{"id":13173,"date":"2016-01-26T12:11:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T17:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=13173"},"modified":"2016-01-26T12:19:13","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T17:19:13","slug":"unionville-hs-teacher-resignation-sparks-social-media-furor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=13173","title":{"rendered":"Unionville HS teacher resignation sparks social media furor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><em><strong>District, ex-teacher disagree over why she was investigated<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><strong>By Mike McGann<\/strong><\/span>, <span style=\"font-size: 8pt;\"><em>Editor, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SocialMedia-300x237.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1268416\" src=\"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/SocialMedia-300x237.jpg\" alt=\"SocialMedia\" \/><\/a>A former Unionville-Chadds Ford School District teacher and the schools\u2019 administration have strikingly different accounts of how she came to resign her part-time teaching position at Unionville High School, after a social media furor was touched off last week over what sparked her departure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Winden Rowe, a 1997 graduate of Unionville High School, painted a disturbing picture of school and district administrators quizzing first students and then her about her \u201cgay\u201d friend and her mentions of him and their respective social lives during class time. Superintendent of Schools John Sanville and Board of Education president Victor Dupuis issued a statement Monday night, disputing that account, saying the issue had nothing to do with her friend or the sexual orientation of her friend \u201cbut rather the inappropriateness of discussing an adult recreational lifestyle with students during class time.\u201d<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">After Rowe\u2019s controversial account of an investigation into her in-classroom conduct began to make waves in the community last week via social media, district officials had no on the record comment until Monday night\u2019s Board of Education meeting. Although public media had encouraged local residents to attend the meeting, possibly because of the massive weekend snowstorm, there were no public comments about the situation beyond those made by board members and administrators.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"h6qtKUx21e\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=13175\">UCFSD statement on Rowe incident<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;UCFSD statement on Rowe incident&#8221; &#8212; chescotimes.com\" src=\"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=13175&#038;embed=true#?secret=wYg21QzWDx#?secret=h6qtKUx21e\" data-secret=\"h6qtKUx21e\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Rowe, in an interview last week, said while she could understand why there might be questions about her sharing in class and going off topic \u2014 Rowe taught Spanish part time \u2014 she said the investigative process, the questions and how it was conducted made it impossible for her to continue teaching in the district. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">She said she had no idea that there had been a complaint \u2014 which according to the district came from a student, automatically starting an investigative process under district policy \u2014 until she was informed by one of her students. She said that students were being called down one by one to discuss the matter with administrators but that no one had spoken with her at that point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI felt like I was proven guilty before I even knew I was on trial,\u201d Rowe said. \u201cIf that\u2019s the methodology in place, it\u2019s concerning to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">According to the district, administrators sought to focus Rowe on teaching the subject matter, planned to enter a letter into her record (both sides agree, she had a spotless record in five years of teaching at the school) and asked her to apologize to her students. They said Rowe chose to resign twice, which was not their intent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Rowe\u2019s said her account, which has since been removed from Facebook, was published to her private Facebook account, to be shared with a handful of friends, and only became more widely known when a friend of hers pushed it out to a wider audience on the social media platform. The account spread like wildfire through the community \u2014 as students began sharing the account in school by week\u2019s end.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">She made it clear that was never her intent, though.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI\u2019m not one of those people who is driven by anger or revenge,\u201d she said. \u201cI just wanted to answer public questions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">By Tuesday \u2014 following the district statement \u2014 Rowe posted to Facebook suggesting everyone had said their piece and it was time to move on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cWhen I read the statement released from the district last night, I knew it was time to let go,\u201d her post said Tuesday. \u201cSome of you may say that I am somehow incriminating myself as dishonest by doing and saying so. And I understand that thought process. I also know that regardless of what I say there will be both naysayers and supporters, and the possible dialogue is endless. However, that is beside the point of this post. I see a lot of unkindness being shared here, so I ask that we all please stop.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The Times made a Right To Know Request regarding all materials related to Rowe\u2019s resignation \u2014 which to date has not been fulfilled \u2013 in an attempt to clarify what appear to be varying accounts of how the issue was handled during the week of Dec. 18, 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>District, ex-teacher disagree over why she was investigated By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times A former Unionville-Chadds Ford School District teacher and the schools\u2019 administration have strikingly different accounts of how she came to resign her part-time teaching position at Unionville High School, after a social media furor was touched off last week over what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[6873,811,615],"class_list":["post-13173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-resignation","tag-unionville-high-school","tag-unionville-chadds-ford-school-district"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13177,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13173\/revisions\/13177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}