Fake or real? Esco HS party turns viral

Video of an Escondido Charter High School teacher violently reacting to a group of students intruding on his class has drawn widespread criticism from Australia to Cape Verde – but more than one viewer insists not all was as it seemed.

Footage showing Escondido Charter students entering the classroom of a teacher was uploaded to streaming website Streamable earlier today.

Wearing party hats, stick-on moustaches, sombreros and paper masks of their teacher’s face, the students storm his classroom singing a Spanish version of “Happy Birthday”.

The teacher does not appear at all impressed with the intrusion, and when one student attempts to take a selfie photograph with him, he reacts by seizing the phone and flinging it on the ground.

If a teacher says they don’t want a surprise party, don’t throw a surprise party. from videos

A pall of silence settles over the classroom, with the would-be partygoers quickly filing out before they can further rouse further wrath.

The video has since been posted to Reddit, where it has received thousands of upvotes.

Many users have condemned what they perceive as an overreaction on the teacher’s part, while others have said he sent a necessary message to rowdy students.

One Reddit user, “StarFleeter”, has since claimed the video was in fact “a prank”.

“Probably going to get buried but as awesome as this is… this is actually just a prank,” they wrote.

StarFleeter included a screenshot of a Facebook interaction between themselves and the teacher commenting on the popularity of the video.

In it, the teacher stresses in that the video was indeed a prank.

“I would never throw a student’s phone!” he wrote.

The teacher has previously appeared in a video with his students performing a cover song with a keytar while rolling across his school campus on an office chair.

He also holds a four-and-a-half star rating on the Rate My Teachers website, with many of students praising him as the “best”, “amazing” and “very smart”.

NOW THE REST OF THE STORY: BUZZFEED’S TAKE

Jonathan Takagi and another teacher at Escondido Charter in California, Noah Endermann, are friends and always throw birthday parties for each other.

For Endermann’s birthday this year, the two teachers helped to execute a beautiful prank.

“We spent a solid week planning not only what we were going to do, but how we were going to do it,” said Joseph Mendoza, a 18-year-old student of Takagi’s.

On Endermann’s birthday, students from Takagi’s class interrupted his lesson several times, inviting Endermann to his birthday party . As planned, the teacher declined the invitations.

With every disruption, Endermann acted more annoyed. “I was so scared and didn’t know what to think,” said Sara Badrani, a 16-year-old in his class.

For the ultimate escalation, all of Takagi’s students stormed into Endermann’s classroom singing “Feliz Cumpleaños,” and that’s when things got really real.

At the end of the song, one student approached Endermann for a selfie.

Joseph Mendoza

And the teacher grabbed and threw the phone to the ground. His class was stunned silent.

Joseph Mendoza

BTW, they used a broken phone.

Sara said that “[her] heart stopped” after the phone was thrown.

Joseph Mendoza

“After I threw the phone and the other students left, there were some long moments of tense silence,” Endermann said.

The prankster teacher let the tension fester and even resumed his lesson briefly before telling his students that it was a joke.

People on Twitter were impressed with the whole thing. This person called the phone toss “legendary.

The suddenness of the silence was too much for everyone. And people couldn’t stop laughing. Endermann said that he would never actually lose his temper and throw a student’s phone.

“I love my students and I love my job, and find it to be incredibly rewarding to work with young people like these,” he said.

Also, Endermann did end up attending the party with his class and it was “a lot of fun,” according to Mendoza. Here he is crushing his kale-filled piñata.