A school teacher from California who updated her Twitter account with threatening messages about her students was formally reprimanded, but is being allowed to teach, The Blaze reported on Friday.
Krista Hodges, who works at Newark Memorial High School, apologized after she received a written reprimand at the end of a formal investigation.
One tweet said: "I already want to stab some kids. Is that bad?"
"I am getting Starbucks for sure before school tomorrow," another said. "That way I'll be refreshed and have something to dump on the little a-holes."
"So happy to be done w/ school for 10 days, but especially to be away from the ones who truly try my patience and make my trigger finger itchy," another tweet said.
One of Hodges' colleagues alerted the school about the tweets, some of which contained racist remarks in addition to violence. Hodges said she meant none of it seriously and further apologized. But some members of the school community are shocked by the turn of events, given the alarming feelings the teacher expressed, according to Mercury News.
"I never expected anyone would take me seriously. If I had thought for one moment that someone would read anything I said on Twitter and take me seriously, you'd better believe I would have been much more careful with what I've said," she said in an email to Mercury News.
Hodges told Mercury News that she handled herself unprofessionally, but that everyone knows she's one of the most-liked teachers on campus due to meaningful and long-lasting relationships with her students.
The school's athletics booster club president, Stacy Kelly, whose children graduated from the same school, said the tweets were unacceptable.
"If you feel that bad about your job and your students, maybe you should find a different career," Kelly told Mercury News.
But one psychologist said that people who express threatening emotions through social media aren't always inclined toward violence.
"When people go online, it doesn't feel like the real world; it's almost an extension of their imagination where they can say almost anything they want," John Suler, a professor and specialist in cyberpsychology at Rider University in New Jersey, told Mercury News.
