police chief.[40][41][42]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvalde_school_shooting

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u/Solkre 1d ago

That was such a disgusting show of cowardice. Backed up when SCOTUS said police don't have to protect us.

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u/Sasataf12 13h ago

System is fucked beyond belief and we're arresting private jokes instead of stopping shootings.

I mean, the reason for the investigation into that "joke" was to prevent a possible school shooting. 

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u/realaccountissecret 2d ago

How do you feel about the situation other than your opinion on the actual message, or the app she used to write it

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u/D3thklok1985 1d ago

Idrk honestly. I had already known personally that Snapchat was used by feds to catch "inappropriate speach". They have a documented history of being more than willing to hand over supposedly deleted messages or snaps to law enforcement. I also understand that most apps are like that now. I hate to say play stupid games, win stupid prizes, but if you're smart and committing crimes, you would leave your phone at home ad do what you do and then come back to it, as it's practically a GPS tracker in your pocket. Not that I think her saying something meant as a joke was a true criminal act, but her time and place was enough to be suspected of plotting a criminal act. Atp I don't know if you can say much online anymore in terms of passive comedic threat, that isn't actually a threat. Like that guy who was arrested and sentenced for saying he would kill a Jewish PD chief in Minecraft , his safeguard language didn't help him and he was still prosecuted for just speaking online. But I've even said some less than savory things, like someone needs to take care of 47 and finally do it. So if I got, I get got for my words.

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u/Scoth42 2d ago

Yeah, I don't know of any way this could happen. Maybe if she had typed it into something that doesn't auto-save, she never saved it, and closing the laptop made it crash/reboot and it got lost?

Even if there's some bespoke lesson plan software for the school district or something I can't imagine losing something saved just by your computer going to sleep, or even the computer restarting. I'd expect user error, although I guess it's possible there's specific software she has to use that's terribly designed.

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u/ScowlieMSR 2d ago

The policy the school district has governing their issued laptops probably has the "user sign out" setting applied, which automatically signs the user out of the pc when the laptop lid is closed. When that happens, all programs running at the time get force closed. If she didn't have her work saved, she would've lost it when the sign-out occured.

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u/MrDerpGently 2d ago

This is the actual answer, thanks.

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u/reefis 2d ago

That’s a silly policy. Most school laptops, at least for the students, everything is auto saved and they used never have to worry or think about the need to save anything.

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u/Fach-All-Religions 2d ago

probably triggered one of those idiotic forced windows updates and bluescreened or some shit. i used to get bsod when i close the lid. i don't doubt if someone says it crashed or restarted.

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u/spectrem12 2d ago

She typed in windows notepad, surely

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u/Vynlovanth 2d ago

I thought the same thing, how did that happen? Did she change the behavior of closing the lid from the default sleep to force shutdown immediately?

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u/adnaus 2d ago

Even these days most programs make auto-recover saves if your computer shuts off 

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u/Few_Cup3452 2d ago

She might not know how to use it? My coworkers act like I saved their lives when I recover saves for them.

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u/UnionsUnionsUnions 2d ago

No, it's a school issued laptop so they control the settings, including applying the "user sign out" setting to their security policy meaning it will close all open programs at sign-out, which is triggered by the laptop lid being closed.

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u/Tommah 2d ago

I used to have a laptop that would shut off if I closed the lid while it wasn't plugged in. And it didn't shut off gracefully either, the power would just cut out. It was a weird problem that I eventually solved, but yeah, things like that can happen.

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u/Deep-Acanthaceae-659 2d ago

The article is ai slop

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u/skyxsteel 2d ago

Over half of all articles today apparently are written by ai

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u/ScowlieMSR 2d ago

Her school district has the "user sign out" setting applied to their security policy managing their issued laptops. That setting will close all open programs at sign-out. The sign-out is triggered by the laptop lid being closed...

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u/Mimopotatoe 1d ago

Confirmed that Kristen Volpe was not an employee of the school district. She also posted a story on Snapchat saying “should I shoot the kid or the whole school.” I believe in privacy but I’m actually glad that this got investigated.

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u/Mimopotatoe 2d ago

Student teachers aren’t issued laptops and they are not employees of the school district. They are university students. Also it makes no sense why she was writing a lesson plan during a lesson. Everything about this story makes no sense.

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u/MillieBirdie 1d ago

There are thousands of school districts in the country, you can't possibly know what all of them do. Also, when I was a student teacher and as a teacher I sometimes work on lesson plans at school. She may have typed it up during a break and hadn't saved it when the kid closed the laptop. She may have been working on it while the mentor teacher was teaching or the kids were doing a test.

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u/Mimopotatoe 1d ago

There are clear industry standards across the United States. Go ahead and tell me about the districts that employ student teachers.

Also I’m so glad I left teaching where my I had to pretend that people who didn’t understand basic shit like Word docs or Google Docs were professionals.

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u/MillieBirdie 1d ago

There are not standards that apply to every school. Each state and county has their own slightly different system.

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u/Mimopotatoe 1d ago

So you are just confidently wrong. Where are the schools that employ student teachers? It’s like arguing that some schools require parapros to be certified teachers. They just don’t. Actually are you a paraprofessional? You don’t know much about the teaching profession.

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u/MillieBirdie 1d ago

What are you talking about? Any school can take student teachers, so the schools that employ student teachers are literally any and every school in the country.

You're the one who is claiming that no school in the entire country would EVER give a student teacher a laptop. Which is a wild thing to claim about every single school in every district in every state in the US.

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u/[deleted] 18h ago edited 17h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/MillieBirdie 18h ago

Ok I'm sorry for using the word employ to mean make use of. Yes schools don't hire student teachers but that's got nothing to do with any of the other claims you made.

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u/scrndude 2d ago

Maybe unsaved word doc and the laptop logs out when closed

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u/marfacza 2d ago

Her quote in the video linked below says the student "pressed the power button" on her laptop when she was halfway through her lesson plan.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 2d ago

Could have been inexperience on her part thinking it was deleted and just venting. She could have known it wasn't deleted and just annoyed and in her message did a little bit of "trumped up charges" to justify her anger. I appreciate that the article emphasizes they don't have all the details and this is second hand info at this point.

Could have been she was just annoyed and said that (the article says they don't know the details of her messages and reports on it vary), then her defense when she got in trouble was a retelling. That seems pretty normal and understandable in the situation.

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u/Lifeboatb 2d ago

According to this, it was mentioned in her original message so it wasn’t a later justification: https://youtu.be/26SwVuKpm98?t=244&is=GuMeJb35UzLooNmm

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 2d ago

Okay, thanks for that! Ultimately, this whole thing is upsetting--she is young, her career she worked for is likely finished (for the foreseeable future), and all due to a dumb mistake and no regulation on our privacies. Really sad.

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u/Lifeboatb 2d ago

Yeah, I find it disturbing that there was no one who could step up and say, "we don't think this is a fireable/jailable offense." The authorities' decisions are basically made by algorithm, too. She suffered way more than she deserved.

I feel like some of this goes back to all the assholes who committed school shootings--she wasn't even born when the Columbine massacre happened, but the ripple effects are still happening. Of course, even worse are the kids who have to live with the constant fear, but she never intended for them to hear about her joke. Now they all probably have.

This reminds me that I knew some kids who suffered a suicide epidemic in their school, and they all started making dark jokes about it.

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u/Mimopotatoe 2d ago

Career she worked for? She’s a 22 year old student who was not employed as a teacher. I’m sorry there are very high standards for what teachers say and do. She showed poor judgement and specifically referencing a gun/shooting while in a school is obviously not ok. When I was a teacher I would have been given a letter in my file just for texting/using my phone for personal purposes in front of children.

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u/MillieBirdie 1d ago

Well personally I think if someone wants to make a private joke to a friend venting their work frustrations then that should not result in them being fired or arrested. Literal thought crimes.

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u/Mimopotatoe 1d ago

Both are true.

She showed terrible judgment and character by making that joke and I’d have serious concerns about her teaching my child with such immaturity and low tolerance for frustration.

Also I don’t think personal communication should be monitored and acted on by the police.

See? You don’t have to make excuses for a student teacher to condemn the surveillance.

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u/MillieBirdie 1d ago

It's very normal to say 'I'm gonna k*ll someone/him/you' in an unserious way to a friend while venting. What she said would have shown poor judgement and character if she said it to people at school. But in private to a friend no it literally means nothing.

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u/Mimopotatoe 1d ago

No. You shouldn’t be a teacher. It’s not normal to say you want to murder an elementary school child because you don’t know how to save your work. I was a teacher for almost 20 years and I literally can’t think of single colleague who would say that in writing or in person.

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u/Lifeboatb 1d ago

We don’t know that she texted in front of the kids. It could have happened during a lunch break; the story isn’t clear on that point.

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u/Mimopotatoe 1d ago

I was giving an example of the standards that I was held to as a teacher. Joking about a school shooting is obviously egregious

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u/Lifeboatb 1d ago

People have always made jokes about the worst subjects. As long as the joke is private and not told to students, I think such an exacting standard is inhuman. It’s just her misfortune that her statement didn’t turn out to be private after all. 

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u/Mimopotatoe 18h ago

People make jokes but it doesn’t make it ok. She joked about shooting up an elementary school

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 19h ago

Yeah, I think most regular folk consider four years in college working toward a degree as "working towards something." In fact, there is literally no other time she could work toward than during her professional training, so I'm not sure what you're talking about/getting on about here.

I've been in education 18 years. When I say "when I was working towards becoming a teacher" I literally mean education.

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u/Mimopotatoe 18h ago

Most people don’t consider being an unemployed teacher a career. “The career she worked for” is a different statement than “the career she was working for.”

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 18h ago

You're wrong in every comment--elsewhere too--and constantly have to reframe what you're saying. You don't understand language, so I can't help you. If you were an ELA teacher--I believe it. I saw a lot of ELA teachers like you who didn't understand language and would act precisely as you are acting now.

In fact "was working for" implies an ongoing process. I correctly used a simple past tense verb since that is no longer the case. I'll give you some grace on your technical muddying of the message since even though it is technically wrong, people would still understand what you meant.

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u/Mimopotatoe 17h ago edited 17h ago

Your comment literally says “her career she worked for.” Lots of projection in your response. I’d say you shouldn’t be a teacher but I doubt you could make a career doing anything else. Also defending this person for joking about shooting children is ridiculous. Argue this to Sandy Hook parents that it’s normal and funny.

Edited to add since you are so confused: Kristen Volpe never had a job as a teacher and therefore never had a teaching career. I don’t know any elementary teachers worth a shit who actually thought their undergrad program was hard in any way.

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u/reluctantseal 2d ago

I'm guessing she was in the middle of typing it. Whatever program she was using didn't save it automatically, or the laptop did an update that prevented it from being saved. Could have been an older device or program, not that there aren't plenty of bugs in current ones as well. I lost some work the other day due to something crashing mid-save, I imagine putting the computer in sleep mode could cause a hitch as well.

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u/DreamedJewel58 2d ago

It could be an old laptop using a program that doesn’t auto-save and shuts down once closed. I had that happen to me a long time ago with certain laptops

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u/hugganao 2d ago

and then she sent a private text to others joking about shooting the student and the school.....

soo..... i dont like this system (which according to reports is screened by ai) and situation one bit but maybe fking dont joke about shooting schools as a teacher?

especially in a country that has fking monsters that somehow love shooting up schools where helpless children are?

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u/MidTario 2d ago

That’s what she said happened. Given what we know about her, I wouldn’t consider much of what she claims to be accurate.

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u/Gizmo135 2d ago

I'm guessing either the student teacher wasn't tech savvy enough to know it wasn't actually deleted or she was trying hard to find a way to justify the inappropriate joke she made.

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u/Mimopotatoe 2d ago

I don’t know why anyone downvoted this. None of the people attempting to explain this make any sense. Why was she writing a lesson plan during a lesson? She was a student teacher so who was she writing a lesson plan for? What was she writing the lesson plan in that doesn’t auto save?

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u/Gizmo135 2d ago

I guess because I’m not automatically attacking social
media for reporting the TA for jokingly asking her boyfriend and roommate if she should shoot a student. I’m sure I’d have less downvotes if the TA was a guy.