Teach-Tok: Science teacher Joshua Parker has a viral TikTok account, which helps him stay current with high school trends and understand his students

The white framed letter board reads, “Science, very cutesy, mindful, demure” in crisp black letters behind new chemistry teacher Joshua Parker’s desk. 

Most students ruffle their brows at the board when they approach Parker’s desk or walk out his door. They expect their teacher to know scientific nomenclature and atomic masses — not what demure means. 

When students ask Parker about the latest catchphrases and trends he spells out on his letter board, he perks up. He always gets excited to talk about his TikTok account — an account with almost 300k followers and more than 12M likes. 

“One day we were finishing up class and students were grabbing their phones, and one showed my account and asked if it was me,” Parker said. “Sometimes I deny it even though it clearly looks like me.”

With his presence on TikTok, Parker keeps up with the latest teenage phrases and influencer drama, weaving them into class discussions. The goal, Parker says, is to get his students to see him as a real person. 

Once, sophomore Haliey Stuber was scrolling through TikTok when she saw a very familiar conversation on one of Parker’s “How students walk into class” skits. Parker had acted out a conversation he overheard between Stuber and a friend. 

Stuber thought this was crazy and immediately tagged her friend in a comment telling her to watch Parker’s video. 

Because his posts are public, he doesn’t feature any students or teachers in his videos. But, to make his TikToks more relatable to students, he includes real conversations and moments he overhears in his classroom.

“It’s definitely added to how well the kids know me and join my class because they find it relatable,” Parker said. “It has helped me have a little bit of advantage of knowing people because they all kind of knew me from my social media.” 

Parker downloaded TikTok during Covid while teaching at Central Middle School in Kansas City. He’d hoped to connect with other teachers around the country while staying up to date with the outside world. 

Eventually, he started making content, posting his first video about how to perfectly cut a pineapple. From there, he was hooked. He started posting relatable teacher skits, videos of him doing sporty challenges and occasionally a science experiment — gaining connections with teachers nationwide with each new post.

His videos started showing up on For You pages across TikTok. His average view count went up by hundreds, and he had multiple trending videos — all within the first six months of posting. 

“Once I broke that threshold of like a couple hundred [followers] and then a couple thousand, I was like, ‘How can I keep building?’” Parker said. “It's kind of intriguing to see how far you can get.”

Once Parker broke 10k followers, he was eligible to apply for TikTok’s Creator Program — a way for him to get paid for the content he creates. The program occasionally sends him a monthly check, giving him a couple of cents for every one thousand views — an amount that can reach several hundred dollars on a good month. 

“I would still make [videos] if I didn't get paid, but it is a nice perk,” Parker said. “It’s really cool that it's easy enough to post something random, and you get paid through social media.”

The student-teacher relationship he’s formed by sneaking a trendy phrase into his lecture slides once in a while or displaying catchphrases on a letter board has changed students’ opinions of him.

“One thing teachers are told is to build relationships with students and knowing what they are interested in, knowing what they need to succeed,” Parker said. “I'm their teacher, but I can also talk to them about random stuff outside of school.”