TikTok teacher in tears after getting fired for filming students unbraiding his hair

A teacher on TikTok broke down in tears after getting fired over a viral video where he had female students unbraid his hair before an appointment.

There’s no shortage of teachers who share their classroom shenanigans with the world on TikTok, but that decision is coming back to bite one middle school educator in a big way.

In a video posted on May 5, teacher JaQ Lee explained how he live-streamed students helping him take out his braids. While he meant for the video to be innocent, users in the comments debated if this was appropriate.

“I had a hair appointment immediately after school and needed my hair taken out before hand,” he said, noting how he was unable to do so the night before. “Naturally, I asked four or five of over 100 best friends to assist me.”

While JaQ seems to have had the best of intentions, not everyone felt the same, and a fierce debate started raging on social media. The TikToker’s video even went viral on other platforms too, receiving over 50M views on X.

“He’s not chilling with his little siblings/cousins, he’s at work,” one user blasted. “It’s bad enough he’s doing this on work time, but young girls can be impressionable and this is somewhat intimate, and way too personal.”

“As a mother, I would have been livid!” roared another.

According to Distractifty, the teacher was fired following the backlash, but users suspect that the braiding incident wasn’t the only reason he was sacked.

Users had looked through some of his older videos and noted what they claimed was ‘inappropriate’ behavior. In one, JaQ looked out the window of his class with the caption, “When you catch a student’s mom lookin like a snack during carpool.”

Following his firing, the teacher posted a video where he revealed messages supposedly sent by his students and broke down in tears reading them. However, some statements made by the students only caused more controversy.

“‘Hey bestie, I really hope that you see this message,’” he read while tearing up. “‘I hope that you’re okay. My class missed you so much. We want you to know that we love you and we miss you… I want you to know the class and others got your back.’”

Many viewers were baffled at why students would call their teacher “bestie” or say they “love” him, while others got emotional and cried alongside the teacher.

“Think about from a parent’s perspective.. they are still under the age of 18. Like, are you dating them breh?” one viewer rhetorically asked.

“We need more educators like you, that genuinely care about your students. This is so upsetting,” another sad in contrast.

“Obviously he’s loved at that school and he loves those kids,” someone else chimed in.

This is hardly the first time a teacher has gotten in trouble over their behavior with students. Earlier in May, a teacher bragged on TikTok about getting a new job after she was sacked for texting one of her students 28,000 times.

In 2022, a science teacher was fired when she admitted to filming inappropriate content in school on her students’ desks.