From Headache to Helpful—Teachers on Using TikTok in the Classroom

To improve her middle school students’ grammar skills, English teacher Claudine James started posting short YouTube video lessons linked to class writing assignments last fall. But most of her videos weren’t getting any views—and her students kept making the same mistakes time and time again.

“What I was trying to get you not to do is exactly what you did,” James told them, frustrated.

As a solution, some students suggested that she upload her videos to TikTok, a video-based social media platform frequented by tweens, teens, and adults under the age of 30. Though James, 54, was reluctant, her students encouraged her to film her first video right then and there. On Nov. 30, 2020, she posted her first TikTok grammar lesson, and in less than a week, her account @iamthatenglishteacher was approaching 10,000 followers. Six weeks in, her account reached 100,000 followers; currently, she has more than 900,000 from all over the world.