A friend of mine, knowing I love nothing more than the intersection of weird TikTok and teacher TikTok, sent me perhaps the greatest attention-getter I’ve ever seen.
I thought I’d seen them all. I was already obsessed with @nattiemeetsworld‘s viral attention-getters that range from The Office to The Real Housewives of New Jersey (we’ve rounded them up for you here).
Maybe it’s because it was Monday. Maybe it’s the brain fog from my allergy medicine. Either way, I didn’t see it coming. And I almost spit out my cereal.
The TikTok starts with @carlyjdot standing at the front of a chatty classroom.
The preface that her students came up with the attention-getter is all I needed to know it would be weird and awesome.
Then, mid-attention-getter, it was this face that killed me:
I know this face. More on that in a second.
And to top it all off, it ends in silence. It doesn’t matter how engaging or creative an attention-getter is if it doesn’t work, and hers is flawless. 10/10. Watch it for yourself here:
A few comments stood out to me after I watched the TikTok (multiple times):
Couldn’t agree more, Mikey.
That visual is everything.
I think this—getting to see a positive classroom community—is part of why I loved this TikTok so much. And why I love this face so much:
It’s the face of a teacher who loves her class so much that she’s willing to choose engaging weirdness over faster (and probably easier) drudgery. It’s a face that says, “Huh. I did not foresee leading a chicken nugget cult in my 10-year plan, but here I am. And I love it here.”
