‘Gen Z Teaches History’ Is a Viral TikTok Series That Mixes Learning and Humor
If you’re a historical past buff, you might already know that Cleopatra had a substantial quantity of rizz. King Henry VIII, however, might be thought-about the Tom Sandoval of his time. Meanwhile, Czar Nicholas II struggled to, effectively, decide a wrestle.
All three of those historic royals have been the topic of “Gen Z Teaches History,” a viral video sequence created by Lauren Cella, who teaches tenth grade historical past. In it, the California educator assumes the persona of a Gen Z trainer from the longer term, delivering overviews of historic figures and occasions utilizing a hilarious mixture of opaque (should you’re a Millennial or older) slang and Taylor Swift lyrics.
“A positive compliment that I hear sometimes from my students or from people on the internet is like, ‘Oh my goodness, you make history so interesting,’” Cella explains. “And I always say, ‘History is interesting.’ I think other people make it boring. I’m not making it interesting. I’m just telling you what happened.”
Check out our Gen Z slang dictionary under.
What started on a lark on social media has earned Cella tens of millions of views throughout TikTok and Instagram, together with the admiration of scholars and commenters who admire how a lot they study from every installment.
“Thank you for helping me get my PhD in 20th century history,” wrote a commenter about Cella’s explanation of the Cold War.
Behind the lighthearted sequence is Cella’s actual love of historical past and want to make it extra accessible, simply as her personal academics did for her.
“I think other people make it inaccessible,” she says. “I think other people purposely want to not tell different sides of the story, they want it to be an easier narrative, they purposely use vocabulary that only encompasses upper academia. They don’t want other types of people to be able to have access to the curriculum, and that’s done on purpose — especially in social studies.”
How It Started
Cella loves a good story.
It’s why she studied historical past and journalism as an undergrad, and why instructing historical past appeals to her. Before that, Cella grew up listening to tales from her paternal Hawaiian grandparents — who’re additionally of Chinese and Puerto Rican heritage, which Cella says is a frequent “hapa” mixture of backgrounds — about their lives and the household’s historical past. They shared tales about what they witnessed through the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and additionally they regaled her with the historical past of Puerto Rico’s indigenous Taino individuals.
“Then on my mom’s side of the family, all the elders would tell stories about how the family came from Mexico,” Cella remembers. “From a really young age, I was really interested in Liberty’s Kids and the American Girl series. I should have known I was going to be a history teacher.”
It’s a lack of connection to the previous that Cella sees as a barrier to college students discovering their very own love for historical past.
“A lot of these things were 100 years ago, 200 years ago, and maybe if you’re reading about it from a primary source, it can be really difficult to understand,” Cella explains. “I’ve had teachers of different ages that were able to break it down in a way that we could understand, and that made me fall in love with history. So the series is really just an homage to that.”
It was Cella’s college students who inspired her to start out posting historical past classes on-line, and she lastly gave it a attempt through the pandemic.
“I was like, ‘No, I’m too old. Nobody does that,’” Cella remembers enthusiastic about the notion of taking to social media to show classes. “And they’re like, ‘No, Miss, they do. You can actually learn a lot of stuff. People go on it to learn.’ So I started kind of posting more and just experimenting, and I noticed that my stories about teaching or my reels about history were getting a lot more engagement than anything else I was posting.”
Her first viral hit was a Gen Z historical past lesson on the Russian Revolution, which gained 1 million views on Instagram and then one other million views on TikTok. Cella says that she chalked it as much as luck, however then her subsequent video on the French Revolution reached 2 million views. Subsequent historical past movies continued to carry out effectively.
Most of her on-line viewers is made up of individuals her age or older, Cella says. While they may not perceive all the slang, she muses, they’re drawn in by the format and pleasantly shocked to finish the movies figuring out greater than once they began.
“Literally have never understood WW1 until right now,” a commenter wrote on her hottest TikTok video up to now.
Cella likes to “trick” individuals into studying once they suppose they’re simply watching a humorous social media publish.
“Of course, it’s an oversimplification. The videos are a minute long, but it gets people interested,” she says. “I’m really just doing the same thing on TikTok and reels that every great teacher does, and that’s just connecting with their students and breaking it down into a language that they could understand in a way that is inclusive and maybe a little bit fun.”
Fun might be laborious to return by for academics today. Cella hopes that her movies supply an instance to fellow educators about how, regardless of the difficulties of the occupation, they needn’t at all times let fear dominate.
“If you’re worried that you’re not doing enough, you probably are. Because the good teachers that I know are always trying to do the best for our students,” she says. “So if that’s where your heart is, 99 percent of the time, you’re probably already doing enough.”
Behind the Scenes
There are a few recurring parts to Cella’s Gen Z historical past movies: She’s sitting behind a desk or podium, sun shades perched atop her head, iced espresso in hand.
Cella says she by no means supposed for the iced espresso particularly to turn out to be a staple of the format, however there’s no going again now. That’s as a result of it alerts a pivotal second in her movies, when she shakes the ice-filled cup, switches palms, and introduces essential context for the story with a pointed, “Meanwhile…”
“This is so embarrassing, but sometimes it takes me a few takes and the ice would melt, and then I would have water. And I’m like, ‘What do you do?’” she recounts. “I would go buy another one, but then I was all hyped up on coffee. So I have fake ice in the iced coffee now.”
Cella is a scholar of her time. As a excessive schooler, she was a fan of comedy historical past exhibits like Drunk History and Epic Rap Battles of History — sequence that approached dry subject material with a comedic slant that earned them huge attraction.
But her influences now embrace her college students, who give her concepts for brand spanking new slang to include and maintain her up-to-date on the ever-evolving Gen Z — and now Gen Alpha — lexicon.
It was her college students’ frank approach of talking concerning the world that impressed the character Cella performs. Cella says that if she’s making enjoyable of anybody, it’s herself and not the children.
“The way we were taught [history] was so boring and so dry and only told one side of the story, and Gen Z is not about that,” Cella says. “So when they actually get to be the history teachers, that was the inspiration. They’re going to really give us the tea, they’re really going to tell us how it is.”
