Is a viral post about the retirement of a Denver kindergarten teacher named Clara Holt illustrated with a photo of someone named Clara Holt? No, that's not true: The photo is copied from a BBC report about the reunion of students of Shirley Arnold, a primary school teacher in Kent, England. No Clara Holt appears on Colorado's list of certified teachers as of Oct. 10, 2025, the day after the purported retirement.
The "Clara Holt" photo was part of an October 9, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) on the OccupyDemocrats Facebook page accompanied by text that began "A message from a Kindergarten teacher:" It continued:
After forty years in the classroom, my career ended with one small sentence from a six-year-old:"My dad says people like you don't matter anymore."No sneer. No malice. Just quiet honesty -- the kind that cuts deeper because it's innocent. He blinked, then added, "You don't even have a TikTok."My name is Mrs. Clara Holt, and for four decades, I taught kindergarten in a small Denver suburb. Today, I stacked the last box on my desk and locked the door behind me.
This is what the photo looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats.)
But that photo appears to have been lifted from an August 2025 BBC.com report about students gathering in the southeastern county of Kent, England with Shirley Arnold, their primary school teacher:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshots from BBC.com and Facebook, arranged into comparison graphic by Lead Stories.)
In case only the photo was incorrect, Lead Stories on October 10, 2025 downloaded the Colorado Department of Education list of currently certified teachers, found here (archived here).
On that list of Colorado's certified teachers, there is no Clara Holt.
