Through the crowded halls, a new teacher has become a familiar face to not only his students in the classroom, but also thousands of people on social media. He transforms regular classroom moments into viral TikTok content for your For You Page.
U.S. History teacher Chris Simons moved to Bowie this year after most recently teaching at Lockhart High School. This is where he originally started to grow his TikTok fame as MrBearTeaches, from his day in the life videos or from sharing comments from his students.
“I started TikTok in COVID, and I think I did a couple of those stupid dances with my students at the time,” Simons said. “When we actually got into COVID, it was one of those things that kept me going and interested. So, I figured I would just do random things. A lot of it wasn’t teacher related and it just kind of took off from there.”
Simons has accumulated 63,600 followers and 2.6 million likes since he started his content creation on TikTok and has also picked up 2,054 followers on Instagram.
“It’s definitely cool to have a teacher who is really popular online when it’s already rare to find a teacher who is online,” junior Josh Taylor said. “It’s just very cool to see his videos and just him talking about stuff that he teaches us.”
Simons explained that his first video that really went viral on TikTok was a video of him on vacation when he put his finger over a straw to pick up the liquid in his drink and then drank it, asking if anybody else still did this.
“It gets confusing,” Simons said. “I’ve done so many random things, like the straw thing got me around 10,000 followers, and I did other things that are teacher related. My followers are all there for different reasons, so some people get grumpy when I do teacher stuff.”
Simon’s follower count has grown over time after his explosive straw video and in fact, he didn’t expect his videos to go viral. He explains he was just doing random trends, and it slowly started to grow a following of mostly teachers, as well as former and current students.
“A lot of my students know now that I’m on social media, and I don’t mind that people know, but I don’t outright tell them,” Simons said. ”I’m not trying to just gain followers by having students because that’s not what I’m going for, but I’ve always made it teacher friendly where it’s just the teacher side of me.”
Despite the attention from his thousands of followers, Simons says he keeps his content relatively focused on school related activities to help prevent challenges. He claims that social media can cause problems for some teachers, but he hasn’t run into any yet.
“I love my job, so I come here and work and then I go home and I keep working, so if I’m going to do anything, it’s usually school related,” Simons said. ”I don’t think there are that many negatives to being a teacher on social media.”
Recently, Simons has been making “A Day in the Life of a High School Teacher” videos where he shows what he does throughout the day. These videos give his followers an inside look at activities, classroom preparation, and other behind the scenes of his daily routine as a high school teacher. Several students have said they find it fun to see their teacher online.
“I think it is so fun,” junior Maddy Evers said. “My friend and I asked him to sing a song and shout us out, and he did. It’s actually kinda a flex to say your teacher is famous, and I love watching his TikToks.”
Although his TikTok fame has been noticed by many students and teachers at Bowie, his students state that his reputation has built up of more than just his fame. Simons prides himself on how much he connects with students as he teaches, and makes his lessons interactive and fun.
“Mr. Simons is a really good teacher,” Evers said. “He is super interactive with the class, and you can tell he cares a lot about all his students, and his class is never boring.”
