#TeacherLife is a hashtag teachers attach to posts about the everyday side of their work: classroom setups, lesson ideas, jokes about the job, small wins and honest frustrations. It sits alongside platform tags such as #TeachersOfInstagram and #TeacherTok, and it is used on both Instagram and TikTok. Unlike those tags it names no platform, so it travels across apps and works as a general label for “this is what teaching is really like.”
Origin
No source we could verify records the first use of #TeacherLife, so this page gives no start date. What can be documented is how the tag shows up in coverage of teachers on social media:
- 2018, Instagram teacher communities. NPR reported on December 4, 2018 that teachers had formed a community on Instagram, where “teacher Instagrammers post photos of meticulously crafted classroom decorations, lessons and even their daily outfits.” NPR’s example tag was #teachersofinstagram, not #TeacherLife.
- 2019, research on #teacherlife influencers. Researchers presented “The visual grammar of #teacherlife among Instagram teacher influencers” at the Fifteenth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) in Champaign, Illinois.
- 2020, a study of #teacherlife posts. An article in Jurnal Tarbiyah (Vol 27, No 1, 2020) used 10 Instagram posts found through the #teacherlife hashtag to examine how teachers’ identity is represented.
- 2020, TikTok during lockdowns. On October 12, 2020, the Australian Association for Research in Education’s blog wrote that “during COVID-19 lockdowns, a growing number of teachers have found solace—and celebrity-status—through the app,” naming #teacherlife among the hashtags whose teacher videos “have views in the billions.”
- 2023, a top teacher tag on TikTok. Education Week’s February 14, 2023 guide to how teachers use TikTok listed #teacherlife among its “popular teacher hashtags.”
How It’s Used
The tag covers both the professional and the personal. The AARE blog describes teachers on TikTok “connecting with a teaching community, sharing tips, celebrating successes, laughing at themselves, or venting frustration,” and says their videos capture the “everyday, funny, and perplexing moments” of teaching. Education Week says many teachers use TikTok “to connect with other educators, discuss their profession, and share lesson ideas or inspiration.” Its examples include a #teacherlife post about lesson plans that is also tagged #FirstYearTeacher, and a lighthearted Friday post.
The 2020 Jurnal Tarbiyah study found four major themes in the #teacherlife posts it analyzed: teachers’ responsibility, commitment, authority and need for recognition. The authors also wrote that “many ideas of teachers’ identity are against the teachers’ expectations.”
Teacher influencers. For some teachers, posting is also a side business. NPR reported that a teacher Instagram account “can also be a way to bring in extra cash, with some using their account to promote a company’s products or sell their own resources,” for example on #TeachersPayTeachers. A 2020 study in the CITE Journal defined “edu-influencers” as people who have achieved “microcelebrity status” on sites such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube by promoting education-related products or practices. Studying posts by 18 influencers across 4 weeks of the 2019 back-to-school season, the authors found four themes: “promoting products and themselves, motivating teachers, soliciting engagement, and advocating for classroom approaches.”
Downsides. NPR named “the comparison game” as one downside of teacher Instagram. It also noted that posting photos of students can be tricky, because the annual notice schools send parents may not cover a teacher’s personal account.
What Researchers and Reporters Found
| Source | Year | Platform | Focus | Finding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NPR | 2018 | Teacher community | Teachers share classrooms and lessons; some earn extra income | |
| ICQI talk (Engman, Shepard-Carey, Lemanski) | 2019 | #teacherlife influencers | Visual grammar of influencer posts | |
| CITE Journal (Shelton, Schroeder, Curcio) | 2020 | 18 edu-influencers | Products, motivation, engagement, classroom advocacy | |
| Jurnal Tarbiyah (Hidayat et al.) | 2020 | 10 #teacherlife posts | Responsibility, commitment, authority, recognition | |
| AARE blog | 2020 | TikTok | Teachers in lockdown | Community, tips, humor and venting |
| Education Week | 2023 | TikTok | Teacher hashtags | #teacherlife among popular teacher hashtags |
Sources
- https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-teachers-use-tiktok-to-get-new-ideas-feel-inspired-and-indulge-a-laugh-or-two/2023/02
- https://blog.aare.edu.au/2020/10/12/tiktok-teachers-go-viral-in-these-viral-covid-19-times-a-booming-new-genre/
- https://jurnaltarbiyah.uinsu.ac.id/index.php/tarbiyah/article/view/627
- https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/activities/the-visual-grammar-of-teacherlife-among-instagram-teacher-influen-2/
- https://www.npr.org/2018/12/04/670829785/teachers-turn-lessons-into-instagram-worthy-photos
- https://citejournal.org/?p=9914