Austin teacher fired over Harry Potter book club

An Austin, Texas Elementary School teacher has been fired after uploading a TikTok revealing she had a meeting to talk about her teaching kids about Harry Potter, their legal rights, and more.

With the rise of TikTok over the last few years, an increasing number of its users are taking to the platform to share the variety of issues they have with work.

One prime example of this happened back in March 2023 when a woman shared the freebies she got on her first day of working at Gucci.

Sophia, a now former Grade 3 teacher from Austin, Texas was fired after a TikTok video went viral where she revealed notes from a meeting with her boss regarding teaching kids a Harry Potter book study, their legal rights, and more.

Austin, Texas teacher fired over viral TikTok

“Okay so today I got pulled into a check-in meeting with my admin at school,” Sophia revealed. “But my favorite amongst them is ‘We noticed an intentional attempt at teaching your students about their legal and constitutional rights.”

After reading off the line, the former teacher began wondering why that would even be a concern for the school.

Among the list were questions regarding a Harry Potter book study, complaints about how long Sophie was taking to answer emails, and why her students were sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance.

The former teacher was interviewed by a local news station on June 9, 2023, revealing that the situation caused her quite a bit of anxiety.

“It just felt like a very demoralizing meeting. I think that’s really the word for it, where I didn’t feel supported, and I felt disrespected,” said Sophia. District administration claimed that her video on TikTok interfered with her ability to work, which lead to her termination.

The TikToker added: “They made it clear that it wasn’t. It didn’t have anything to do with my instructional practices or what I was teaching or how I was teaching. And it had everything to do with the fact that I had embarrassed one of my administrators on TikTok.”

Since then, the teacher has traveled to the US Capitol quite a bit to advocate for teachers across the country.

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