Teachers on TikTok: A bad idea?

[@davidletarte214]

as a teacher myself yeah this may have been a nice moment at the time but it becomes creepy when it gets sent out to millions of strangers over the internet... don't fire him for the hair stuff, fire him for posting the video online & it seems like that's what happened so. yeah.

[@fugitive_]

Not a teacher but I agree, he definitely didn’t need to share this on tiktok

[@fallenbee]

I do think some people were being too dramatic, and that doesn't help the situation. But yeahhh I do think he overstepped by posting their faces and everything.

[@leiajiang7877]

Exactly, posting other peoples children online is insanity, he would have exposed them to a world of harm from creeps online. Boundaries are crossed for sure.

[@shanna2.2.2]

You don’t think it’s inappropriate to have his students touching and grooming him..? Crazy.

[@shanna2.2.2]

You don’t think it’s inappropriate to have his students touching and grooming him..? Crazy.

[@liamjones468]

I firmly believe that teacher influencers should never post their students names, faces, voices, or work. You can talk about your experience being a teacher without risking the students you're supposed to be safeguarding

[@selmalarsson8920]

Teachers should never film their students and post it online, that’s so weird

[@AmyAberrant]

It’s also against school policy

[@C_Griffy]

I agree. Glad I got through school before all this. Imagine going to school just to be unwillingly a part of someone’s reality show

[@Falom]

In some places that’s against the law. In BC, Canada we had to sign FOIPPA (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act) forms to post anything online regarding our Media Arts classes. A teacher doing that would result in soooooooo many lawsuits here lol

[@C_Griffy]

@@Falom rightfully so it’s so creepy

[@RariettyC]

I think there's a sad undercurrent to this where people with full-time jobs are often encouraged to monetize their careers through social media due to how tempting the potential extra profit is, and this becomes an issue when so many people are working jobs that require confidentiality. A side hustle is enticing when the cost of living is so high, and teachers generally are underpaid. It's common to forget about the potential risks of filming other people when it's so normalized to just whip out a phone camera without the consent of others nearby.

[@julietskelly9135]

that's a great point and well explained

[@heathercontreras1772]

I'm not a teacher or a young student, but I wholeheartedly agree that those students faces should've been blurred. It was most likely a spur-of the- moment thing and maybe they were razzing him about his hair? If I were a teacher I don't think I would've dine this.

[@brokenbrastraps]

there were many girls at my school who did teachers hair bc they wanted to be hairdressers and there were teachers who were willing to help them. i think the issue is the fact that it was posted online, this is something that people will always want to see the negative side of things and something like this is obviously gonna cause huge discourse

[@bellashannon4694]

In Australia it’s illegal to film kids. Phones are also banned in schools 👍

[@kate_6436]

Teachers aren't supposed to film kids in the US without permission as well. Probably why he got fired

[@lelajones404]

I think it’s a very thin line when I was in school, which was like four years ago there was a substitute who got fired and is barred from substituting because she filmed a student because it’s illegal without parental consent at least in my state.

[@katiechamberlin4194]

Had a sub film a group of girls during my gym class in hs 😭 creepy asf and he was fired and removed within the day. But even in less extreme cases teachers do not need to film or record students w/o consent 😅

[@eleanorp3202]

All the comments saying it's "weird." It's not weird it's a literal safeguarding issue. 1 - these children are not old enough to consent to having their image online FOREVER. 2 - you need permission to post a child that is not your own. 3 - schools have stringent rules for a reason; they are the caregivers of those children for the period they're in school and have to be overly cautious. 4. You never entirely know the full situation of a child, worst case scenario, you could inadvertently include a child in the background who, for example; is in care/is dealing with the care system; who is having serious family issues; who has maybe been taken away from a parent for safety reasons and you have just broadcasted their location. It is never a teacher's right to post the image (or even to be honest, voice) of a student. They are in your care for their time at school you keep them as safe as possible. I couldn't care less about the hair stuff, create a bond with your students. But when you post it online you lose every bit of sympathy from me.

[@maddiedaddy21]

hello!! education major here. i wouldnt dream of putting the faces of minors online without their guardians' consent.

[@iluvcamaros1912]

He probably violated a lot of formal written policies. Even if they wanted to "let it slide this time" he did so publicly and loudly. They have no choice but to throw the book at him. Social media + state government job involving kids = bad idea. It's best to just keep it professional and simple at work. Be yourself at home.

[@meghanoel99]

I definitely feel like the firing had more to do with the posting online of students faces and not protecting their identities, and having done so multiple times

[@Evanz111]

I think there is an issue of people looking at very innocent situations and assuming warped intentions. However 100% the issue is a teacher filming kids at his workplace, like that’s not up for debate. He should be setting an example for these kids, and thinking “would the parents be okay with this?”

[@AmyAberrant]

People talking about how the guy was being like family, or how they may not have father figures so he has to fill that role… no he doesn’t! That’s not his job at all! The role of a teacher is not to be a surrogate parent!

[@Kaeros77]

Yet, plenty of teachers have to fill that role regardless- would you rather the teacher not care, and let that student have no positive role model or adult? Teachers have to go above and beyond their job description and responsibilities constantly. Bonding with students is proven to help students do better in school, and in life in general. It's not weird to bond with students at all. The weird thing is that he posted it, and didn't bother to blur the children's faces. I'm in college to be a teacher. Recording the students is what was wrong. Bonding and being friendly is not wrong- teachers hug students all the time. It's okay for a teacher to actually care about the student. For example, I've had to hold a child while they cried in my arms because no one else in their life was helping them through something, would you rather I have pushed the child away and not helped them calm down?

[@lucystone7637]

the weird part is filming it and putting it on tiktok, it's so mad how teachers in the usa are making money off recording their students or recording themselves teaching... i don't think that would be allowed in the uk, especially now AI means you can do nefarious things with such little source material, e.g. a voice, a picture

[@kate_6436]

yeah its definitely at the very least against most schools policies for teachers to post kids online with their faces shown in the US so that probably why he got fired but yeah I also get uncomfortable with teachers filming in their classrooms with kids in there at all. Even if its just their voices

[@cclaussen]

Jere Chang (mschanggifted) does it the right way. She kind of acts out hypothetical student scenarios and never shows the kids. The only kids you see are her own sons.

[@5minutememory]

Very strange that some teachers think it's okay to film kids for their own social media profiles. I don't even like the ones where they film themselves but you can hear what the kids are saying. Stop filming for internet attention and teach!

[@robinkarlsen7113]

i come from norway, and so this feels weird for me to see, because teachers here are so kind and friendly towards their students in a way where they feel like friends, so the boundary and respect comments are really culture shock for me. but i agree with the comments that filming without blurring was a bad idea if it were to be published online

[@SienaMW]

I agree with these comments, I think it’s less about the hair more about the filming of children

[@vampire_wolf4599]

I don’t think it was weird bc to me my highschool teacher was like a father figure, if I was sad he would check in on me and let me give him hugs if I wasn’t okay. We still talk after I graduated and he does this with a lot of his students because he truly cares ab us and it makes it more fun to learn because of that

[@ninas8210]

honestly the main problem was filming it, and especially not blurring the students' faces

[@ConejitoPequenito]

Totally agree with your analysis. There's nothing too weird about hair, but every workplace has rules. I hope that this story won't impact the teachers' career anymore now

[@thelilunicorn766]

I once had my (primary school) teacher French braid my hair during lunch time because my mum couldn't figure out how to do it and I needed it braided for a girl guides camping trip lol. I feel like a teacher doing their student's hair isn't that weird so the reverse isn't exactly weird either - I think that filming it and posting it online is what crosses it into a weird territory though.

[@cerysxox]

i think as well there’s the aspect of we were not there - did the girls volunteer, were they asked to, was it an uncomfortable situation? also filming students is just so weird

[@servingcant]

I’d go crazy if I found out my child was unbraiding their teachers hair…

[@lilissupafly]

I don't know what the laws/rulea are in the US, but in the UK if you filmed your students and put it online you would most likely be barred from working with kids

[@ames-inthe-grass]

…i agreed with you. but then weird videos of him stitching high school aged girls and being…odd about it

[@IrishTechGirl]

Former teacher.... absolutely not.

[@KittyZoomZoom]

As someone that watched cupofteam way back in the day the Scrabble reference made me happy

[@ninjagoats3034]

This KZbin channel is great. I am surprised you aren't amassing way more views. Don't give up!!!

[@elisa2115]

people making it out to be a creepy thing are weird, but keep tiktok out of the classroom for gods sake

[@JewishKeto]

He’s paid to TEACH…. NOT be cool!

[@midnightwolf333]

I hope he got the kids consent to film and post that. I mean I’ve seen so many dance routines in classes on TikTok that this seems like nothing compared to those. I’ve seen ones of a kid going up to teachers and calling them by their first name. This just seems so silly to be upset about.

[@Blueleaf11]

Other than the hair thing, he admitted he had a group chat with the students and they would message each other....which is pretty weird....

[@fungi5350]

Yeah the blurring is definitely the issue. As a guardian you expect your kids to be protected at school, and some people don’t want their kids online.

[@RubyRedwood]

Consistently entertained, and informed. Well done.

[@zsht]

I'm not even comfortable with teachers posting videos of themself with student voices

[@kissiepie]

Very late to the game, but what he did was technically illegal, regardless on how you feel about the students touching his hair. There are privacy laws that protect student information while they are in school. It called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy act or FERPA. The level of intensity can vary from state to state but he would have to have been taught about FERPA in order to get his teaching certification. It’s literally taught to educators.

[@chaipilled]

I love you mustache man

[@avenpower6714]

i think the problem is that he showed the kids' faces online and also that he seemingly did this during school hours... i can't really speak to the hair bit bc it seems like a cultural thing but not blurring the faces and also wasting school timeare not cool

[@ManicPixieDreamNerd-dj4jb]

I went to a small school and the younger teachers were always doing things like this with the popular kids. It’s very strange and it feels like they are trying to relive there junior high days. Teachers can be cool and not be your bestie!

[@patrickscannell6370]

In the school where I taught, all our students and teachers were on a single email server so everybody could reach everybody. It was policy that everybody could message each other on there.

[@ZMS463]

No, not atall. I don't even like the ones where it's during class and you see only the teacher but hear the children. It's inappropriate.

[@QuarterMoonRachel]

I think you're spot on that the act itself isn't inherently weird but it becomes so when its a teacher (of any gender) because of safe guarding issues. Also, yeah don't film kids. I think teachers filming themselves is ok as long as no kids are visible or identifiable or being mocked in any way but honestly better to just not film that during school hours at all. The only teacher content i really watch is where theres no kids at all, just the teachers telling stories or recreating scenarios acting as kids. The exception to that is music teachers where you can hear kids singing but only ever see the teacher.

[@SpaceJelly7]

When I was in middle school I won a raffle to shave my principles head at a school assembly to show solidarity for another student that was undergoing chemo and had lost their hair. There is a photo of this in the year book. I thought that was a nice moment up until now? I don't see a problem with his students doing his hair, especially since there were so many. If it was one girl alone with him after school hours that would be weird. But you can't argue with the fact that he should not have posted that online.

[@rebecca4722]

Scroll deep upload always makes my week!!! 🎉 also I just don’t think you should film your students at all.

[@spooky-spaghetti]

i get the impression there was absolutely no bad intention but it's inappropriate behaviour and recording/posting students who are children is wrong

[@carlafrancisco590]

What I think is that the bigger problem is how kids are learning that social approval is more important than connection. Lets say, for example, that my boyfriend would use our personal moments to raise is following on social media, so pretty much every kiss or nice moment would have to be recorded with him being the star of the show .... I'm sad, I'm happy, look at us, look what I did, etc .... was he really having a relationship with me??? Was it about us? So, my problem isn't that he's a teacher, my problem with this, all of this, is how is using this young people for other personal benefits. When you really care about someone else, be it in a romantic relationship, a friendship, or a mentoring, you don't need to post it to the world and hope for it to go viral. This kids, in general, nowadays are really learning a wrong message and becoming detached from honest, real interactions. No wonder mental illness is becoming a problem.

[@Kaeros77]

Mental illness has always been a very huge issue around the world for a very long time now, it's only just being talked about more, and more awareness is made

[@gluttonous_scoundrel]

At my school there was a whole thing where a Barber in Y12 gave my PE teacher a buzz and posted it on tiktok where it got hundreds of thousands of views. I think the main difference is that the student posted it (also as an advertisement for his business). I don’t think there’s much inherently wrong with stuff like doing teachers hair because I know a lot of students and teachers have close relationships and that students that love doing hair often practise stuff on teachers because it can be like a mentorship pretty much ! Just the most unlikeable part was that the students were posted online, whether the students were fine with the video being posted or not it’s still not great imo

[@AshArAis]

It's hard to show group music activities without a group, and adults simulating children are too ingrained in what they've learned. Choirs, group music-making, I see either a video trained on the teacher only, or on the group but totally blurred

[@KatzeMelli]

as already mentioned, boundaries have been crossed and things got messy because of that. We have protection laws for underaged humans aka children in place for a reason. I respect him trying to make an effort to build a relationship with the children in his care but filming it and building a brand and social media platform from it, is what doesn’t make it genuine or believable for me. You can do that without exposing children. I understand that in the US the laws revolving taking videos of strangers are vastly different than in Germany (here it is straight up illegal) so I can understand that he doesn’t understand he did something wrong. He claims if the gender roles were reversed there wouldn’t have been an outrage but that is a lame excuse. The reverse, a somewhat attractive female teacher surrounded by 15 year old boys making her hair would still be weird. Overall in the best case he is just naive and immature and the worst case the school kicked a predator out. Either way, i feel for the kids, this guy created a lot of drama due to his own selfishness in their life.

[@BrigidNotBrigit]

no. video over haha.

[@feltfrog]

i deleted the comment i wrote cos yeah that’s basically it

[@Kaleighlovescomics]

I don’t like when any sort of educator centers their teaching around themselves and their personal preferences. If he was maybe teaching the girls how to care for their own hair? That would be okay by me. But having those girls do HIS hair almost feels like he’s exploiting them for free labor.

[@isaiahgarcia]

Ha! At 6:55, very funny in forgetting the list of what is wrong. Clearly a reference to the famous gaffe during the 2016 Republican presidential primary when Rick Perry, governor of Texas at the time, said that he wanted to abolish 3 executive agencies, but when asked to name which 3, he forgot which ones! Classic intellectual Benedict! 🧐

[@charlottewalker-jolley3865]

He just needed to blur their faces and then nothing was bad

[@fugitive_]

I think maybe this might’ve just been a sweet moment to keep to himself. On the comment of never touching a teacher’s hair, one of my teachers in junior high actually let us go to his house and dye his hair for a science project and he had pink balding hair for a few months! But I feel like so many people think they need to share things online for some reason when, like I said, this was probably just a sweet moment the teacher should’ve kept to himself or maybe instead of posting the video just saying something like “a few of my students helped take out my braids and it was a nice bonding moment with them etc.” and I bet those students were probably pretty disappointed that their teacher got fired.

[@libbygraalum5290]

Great video! I’d recommend not calling female minors “young women” though, they are children not women 👍

[@JewishKeto]

I don’t think he’s bad or a predator but my gosh I think it’s inappropriate.

[@DaDamuse]

no, dont film the kids ffs. same goes for any teacher, not just this guy.

[@blakesby]

I think one of the major factors not being considered here, which I don't feel qualified to specifically comment on, is the difference in the culture of African-Americans in regards to hair and community. I think the culture around hair that white people have is vastly different and would easily and unfortunately skew to something like this being perceived as uncomfortable, but only because other cultural attitudes are not being considered. As the teacher was quoted, this was about community. Benedict is always very respectful in commenting on more nuanced issues, and I don't fault him here, but I think we as white folks are probably missing a lot of cultural context on this one.

[@blakesby]

That is to say, the 'hair' part of this isn't the issue, it was filming kids.

[@AbiSaysThings]

It's not complicated. No.

[@kate_6436]

I don't think there was anything inherently weird with the doing of the hair, but I do wonder how it came about and why those children were after school doing his hair. I don't think it's entirely weird cause when I was a daycare teacher I would sometimes let my elementary school aged kids do my hair if they wanted to. However they were elementary school high School kids might be different. And Its the after school bit thats concerns me a little were they after school just to do that? Did he ask them to do it? Did they ask? Ive got some questions. Thats all a bit wishy washy for me. HOWEVER. The filming and posting online of minor children without a permission slip from the parents is NOT OKAY in the SLIGHTEST. The internet is a dangerous place and it is NEVER okay to pos another persons child without permission. I would be FUMING if those were my children. Parents trust teachers to keep their children safe.

[@AbeeraImran-sj8gz]

What would you do if you were in his shoes? Would you ever stay after school alone with teenagers (opposite gender) and let them do you hair?

[@liamwatt3691]

If it wasent a cultural thing it would have been funny .. just saying 🙌🏽

[@jessicaadami3499]

i think the only problem is him posting videos of his students

[@nellieratt]

He’s the teacher- it’s inappropriate. Also, please don’t take or post any content ever….

[@freebeerishere]

I'd play Scrabble at your house

[@BreezyStreamy]

"Don't film your students" These kids probably filmed a tik tok as soon as he was done recording, do y'all really think his reach was that much bigger than theirs? As a teacher, yeah, let's be smarter, but let's not act like this is some massive crime. We gotta stop reacting to this stuff like we would have if things were the same as when we were in school, because they're just not. As far as the them doing his hair or whatever else, it's hard for me to really judge without audio (I may look up the original tik tok later to see more), but it's poor judgment at worst in my opinion, and I say this as a Bachelor's in Sciences and Education graduate. As for doing his hair, sure, it's probably poor judgment, but I feel like you can resolve this with a meeting and maybe a suspension for a day or two, but firing seems way over the top unless their had been previous incidents with him.

[@kate_6436]

the kids choosing to film themselves is VERY different from him a trusted non related adult filming them without parental permission