Tony Wishard, who is a principal at a school, never intended to make the video public on Tiktok but fate had other plans for him.
Social media isn't just a platform for music and dance videos anymore, but everyone from doctors to lawyers and teachers to finance professionals are able to find an audience online. Although going viral and being an influencer in their respective disciplines is what most people want, sometimes the fame can come accidentally. It's not an easy task to bond with every other student and teach them correct values. This is something that Tony Wishard a teacher-turned-administrator and coach, also felt who often felt when he couldn't understand the psyche of students well enough to help them. So he maintained a record of his experience with students in his TikTok account (@t.wishard), in the form drafts that he kept revisiting to remind himself that the students need him even when they don't say so. But the TikTok slideshow video accidentally went public when his son was tinkering with the phone and went on to receive a lot of love on the internet.
In an interview with PEOPLE, the health and P.E. teacher turned assistant principal said, "I taught or coached baseball for seven years, which was neat because we're a small school division. So toward the end of my career coaching, I got to coach kids that I taught in the beginning, which is really neat." While on the job, he realized that students need a lot more than what they get in their regular classroom setting.
Wishard once found two students arguing in the gym and he wanted to take an approach that would both discipline them while addressing the root of the conflict. He got the students some goodies from Target and the students were happy when he resolved their petty conflict with thoughtfulness. "It was a great reminder to me to not just discipline students at the moment but to get to the bottom of the story. Behind every behavior, there's a story. Kids don't come to school wanting to be bad. They come here to tell us something and I'm so glad I took the time," he explained.
Wishard makes sure to let students be comfortable in his office before he puts them on the right track. But whenever Wishard felt defeated while trying to fix the attitude of a student, he added the experience to his TikTok draft. Every slide of the TikTok post had a picture of one or more students with their faces hidden with emojis and some overlay text that described instances when Wishard decided to show up for them.
"In all honesty, I had no intention of posting this video. I was just using that pattern on TikTok to put together a video. I would watch it for almost two months straight in my drafts and it was a good reminder at night," he revealed. "Kids don't love coming to my office. I mean, they do, but it's different. So I made the video as a reminder of why I need to keep coming in. There's a mix of pictures and videos from almost 10 years ago. I needed to remember that I do have something good here and to keep that momentum going." But his video suddenly went public when he was preparing for a Father's Day outing with his family. His 4-year-old son, who loved to watch videos on TikTok, stumbled upon the draft file on Wishard's account and accidentally published it.
Wishard was surprised when his girlfriend showed him the video that she could see on her FYP. Initially, he was confused but soon realized how the video ended up going public. "We invest in students. We give them those snacks. We tie those shoes. We watch the baseball games. We show up when our parents get married. Those are all small investments. It's neat that now people see what those kinds of investments can do. I don't think some parents know what we do with their own children and I mean that in a good way," Wishard described. "I think the reason I made the video, my conclusion about it, is that I needed a reason to keep going," he concluded.
For more such content, follow @t.wishard on TikTok.