A teacher in Sequim, Washington, decided to help his student warm up by copying a sentence twice, objectively a simple instruction. However, he was shocked when multiple students asked questions surrounding the task, with one of them apparently unable to comprehend what he was asking.
TikToker jace_h25 (Jace) shared this story with his audience on TikTok. He regularly records himself talking about the nuances of teaching and funny class anecdotes. This time around, his clip went viral, garnering close to 600,000 views, 123,000 likes, and 1,700 comments. By far, this is Jace’s most successful TikTok.
As seen in the clip, Jace’s writing warm-up consisted of students copying a single sentence twice in their notebooks. However, according to him, within five minutes, several students asked him to clarify what he had instructed them to do. Among these students, one of them stood out.
“Hey! Why are you not writing anything?” the Washington teacher recalled asking his student. “He goes, ‘Well, I don’t really know what to do here.’“
Jace said he told the student, again, to write the sentence twice. He was then asked multiple questions regarding the task at hand. These included, “Do I have to fill up all the lines that are left?” “How many times do I write it?” “So I write it two times? Wait, can I do it once?” and “Do I have to put the period?“
After each sentence, Jace is seen answering increasingly impatiently, repeating himself multiple times. His frustration was visible, and he wrote in the clip’s description, “I love what I do, but these kids spike my blood pressure sometimes.“
Clip Goes Viral, Reactions
The clip sparked multiple responses online. Some viewers thought that Jace’s explanation of the task was lackluster, with one user writing, “Repeating the same thing the prompt says is not an explanation!” Others straight-up refused to believe his story was real, with one saying, “At this point, this is rage bait.”
The vast majority of users, however, were legitimately worried about those students, with one commenter saying, “The fact you could be talking about kindergarteners or high schoolers is depressing.” Others tried to blame the technology, with one person adding, “This is AI’s fault somehow.”
Users empathizing with the Washington teacher’s frustrations and possibly concerned parents are factors that led to the video’s success. Jace isn’t the only teacher who has talked about this phenomenon online, which might also explain the clip’s virality.
By the looks of it, Jace will continue to share his classroom stories online.
