this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.

No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.

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[–] WindyRebel@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

I am a teacher who finished his student teaching the past school year in the Chicagoland area.

I just want to say…the FUCK? This woman was pissed because a student closed her laptop? She claims it “wiped” her lesson plan? No. I’m calling baloney on that story. Her stuff was saved in a cloud environment and would’ve been recovered easily or the OS would’ve saved the working doc.

If this student teacher was frustrated over this extremely small thing, and made a comment like that even “joking” then she is not cut out to be a teacher. At. All. This incident also just killed her career. No school will hire her with this story out there. What a moronic thing to do/say!

The tech issue of flagging this is just a whole other issue though and a good reminder to be careful of context because we are being monitored even when seemingly not.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago (14 children)

I'd like to shoot myself after reading this stupid comment. Should I go ahead and start baking cookies for the agents. I wonder if they want coffee?

Everyone is unhinged. Get a grip.

[–] WindyRebel@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (13 children)

I’m sorry, but what? I’m a dad to a teen and a new teacher as well, so I have experience in this area.

Everyone is unhinged. Get a grip.

You really don’t understand the profession of teaching if that’s your takeaway of what I said. We all get frustrated with students, but to plainly say “shoot” them, while in a literal school and over social media because a student closed your laptop?

A student teacher shouldn’t be this frustrated at this point in their career or they should consider a different career. Kids do this stuff all the time, especially to each other. Open the laptop, boot up, recover the documents/projects. It’s really not a big deal that warrants a comment about shooting a kid, even as a joke.

If you really feel that is acceptable, then thank you for not teaching kids.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It was a joke under an assumption of privacy.

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works -3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Its a shitty joke. Having consequences for saying something is an okay thing. I agree that they should rethink teaching if this is their perspective. Are we just supposed to let them teach for a decade or two and hope they mellow out? Teachers are supposed to be leaders, they have a higher bar to meet.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

We're supposed to not find out that the joke was made in private and judge her based on how she acts outside of private

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works -2 points 3 weeks ago

Private is the thoughts in your head, everything else is public. This teacher didn't need to actually say the thought out loud, it could just stay a shitty thought in their head. Maybe they could try some introspection, about why they are so frustrated over something so trivial. Maybe consider why they are so quick to have violent thoughts about people they are in charge of.

Also, besides all of this, who ever thought Snapchat was a private place, even using your definition of the word? They sent a death threat to a public company that is very clear that they monitor the content that flows through their servers.

Context matters, you can't just leave out the details and say "any privacy violation is bad". That's not how society works or else wed all be living alone in caves.

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