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Claudine James - English Teacher and TikTok Influencer
37 Plays2 years ago
Claudine James is a National Board Certified English Teacher in central Arkansas. She also has over THREE MILLION followers on Tik Tok. She joins this episode of National Board Conversations to discuss her rise to becoming the #1 Education follow on Tik Tok, and provide you with tips on how to use social media engagement to connect with your students! Be sure to follow Claudine on Tik Tok.
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Transcript
Introduction of Claudine James
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to National Board Conversations. On this episode of Howler Prison Speaks to Claudine James. She's a National Board Certified Teacher in Arkansas and was recently featured as the number one education follower on TikTok. She has over three billion followers on the platform creating content to help students learn more about English.
Conversation with Claudine Begins
00:00:16
Speaker
I'll talk to her about her rise on TikTok and get some tips for you to create more engaging and accessible content for your students. I won't keep you waiting. Here's my conversation with Claudine.
Claudine's Teaching Role and Background
00:00:26
Speaker
Hey Claudine, how you doing today? It's good to talk to you and good to get in touch.
00:00:29
Speaker
Oh, great. Good to see you this afternoon and talk to you as well. So you are a pretty big celebrity on TikTok, and we'll get into that a little bit later. But so we're going to get to know you a little bit first. Can you tell us what your current role is and where are you checking it from? OK, I am currently an ELA eighth grade
00:00:52
Speaker
I'm also ESL certified and of course I'm Nestle board certified and I teach in a middle school in Arkansas.
Inspiration and Passion for Teaching
00:01:01
Speaker
Alright, so why did you end up becoming a teacher? What pushed you to become an English teacher?
00:01:08
Speaker
funny story behind that and I've told it many times but it is hilariously funny. I became a teacher because and I've always wanted to be a teacher since the age of six but I became a teacher because all of my aunts were teachers and it just fascinated me to see people learn and you be in charge of them becoming smarter and how I became an English teacher is in the eighth grade I wanted to play basketball and so I tried out for the basketball team and
00:01:37
Speaker
the coach would never tell me whether or not I made the team and she told me she said get a book and go over and sit down by the wall and read and I was like okay go sit down and read every day and so I kept saying okay did I make the team it's like two weeks and everybody else is practicing but she keeps telling me to read
00:01:57
Speaker
sit down and read sit down and read and so now we jokingly say because she's like in her 80s and she's still living she's like I'm the reason you're an English teacher because I fell in love with reading as I was uh sitting on that wall and then I that's when I realized I wanted to become an English teacher.
Innovative Lesson on Social Justice
00:02:16
Speaker
That's awesome so do you get to wrap um basketball into any of your English lessons?
00:02:21
Speaker
I don't, I don't. I really don't. So what are some of your favorite lessons that you like to give as English teachers? Oh, I love teaching anything that motivates my students. Our theme for eighth grade is social justice and civic engagement or civic participation so that everything along that line is just really, really good. I think one of my students
00:02:52
Speaker
called me the other day and he has graduated from the military academy and he said do you remember that lesson that we done when we had to write our obituary and I was like yes I'll always remember that he said and that made me think about what I wanted my life to be like or what did I want my life to you know my legacy to be and that was a lesson that I had incorporated with the
00:03:18
Speaker
novel study of The Outsider. So that's a book that I like to use in my lessons, but also I use a lot of up-to-date books, things that are just recently been published. In all lessons, I always try to do something that not only helps them become a better reader or a writer, but also to help all of my students become better responsible members of society.
Journey to National Board Certification
00:03:45
Speaker
Amazing, amazing. So at the top you mentioned that you're a national board certified teacher. Why did you end up pursuing board certification and what was your journey like?
00:03:55
Speaker
National Board Certification. I was in my internship and remind, I don't think I said this earlier, but I'm a traditional student. When I first originally graduated from high school, I went to school to be an accountant and I had a social degree and I own my own daycare because I still, you know, wanted to have something to do with children and reading. So for 15 years, I was a preschool
00:04:17
Speaker
owner and when my youngest son entered kindergarten and that's when I went back to school and finished my certification to be a teacher and in my internship someone came into internship and they were talking about national board certification and I thought okay I want to pursue that and just as soon as I finished
00:04:40
Speaker
My second year of teaching, it was something with National Board called Take One. And you could actually take one of the components and you could do that and bank that score for after you had completed three years of teaching and you could use that for your National Board certification. So I'm probably one of the few people that actually did the traditional Take One, which is not even available now.
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think so. So what was it like? What was your journey like? Did you achieve on your first try? Was it? No. Okay. Take one. I passed on take one. And after take one, I banked that and I was ready to start my national board certification. However, what happened was I didn't pass the first time and was I bombed
00:05:32
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I was so bomb. And the main reason was, is because I was so close. I mean, I was within touching distance, actually passing, but you know what I always say? Things happen for a reason. And so I had to redo one of my components and that was the student engagement component. And I remember the student that I picked and I used her for my
00:05:59
Speaker
retake of that component. And, you know, that student to this day still contacts me and tells me how impactful the lessons that I did with her are. So I think that I had to redo that in order to make that great impact for that student. And so, yeah, I look back and I hate that I had to retake it, but the journey and what I learned retaking that, I think it was worth it, to be honest.
00:06:27
Speaker
Awesome, awesome. Do you have any advice for candidates currently going through the national board process? Well, for one thing, the process has changed dramatically since I have certified. But I think that the one thing that I wish that someone would have told me is to not judge whether or not you made it the first year or not on your impact as a teacher. Because I really beat myself up really bad over that.
00:06:58
Speaker
So it's not always easy to be a teacher. What keeps you coming back to the classroom year after year?
Motivation and Impact of Teaching
00:07:05
Speaker
I think what keeps me coming back is the ability to know that I can make a difference, really, because teachers make all other professions possible. And, you know, I tell my students and I tell other people I'm not Oprah of my classroom. Oprah can make a difference and she can help people change. I can do that in my classroom. So that's what keeps me coming back. The ability and
00:07:28
Speaker
opportunity to be able to continually make a difference. That's an amazing perspective and I really appreciate that.
TikTok Fame and Influence
00:07:37
Speaker
So recently you were featured and profiled as the top TikTok follower follow amongst educators. You have over 3 million followers on TikTok. That blows my mind. That is crazy. First, where can the listeners find you on TikTok?
00:07:50
Speaker
I am on TikTok as I am that English teacher. And you know, my mind is blown too. I posted just because my students told me if I posted grammar lessons on there, they would watch them. And I did not realize that the rest of the world would be watching as well. So can you talk about what got you started? How did it all come together?
00:08:17
Speaker
Just simple, I was posting my grammar lessons on YouTube, and I had a lot of students that were virtual at the time. And I'm looking at the comment sections, I'm looking at the views, and I'm like, this isn't agreeing with the amount of students that
Transition from YouTube to TikTok
00:08:34
Speaker
are virtual. So when the students would come back or I would converse with them, I was, why did you not watch it? Oh, Ms. James, it's YouTube, and I was like, okay, well, what can I do to get you to watch it?
00:08:45
Speaker
And one of the students said, if you put it on TikTok, everybody will watch it. I was like, OK. And everyone agreed. And just right then, that day, I asked the students, how do I get on TikTok? And it's history from there. It's just one day. And one day, I had 1,000 followers. In a week, I had 10,000 followers. And in six weeks, I had 100,000 followers.
00:09:10
Speaker
Oh man, that actually answered my next question. How have you seen your following grow over time? Like it seems to have just grown in I guess over like weeks or so.
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, like from the time I went to bed last night, I woke up this morning, I had 500 new followers. So I usually, and my students will be like, I didn't get 500 followers and I've been on TikTok for two years. You got some jealous over there.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah, you know somebody at my school started rumors that I was buying followers and I told the students, I don't know if y'all don't know how my checking account is set up. Like, I promise you, what is a TikTok follower gonna do for my life? No, I'm not buying any.
Feedback from Adult Followers
00:10:01
Speaker
And what I am doing is obviously providing something that the world needed, you know, these little short grammar lessons. A lady on TikTok the other day sent me a message and she was like, I work for the government and we do training lessons. She said, I really wish that they would make like watching maybe 15 of your TikTok videos part of our training. She said, because we just didn't learn these things or if we did, we forgot them.
00:10:27
Speaker
Oh man, they need you over there. So from memory, what was your most viral post on TikTok?
Viral Grammar Lesson
00:10:35
Speaker
What was the most viral grammar lesson?
00:10:37
Speaker
It was one that was, it's so simple. See, saw, seen. See, saw, seen, and was, and were. Because you know, the kids will say, I seen you. You can't say, you can't use the word seen unless you use have or had. You have to say, I have seen or I had seen. And I just simply put it up on the board and I had the students repeating after me.
00:11:04
Speaker
And I think that overnight it had 1 million views, and now it's up to like 55 million. Oh man, that is amazing. So do you have any tips for educators trying to engage on social media, engage your students?
Advice for Educators on Social Media
00:11:23
Speaker
I do. The state of Arkansas, which I live in,
00:11:29
Speaker
I was in contact with some people at the Department of Ed because, of course, they found out about my tick tock and so they actually I guess you could say comb through my tick tock account and I was so happy because they said it was the model engagement that they would see an educator.
00:11:50
Speaker
being able to highlight and showcase. It's not anything that a parent can watch because I don't do any dance and I simply teach or I give new information. It's either grammar lesson or vocabulary lesson or a did you know lesson. It's something you're going to gain from every video that I post. And so I've never really made me happy to know that I'm doing something that is highlighting education and a positive perspective because you always hear about the negative as far as educators.
00:12:22
Speaker
My total, total suggestion to any educator posting on social media is think about, is that going to be an embarrassment to you later on down the road? Is it possibly going to be an embarrassment to your school district? And most importantly, how do you want the world to look at you later on?
00:12:42
Speaker
As an educator as an educator, you can do anything that you want, personally, but if you're posting on social media and it's not a private account. And you're an educator, you are posted and you are representing education and we don't need anything to make education look negative at all education as a positive thing.
00:13:03
Speaker
It it's everything. Education is the most powerful weapon used to change the world. And so we as educators do not need to do anything to make our job or what we do or our mission look like it's anything other than positive.
00:13:21
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thank you. And I'm glad you're doing what you're doing. It's clearly having a positive impact. 3 million followers is a lot of people being able. And it seems to be important to you to make that change. And we're really happy over at the National Board to have you as a National Board Certified
Encouragement for Fellow Educators
00:13:34
Speaker
Teacher. Well, let me make one little correction. It's actually 3.3 million followers. Oh, sorry about that. 3.3 million followers. Let me give you your suggestions. Let me give you your quantifies. Let me know.
00:13:48
Speaker
that point three is three hundred thousand yeah that's a lot of that's a lot of folks that's a lot of folks that you were leaving some change off the table
00:14:04
Speaker
The last thing, last thing, we have a new feature on this podcast. We call it a shoulder tap. It's when you give a teacher a tap on the shoulder, let them know they're ready to become national board certified. And on here, you'll just give them a quick shout out. So with that, who are you giving the shoulder tap?
00:14:19
Speaker
I wanna give a shoulder tap to Sarah Frayer, who is a elementary educator in the District of Columbia. She's energetic, she's engaging, she's motivational, and she just is a go-getter. And so I would highly suggest that she look into being coming, National Board Certified.
00:14:42
Speaker
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you, Claudia, for taking the time. This is so much fun. I had a really good time talking to you.
Conclusion and Praise for Claudine
00:14:47
Speaker
And I'm going to have to go follow you on TikTok. I'm not even on there. You know what? Someone said last week I didn't join TikTok until I saw one of your TikTok videos posted on Facebook. And now I really want to follow you. And so they joined TikTok just because of me. So do it because of me. Look at that, changing the world one step at a time. We appreciate you. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
00:15:12
Speaker
Thank you for taking the time. What a great conversation. Be sure to check out Claudine's TikTok content and I hope you're able to take something from our conversation. I want to say thank you again to Claudine for joining me and thank you for listening to the National Board of Conversations. Be sure to follow us on our social media for all National Board related updates and we'll see you next time.