Jeff Bliss of Duncan High Lecturing Teacher How to Teach Goes Viral [VIDEO]
The classroom rant of an 18-year-old high school student from Texas has gone viral. The video shows Duncanville High School student Jeff Bliss being told to get out of the classroom while he tells his teacher to do her job.
A classmate has captured the exchange between Bliss and social studies teacher Julie Phung in a mobile phone video. The 90-second footage starts as the student stands up to leave the classroom.
“If you would just get up and teach them instead of handing them a freaking packet, yo. These kids in here don’t learn like that. They need to learn face to face. You’re just getting mad because I’m pointing out the obvious.
A seemingly bored Phung can be heard from the other side of the classroom, telling Bliss that he’s wasting her time.
“No, I’m not wasting your time,” he snapped. “I’m telling you what you need to do. You want kids to come into your classroom, you want them to get excited for this? You got to come in here, you got to make them excited. You want a kid to change and start doing better, you got to touch his freaking heart.
“You can’t expect the kid to change when all you do is just tell him. You got to take this job serious. This is the future of this nation. And when you in here like you did the last time and make a statement about, ‘oh this is my paycheck,” and indeed it is. But this is my country’s education and my future.”
“I respect that. Can you go outside please,” Phung answered.
“But there’s a limit. I’m not b*tching. I’m simply making an observation. And now I will leave. You’re welcome. And if you would like, I’ll teach you a little more so can actually learn how to teach a freaking class,” he retorted.
“Because since I got here, I’ve done nothing but read packets. So don’t try to take credibility for teaching me jack.”
The video, shot last week, has been uploaded and duplicated on YouTube, with two of them gathering more than 1.8 million views 24 hours since they were uploaded. It has also earned more than 19,000 on Reddit.
FOX4 spoke to Bliss after his passionate rant. He admitted that while he doesn’t regret his outburst, he could have handled it differently. He also said that he erupted when Phung replied with profanity, telling him to stop his questioning and leave.
“I don’t want people to look up to me as something you should idolise or anything like that. I’m just as human as the next person,” he told the news channel, adding that he has also received support from the school’s teachers and administrators.
Bliss dropped out of high school after his freshman year but has since come back, saying, “Now I’ve been taking school work seriously.”
School superintendent Dr. Alfred Ray said that the teacher “cared so much about her student that she went down to the office with the assistant principal while someone else watched her class and they had a conversation in that office and came to some agreement.”
Bliss, who has being hailed as a cult hero for standing up for the quality of education he is getting, came back to the class later that same period.
The district announced that Bliss wouldn’t be punished for his actions, and that Phung has been put on paid leave while the incident is being investigated.
Duncanville ISD said in a statement that they “want our students and teachers to be engaged, but the method by which the student expressed his concern could have been handled in a more appropriate way.”