Special Ed. teacher busted for calling autistic students ‘psychopaths’ on Twitter
A special ed teacher who was a Miss Montana who ran on a platform of inclusive education for those with disabilities is now being investigated by officials for social media posts she has made about both her job and her students.
An anonymous group of parents sent the printed out tweets to school officials last week. The file contained more than 20 pages of tweets from Sheridan Tihista, who is a special ed teacher at Liberty Middle School
Her tweets referenced her work with autistic kids, calling their mothers “monsters” and the students “Satan.”
She also tweeted about her interactions with students, in many cases dismissively. For example, she said the best part of teaching autistic children is that she never had to switch up her classroom routines because “we loooove routines!”
In yet another post, she showed an image of a text exchange in which the person said they wanted attention as their Christmas gift, she replied, “basically all my students.”
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Since her tweets came to light, Tihista said, “My tweets may have been distasteful but don’t illustrate what kind of educator I am,”
West Fargo school officials were first alerted to this last week and will be going over the material to see what action should be taken.
They have a school district policy that states teachers may be protected by the First Amendment to some degree, but teachers can still be disciplined for inappropriate off-duty conduct.
