The bounds of her free speech rights are being tested by a so-called literacy coach near Chicago, as she creates several videos in which she rails against concerned parents and other “right-wing conspiracy theorist nut jobs” and then posts the condescending videos to TikTok.
UPDATE 12/21: The teacher deleted the video at question and later posted this one: “Achievement unlocked: I’ve been targeted by the network that shall not be named.”
WATCH the ‘liberal teacher’ on video:
Under the handle @thatliberaleducator (now appears to use the handle @teach4tomorrow/), Heather Marie Godbout has posted a series of education-related videos on TikTok, The Blaze reports. Godbout’s job title is a “literacy coach” at Crete-Monee High School, as she claims.
In her videos, she excoriates conservatives as “people who could know better if they could get out of their own little bubbles” and accuses them of “trying to bring down our democracy and create a Christian nationalist theocracy.”
But one particular video which has caught the most attention of the public is where she uses the phrase “Indoctrination? Yes please!” emblazoned at the top and is replete with furrowed brows and audible lip smacks, she claims that it’s “[t]ime to own up to” indoctrinating students.
Godbout begins by saying: “All you right-wing conspiracy theory nut jobs who seem to think the teachers are out here just indoctrinating children into some sort of woke agenda that you can’t actually define, I’m just going to come clean.”
“I am, in fact, indoctrinating your children,” Godbout admits.
She then clarifies for another minute or so about what her version of indoctrination entails.
After claiming to foster a love of “reading and books,” she says: “I’m indoctrinating children into understanding their own agency and learning how to think critically about the issues that impact their lives.”
After that, it appears that she has a clarifying moment of self-awareness when she claims to teach students to “not just accept whatever some crazy person on the internet says at face value” but to “do their own research.”
And after claiming that her work teaches students “to be loving, kind, compassionate human beings” who will make the world “a better place,” she concludes the video. Godbout implies that she presents herself to students as a living model of such behavior.
She created a follow-up video also after she saw viewers criticizing her condescending approach. In that video, she said that she will always refuse to be respectful to people who disagree with her politically – whom she derisively refers to as “those people” – because “they’re talking about legislation that will literally unlive people.”
One of her critics was also accused by Godbout of “tone-policing” and of “shutting down” conversation, especially from people in marginalized groups.” But Godbout does not fear reprisal from her employer for the videos, as she says. “[M]y administrators fully support my First Amendment rights to free speech on my own social media platforms,” Godbout claimed.
UPDATE: It looks like the teacher may have changed her TikTok handle and this could be her now: https://www.tiktok.com/@teach4tomorrow/