MCFARLAND, Calif. (KERO) — On Cinco de Mayo, one Kern County teacher is going viral for her unique approach to teaching students about the history of the holiday by posting videos on TikTok.
Lauren Cella is a world history teacher at McFarland High School, and she says that during the pandemic when she was teaching remotely from home, her students enouraged her to get a TikTok account.
Cella took the advice, and she said she started coming up with these conversational and quick stories about historic moments, all to help students (and her followers) get excited about learning history.
"I think when you realize that hisotry is jsut a story, you're just telling people's stories. It's not really, like, the lingo and the slang. That's funny, but what's really resonating with people is it's a story and they understand it," said Cella, adding that one of her goals is to remove the "elitisism" that sometimes accompanies the study of history and let everyone understand that the stories of history are their stories too.
One of Cella's videos about the history of the Cold War has generated over 1.1 million views.
