A Seattle-area teacher is under fire after scolding a student in an online classroom for saying that he admires President Donald Trump.
According to local conservative talk radio host Jason Rantz, Elsy Kusander’s 10-year-old son was berated by his teacher, Brendan Stanton, for naming the president as someone he admires.
Stanton, a middle school teacher at P.G. Keithley Middle School in Tacoma, prompted students to name someone they admire and explain why. When Kusander’s son named the president, Stanton kicked him out of the class chat and went on a leftist rant.
Thankfully, Kusander began recording the class on her cell phone when she noticed something was amiss.
Stanton asks his students a new question each day, Rantz reports. On that particular day, Stanton asked, “Who is the one person you admire and why?” to which Kusander’s son responded:
I admire Donald J. Trump because he is making America great again. And because he is the best president the United States of America could ever, ever have. And he built the wall so terrorists couldn’t come into in the U.S. Trump is the best person in the world. And that’s why I had admire him.
“The example that was shared in the chat, which I went ahead and erased for us, was not appropriate right? Especially as that individual has created so much division and hatred between people and specifically spoken hatred to many different individuals, OK?,” Stanton told the class.
“Again, that individual has spoken hate to many individuals and I don’t think is an appropriate example for a role model that we should be admiring.”
Kusander told Rantz she was shocked by Stanton’s comments.
“I went into my son’s room and I heard the teacher saying that this individual is hateful and divisive, etc. I started to record,” she said. “How can a teacher be teaching to his students horrible things about the president of the country without facts?”
Kusander says she demanded a phone call with Stanton for an explanation. Later that afternoon, Stanton—unaware that Kusander had seen and recorded the incident—attempted to change the story.
Stanton told her that he only deleted her son’s comment because it wasn’t related to the question of the day, insisting that he told students to name a computer programmer they admired. If they couldn’t think of one, he claims he said, they could name someone from their community.
“Donald Trump would not fit that prompt … just because it was a little bit off topic,” Stanton told Kusander, who recorded the conference call as well.
Stanton then claimed that another student was offended by Kusander’s answer, assuring her that his own personal politics had nothing to do with the incident.
“My perspective has nothing to do with Donald Trump himself, right? I try to keep politics out of the classroom,” he explained. “I do try to keep politics out of the classroom … because students have different opinions, right? And so if the way that I said it was not perfect, I do apologize. What I was trying to say is just, ‘Hey, hey, guys, let’s get it back to our topic of the day because we really need to get moving into our content, which was on our computer scientists.’”
That’s when Kusander finally revealed she saw and recorded Stanton’s rant, at which point his story began to change.
“I came into the room, and you were talking, I got my phone and I recorded part of your conversation,” she told the teacher. “I clearly saw and recorded what you were saying …”
“I do apologize if my words were not perfect at the time,” Stanton finally admitted. “If I used … if I said that Trump was ‘hateful and divisive,’ that may have been what I used at the time, but my purpose was in bringing us back to the conversation of computer scientists and the positive role that they’ve played in our history.”
“I totally respect him as an individual,” Stanton told Kusander, offering to personally apologize to her son. “And his opinion. I am always interested in student feedback and also parent feedback as well. So I appreciate you having this conversation with me.”
Rantz reported that “multiple emails to Stanton, the principal of P.G. Keithley Middle School, and the district communications manager went unanswered.”
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