Search For Tammarow

If you've known me for more than five minutes, you know how much importance I place on matters of spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and correct use of language overall.

Therefore, I can't take too much umbrage with the colloquy that recently took place between two people associated with the Frederick County (Maryland) school system.

There was dicey weather on January 5, and, accordingly, a student who was probably wearing his pajamas inside out* tweeted to the school board, "close school tammarow PLEASE."

A school employee, Katie Nash, whose job it was to monitor the school system's social media business saw this, and responded, "But then how would you learn how to spell ‘tomorrow?"

Done and done, right?  Kid with spelling problem tweets, woman replies with a little wit and a solid point, and life goes on.  Over a thousand people retweeted that tweet, over a thousand "like"d it, and the hashtag #katiefromfcps started trending! 

And then, Ms Nash was told to stop tweeting on her work account.

Nash

And the kids started another hashtag: #freekatie.

And the spelling-challenged kid himself wrote that the original reply didn't bother him. He didn't take it personally.

And then, late in the day last Friday, Ms Nash was called into her boss's office, handed a letter of termination, and shown the door. I'm sure they had a beefy security guard standing cross-armed as she retrieved her personal belongings.

People are petitioning for her to get her job back, but I'm sure she will find better work than to work for these neck-bowed illiberals. Young Quincy, or whatever his name was, needed an admonition, he got one, and Ms Nash was canned for no good reason. 

But she says she wants the students of Frederick County to move on. "It’s important to me that they see it is how you react to a situation that really defines who you are. I am really trying to get to each one of them and say maybe it’s not fair, but life will go on, and I have a lot of opportunity ahead of me because I got a great education."

She'll be fine. Let's hope the students will be as well.

* In Maryland, students hoping for snow to cancel school the next day customarily turn their pjs inside out to bring them luck. This works as often as it does for baseball fans who turn their caps inside out to get their team to rally in the late innings.