In May 2026, a rumor circulated online that Elias Vance, a former history teacher in Georgia, left his job after 35 years because a board labeled his Civil War syllabus "controversial."
A May 26, 2026, post on Facebook (archived) began:
The board labeled my Civil War syllabus "controversial." After 35 years of teaching American history, I suppose that made me a controversial man. So, I left my keys on the desk and walked out.
My name is Elias Vance, and I'm 65. For three and a half decades in a quiet Georgia town, my classroom was a living thing. History there wasn't a series of sterile, polished dates; it was loud, complicated, and often painful—just like the country itself. I taught the brilliance of the Constitution alongside the brutality of the Middle Passage. I wanted my students to feel the gravity of our past, to recognize the ghosts that still haunt our halls.
Then the tide shifted. It became the era of "curriculum transparency" and "positive heritage."
According to the post, Vance objected to the "new, state-sanctioned textbook" he was told to use because it minimized slavery and the Civil Rights movement.
The post included an image that appeared to show a man holding a briefcase walking out of classroom. The image appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence, as evidenced by the incorrect numerals on the classroom clock.
Other examples of the claim appeared on Facebook (archived) and Threads (archived), and Snopes readers contacted us to ask whether the rumor was true.
We first used search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo (archived, archived, archived) to locate possible evidence from credible sources about Vance. We found no reports from local media in Georgia or reputable news sources such as The Associated Press or Reuters about Vance's resignation. According to the Facebook text, Vance and his resignation had allegedly become a "topic of interest" on local community pages, so could have garnered at least local media interest.
The rumor was fictional. It appeared to originate from a Facebook account called "Kaela Bechtelar," that posted (archived) it on May 3, 2026. The image and text that account posted both showed signs of artificial intelligence. As we noted above, another, more recent posting also used an AI image.
Because we found no proof that "Elias Vance" was a real teacher who resigned in Georgia and because elements of the story appeared to be AI-generated, we rate this claim false.
We contacted a manager of the "Kaela Bechtelar" account to ask why it had created the false story without a disclaimer to note its inauthenticity. We will update this story if we receive a response.
Both the image and text in the story on the "Kaela Bechtelar" page appeared to be fake, meaning generated or edited by AI.
The image that the page used contained SynthID, according to Gemini (archived), Google's generative artificial intelligence model. This is a digital watermark that Google adds to content created or generated with its AI tools.
Other websites that screen images for signs of AI, such as Sightengine and Hive Moderation, determined the in-question image was likely created with the generative technology.
Let us note here: These types of AI detection tools are fallible. Snopes cautions people against using them for definitive answers on media's authenticity without supporting evidence.
Apart from the assessments above, the image that the "Kaela Bechtelar" page used had unrealistic lighting. The teacher in the image was dimly lit despite several bright lights overhead. Such obvious mistakes are telltale signs of AI.
We also noted that websites that detect AI-generated text such as GPTZero and Copyleaks found high likelihoods that AI wrote the story about Vance. GPTZero was "highly confident" the text was AI-generated, while Copyleaks was 100% sure.
"Elias Vance" appeared to be a popular AI-generated character. Searches of Facebook revealed two other fake stories that circulated in May 2026 about different Elias Vances. Searches also located a Reddit thread where one user called Elias Vance an "AI trope."
For further reading, Snopes routinely debunks false stories with elements of AI.