One Kansas school district gave a comedian in their midst a failing grade.
Teacher Stephen Taylor says he was fired from Olathe’s Mill Creek Campus alternative school in September after board members objected to a series of TikTok videos Taylor had made.
Taylor had been a stand-up comedian for eight years and a teacher for six — before his sense of humor supposedly got him fired from his day job.
He claims the initial probe was launched after someone had concerns over a video where Taylor joked about farting on his students.
“I crop dust them all the time,” Taylor said in the offending post.
“I save up big milky lactose intolerant farts. And I drop bombs silently because I’m an adult and I know my body. And then I just let it stew.”
Crop dusting is “the act of breaking wind as you walk past a group of people or through a room, thereby leaving a trail of gas behind you,” according to Urban Dictionary.
The video is just one of a series of TikTok videos in which Taylor jokes about messing with his students in his classroom.
“I tell my students the wrong thing all the time when they annoy me. I tell them Abraham Lincoln invented the car, that’s why it’s named after him,” Taylor joked in a video.
But he insists the videos are all just part of his comedy routine and do not reflect his attitude or actions in this classroom. He insists he never actually farted on his students. Although no students were shown in his videos, some of the clips were recorded in his classroom, which the school board noted in their case against him.
“The reason I’m doing comedy on TikTok is to make money because you only pay me $45,000 a year and I work all the time,” Taylor told News Nation Now, addressing the school district.
He said he was told take the videos down and review the district’s social media policy, which requires staff on social media to maintain “the same level of personal responsibility, discretion and professionalism expected in any other form of communication,” according to WDAF Fox 4.
The policy proclaims that staff members should not post anything online that they would not say at a public meeting or to a member of the media, but Taylor believes his comedy should not be an issue.
“They don’t understand it. The social media policies are designed for Myspace. They are years behind where we are currently at in the world, which is TikTok … everyone is on it,” Taylor said.
Taylor was given a choice — remove the videos from his account or resign, which reportedly led to his firing.
The Post has contacted Taylor and the Olathe School Board for comment.
“The thing I feel the worst about is the students are the ones suffering and I know deep down there’s nothing I could have done besides sacrifice all my values and delete the videos and never make another TikTok,” he told a reporter.
Addressing the Olathe School Board before they voted to fire him, Taylor said: “You are going to vote at the end of this to fire a teacher who has incredible evaluations, great relationships with students and cares deeply about their success. I am that teacher and this is all because of TikTok.”
Taylor has no immediate plans to return to teaching but did sign with an agent the day he was fired and has 30 stand-up comedy gigs booked on his “The Teacher Shortage Tour,” the Kansas City Star reported.
“Now I can actually make money to do comedy,” Taylor said to the Kansas City Star. “I want to do comedy and make fun of them and change policy for future teachers. I hope they aren’t treated holier than priests.”
Taylor isn’t the first person to be fired because of TikTok. A teacher in Brazil was fired for performing sexy dances with her students and posting videos on the app while another woman was let go for sharing her salary on the popular social media site.