Students often think they can outsmart their teachers and hide their antics both inside and outside the classroom. But they tend to forget that teachers, who observe them daily, know them well enough to anticipate their mischief. They can spot a student’s attempt to fool them from a mile away. When Nieka Richard (@nieka_richard), an assistant principal at a San Francisco school, discovered a student had skipped class and bragged about it on social media, she responded with a hilarious video calling him out. The video has since gone viral.
Nieka, from Marguerite Maze Middle School in Hollister, San Francisco, California, regularly posts about high school students breaking the rules. “Yes, I’m a principal,” she writes in her TikTok bio. In this viral video, she put a student in his place after she discovered a clip of him on social media where he was showing off his shenanigans after bunking class in a way that was not appropriate with the school’s code of conduct.
The video on Instagram was a stitch of two clips. The first clip showed the boy, Anthony, raising his hand to ask permission to go to the washroom. But instead of doing so, he went to the school’s vending machine and got himself a drink. Then he walked to the lunch counter and got himself a nice meal. Then, instead of returning to the class, he went to the football field, loafing around, killing time. This clip was posted online by @wockhardt03, Anthony’s friend. Nieka had found the clip in her “For You” feed, as she later revealed in the video.
In the second clip, Nieka gave an iconic response to Anthony’s vlog after skipping class. “Hi Anthony, aren’t you aware that your principals also have social media?” she asked sarcastically. “I am not going to blame you because you’re not the one who posted this. Your best friend did.” She then shredded the clip in the most sassy way. “First of all, pull your pants up, I say, every day no one wants to see your underwear. Secondly, when you ask to go to the restroom, you need to go straight there, and head right back to class.” She chided him for using a different lunch number, due to which one of her students couldn’t eat that day. “You used someone else’s lunch number, yeah, you didn’t think I’d notice,” she said. “You used someone else’s lunch number to get two lunches, and that student didn’t get to have lunch that day.”
She declared that Anthony’s actions were “unacceptable,” as well as those of two other students, Omar and Brandon, who were also a part of this bunk mission. Nieka eventually called attention to Anthony’s teacher, Mr. Cook, and asked why he “didn’t notice” the boy was out of class for 30 minutes. Anthony, Omar, Brandon, and Mr. Cook, all four received passes to her office the next day.
The video has more than 19 million views and over 1 million likes. It has also garnered massive attention on TikTok, where it has more than 66 million views. People expressed mixed reactions to the video. Some thought it was hilarious. A flurry of laughter emojis followed in the comment section. @shelley commented, “Mr. Cook is cooked!” @yeastychain said, “Principal is a badass.”
Many felt it was wrong to publicly call out the boy. “Making an example out of a student on the internet is wild and seems kind of unprofessional,” commented @yea.dawgy. But @925name_ supported Nieka and pointed to the student’s reckless behaviour, saying, “Kids nowadays don’t give no f**ks. He’ll do it again and tag you next time.”
You can follow Nieka Richard on Instagram and TikTok for comedy vlogs and lifestyle content.
