Or was it faculty-only? Not that it would be great if the chat was private to the staff, but in my mind it makes it a lot worse if the teachers were saying these kinds of things in a public forum. I can't imagine what it must be like growing up today with social media. Kids have it hard enough as it is dealing with online bullying from their peers; when teachers contribute to that, it has to be pretty devastating for any young person.

On the other hand, I can't imagine what teachers have to put up these days. It seems the norm is for administrations to cave to the online mob rather than support their staff, so I imagine it has to be a pretty lonely feeling knowing that one mistake or one statement that gets taken the wrong way could cost you your job. I could never be a teacher, but I know if I was, I'd likely have some less-than-positive thoughts about poorly-behaved/disrespectful students. I'm not sure telling teachers that they can never vent about dealing with "problem" students is healthy, but it sounds like in this case it went beyond venting and was done in a very unprofessional way. (I'm not saying the child in this case actually caused problems in the classroom - absent more information, I'm just giving the teachers the benefit of the doubt that their comments were not 100% un-provoked)

I'm sure there is probably more to both sides of the story, so it's hard to draw any real conclusions based solely on the news article. If this is truly a case of mean-spirited teachers picking on an otherwise-innocent child, then it's pretty awful. However, if the child truly is a handful in the classroom, then I think that changes things a little bit, but the teachers still shouldn't be calling anyone names, and especially not in a space that is at all public. That's unprofessional, mean-spirited, and just plain stupid.