A Texas elementary school teacher claims she was fired for failing third graders during the Pledge of Allegiance after teaching them about Nazi propaganda and seeing parallels to the Pledge.
Sophia DeLoretto-Chudy said she was let go after making a viral TikTok and “embarrassing” a school administrator by talking about a list of concerns they raised with her.
One of the issues brought up with the Austin teacher was the fact that many of her students were in a schoolwide meeting during the Pledge of Allegiance.
According to DeLoretto-Chudy, the students made their own decision to sit down after discussing the pledge and how students don’t have to just follow what she’s told in one of her classes.
She claimed that their interest in protesting came after teaching them how Hitler had tried to brainwash Nazi youth with propaganda, and suggested that her students had begun to see the promise in the same way.
Other concerns on the list included the teacher’s decision to conduct a book study on “Harry Potter” and failure to respond to emails in a timely manner.
The caption on her video reads, “In Texas it is a crime to question the Pledge of Allegiance.” It collected millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes.
A third-grade teacher at a Texas elementary school was fired after she made a TikTok video of her “embarrassing” an administrator by talking about a list of concerns she was given
Sophia DeLoretto-Chudy was in her freshman year of teaching at Becker Elementary School in Austin when an official pulled her into a meeting to discuss some issues.
Becker Elementary School in Austin, Texas, where DeLoretto-Chudy taught
To talk with FOX 26DeLoretto-Chudy said she thought when a school official called her into their office that they were going to help after a rough freshman year.
“They brought me a list of concerns. I was a little surprised,” said the teacher who worked with eight-year-olds. “It scared me quite a bit.”
During that conversation, the clerk presented her with a long list of problems with her work performance, including her work clothes.
“It just felt like a very demoralizing meeting. I think that’s really the word for it, where I felt unsupported and disrespected,” DeLoretto-Chudy said.
Horrified by the interaction, she took the paper to TikTok, where she showed the world what her admin had told her she was doing wrong.
“We have noticed a deliberate effort to educate your students about their legal and constitutional rights,” reads one line from the newspaper.
It is then asked how the students came to the decision to ‘remain seated’ and whether the group is doing this to ‘please their teacher’ or for reasons of their own.
Earlier in 2019, DeLoretto-Chudy ran as a Democrat candidate for California Assembly District 54, according to a Facebook page dedicated to her campaign.
She remains an outspoken advocate for liberal causes on TikTok, where she has posted political content calling out Republicans and right-wing politicians.
This is the note that will be handed to the teacher stating the concerns raised by administrators at their meeting
According to a Facebook page dedicated to her campaign, DeLoretto-Chudy had previously run as a Democrat for California Assembly District 54 in 2019.
DeLoretto-Chudy at a protest in support of women’s abortion rights
She remains an outspoken advocate for liberal causes on TikTok, where she has posted political content calling out Republicans and right-wing politicians
In a follow-up video posted the same day, she stated that the concerns only came to her mind after officials noticed her children were on the pledge.
“What they decided to do for themselves after learning about propaganda and the Hitler Youth during Holocaust Remembrance Week,” she said.
DeLoretto-Chudy further explained that she had a conversation with her class about the origins of the Pledge of Allegiance during the Civil War, which resulted in the children choosing to abstain.
The teacher said the class looked up the history of the Pledge together and discovered that it was recited in schools after the war to unite the country.
According to the Smithsonian institutionit was not customary to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in schools until October 1892, nearly 30 years after the end of the Civil War.
The administration officials shared concerns that the teacher may have forced her own political views on the subject on the students.
Among the questions put to the teacher were whether or not parents were aware of the silent protest and whether they fully understood their actions.
In the video, DeLoretto-Chudy said that after talking about the history of the Pledge, she told the students about Colin Kaepernick.
A former NFL quarterback, Kaepernick notably received backlash for his protest against the national anthem before games and has remained a free agent since 2017.
“It had nothing to do with my teaching practices or what I was teaching or how I was teaching,” DeLoretto-Chudy said of the way she was fired. Pictured: the letter informing her that government officials were urging her resignation
The letter given to the teacher on April 27 informing her of her dismissal
The topic has divided many on the internet who disagree about whether the teacher had the right to have such discussions with young children.
The original 45-second video, made to vent about the issues administrators had raised, exploded overnight and has been viewed more than a million times.
The next day, Human Resources put her on administrative leave for the video.
“My badge has been taken,” DeLoretto-Chudy said. “I couldn’t access all the apps anymore, wasn’t allowed to communicate with anyone.”
According to the district, the third-grade teacher was fired not for her actions in class, but for violating social media policies.
FOX 26 reported that the employee handbook explicitly addresses social media interfering with an employee’s ability to do his or her job.
If it affects their performance, the employee is subject to dismissal.
“It had nothing to do with my teaching practices or what I was teaching or how I was teaching,” DeLoretto-Chudy said of the way she was fired.
“And it had everything to do with me embarrassing one of my admins on TikTok,” she continued.
The topic has divided many on the internet who fiercely disagree about whether or not the teacher had the right to have such discussions with young children.
Others argued that it boils down to her refusal to follow the school district’s social media policies and nothing more.
“As an educator, she did several things wrong… Her audacity was just mind-boggling,” one YouTube commenter wrote The video from FOX 26.
‘In public schools, students don’t have to take the oath of allegiance if they don’t want to. First Amendment,” wrote another.
“Teachers have no more rights than parents,” one person added.
“What the hell did she do wrong,” wrote another.