People are doing just about anything to go viral these days.
An Atlanta teacher that goes by the Twitter handle @mainey_maine is catching heat from Twitter after he posted a heart-touching letter from one of his “students”.
The letter has gone viral with Steve Harvey, Essence, and The Ellen Show reposting it. That would all be fine it the letter was authentic.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has exposed the man who identified himself as Jermaine Stubbs, a 5th grade teacher in Fulton County.
It was a feel-good story that came to light on social media and drew national attention, a letter from a student who had never met his “real dad” thanking his teacher for being like a father to him.
But The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned that the letter’s recipient, who represented himself as a fifth grade Atlanta teacher, isn’t what he says.
The Twitter user who posted what he said was a letter from one of his students goes by the name @mainey_maine online. In a brief phone call with the AJC and in other media interviews, he identified himself as Jermaine Stubbs, a fifth grade teacher at Manning Oaks Elementary in Fulton County.
Manning Oaks’ principal has never heard of a Jermaine Stubbs, district spokesperson Susan Hale said. And Fulton County has no record of a Jermaine Stubbs working for the district, she said.
Stubbs isn’t even licensed to teach in Georgia, according to the state agency that oversees educator certification.
Stubbs spoke with the AJC briefly by phone Saturday, saying initially he was a fifth grade teacher at Manning Oaks. When told that Fulton County Schools said no one by his name worked for the district, he said he was actually a “parent specialist.” He then ended the call and has not replied to messages from the AJC since.
Stubbs gave a different story to WXIA-TV in Atlanta. He told the television station he was a paraprofessional at Tuskegee Airmen Global Academy in Atlanta Public Schools. But that district too has no record of him, district spokesperson Kimberly Willis Green said.
Stubbs has excitedly tweeted about the popularity the letter has brought him. Since being exposed, Stubbs denied talked to the news outlet and promised to drop “facts and evidence” to disprove the “fake news” of him being a scamming catfish.
We’re still waiting on this evidence…
Flip the pages for the letter and Twitter’s responses.