Third-grade teacher Sophia DeLoretta-Chudy was fired from her job at Becker Elementary School in Austin (pictured above). Credit: Screengrab / Google Maps

An Austin ISD elementary school teacher maintains she was fired after posting a TikTok video about a meeting in which a school administrator complained about her teaching students about their legal and constitutional rights.

On March 21, third-grade teacher Sophia DeLoretta-Chudy posted a now-viral video on the social media platform about that meeting with a school administrator. The clip has since garnered more than nearly 500,000 likes and 3 million views.

@sophforpresident you’d think I was teaching way out west but this is downtown Austin… #TeachingTexas ♬ original sound – Sophie Marie

During the clip, DeLoretta-Chudy shows what appears to be a document from Austin’s Becker Elementary School listing the administrator’s concerns, including that she “intentional attempt in teaching students about their legal and constitutional rights” and allowed students to sit during the pledge of allegiance

In a follow-up video, the teacher explained that her students decided to sit for the national anthem following a lesson during Holocaust Remembrance Week. Following the lesson, some students in the class drew similarities between reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and the use of nationalistic propaganda in Nazi Germany, she added.

Even if the students didn’t bridge that gap on their own, there’s no state or federal law requiring people to stand for the national anthem.

“It had nothing to do with my teaching practices, with my relationship with my students, with how I dressed, it had nothing to do with teaching,” a teary-eyed DeLoretta-Chudy said in another video she uploaded after being fired. “It’s literally only because I whistle blew on Tikok instead of the ‘appropriate channels’ to file a grievance. And now I don’t get to finish the school year with my students. It just feels so fucking wrong.”

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This article appears in May 31 – Jun 13, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...