Last Monday in one of my classes a student asked, "if my dad dies in debt, am I responsible for paying everything off?". She was worried because apparently he has never sent child support and apparently has debt, and she didn't want to have to pay. Then my other students started piping up with, "yes you have to pay" in so many ways and how they were so sure that was the case and they'd discussed it with so-and-so and basically you were responsible.
Ew. I didn't know the answer, and we went on with our math. After class I looked it up, and no, you are not responsible, so I sent out a quick e-mail note to my students with the links just so they wouldn't stay under the false impression.
Well, I sent this via our gradebook program that allows you to just send notes, and one of the parents sends back: What are you doing looking into our debt? You shouldn't be teaching this! ...... So I sent back a note explaining the situation, and he calmed down, with no apology of snapping at me and assuming we were all going online and doing credit checks on parents and making big charts to show to the class. Oh my.
You sent it to the whole class?
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