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An elementary school teacher who shares her young students' daily grievances is going viral after compiling the hilarious tales that land in her "Tattle Box" each day.
"Kids are going to tell you every little thing that’s going on," Jillian Magee, 30, a third-grade teacher in the Washington D.C. area, told Fox News Digital.
"They would interrupt me mid-sentence in the middle of class with very random tattles on other students."
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Magee, who has been teaching for seven years, said when students would alert her to the fact that someone "bumped into me on purpose" or "didn’t mind her business," she needed a way to keep them on track and while she returned to her daily lessons.
Third grade teacher Jillian Magee, 30, has collected some hilarious kid comments in the "Tattle Box" that sits in her desk at school. She said it’s a way for kids to vent frustration without interrupting her lessons. (Jillian Magee)
"I eventually started telling them to just write it down on a sticky note and put it on my desk," Magee said. "But then my desk would be full of sticky notes."
Her solution was to create a "Tattle Form" – asking students to provide their name and some information about their "tattle."
Then she transformed an empty tissue box into a receptacle for everything that might be bothering her students.
@tattler00 Replying to @spanx The tattle tea is always hot in my class! #teachersoftiktok #teacherlife #fyp #trending #tattleforms #teacher #help ♬ original sound - Tattler
She sifts through the complaints each day to learn what is on her students’ minds.
"If there's anything that's super important," Magee said, "I always address it and talk to them about it."
Important tattles could be anything that involves inappropriate words, Magee said, or something that she knows is not true and the student may have been trying to get somebody else in trouble.
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"I've never posted any of those," she said. "But they are the ones that I’m like, ‘I definitely have to talk to you about this.’ Chewing loudly and making fart noises — I don’t need to talk about it."
"Conflict resolution has been one of the benefits of the "Tattle Box," Magee said.
"I think it's a really good form of positive communication," she said. "It helps them with solving conflicts."
It has also helped reserved students find their voice, Magee said.
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"If they have something that they want to tell me, but they're too afraid to say it in person, they can write it down instead," Magee said.
"When you have little notes like this that you can just kind of giggle over, it makes you feel better about what you're doing."
"I think it has added to their confidence," she added. "They are learning that it's okay to speak up — that they can say something."
Even if the tattle is a small annoyance and not an emergency, writing it down can help each child, Magee said.
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"You don't even have to put your name on it. Just throw it in the box, just to get it off of your mind to make you feel better about it."
Magee said she can often see a storyline amid the notes.
"If there's a series in the day where all the kids are saying the same thing, those are my favorite," Magee said. "I think one of them was that there was a ‘student farting,’ and I think I got four of those one day."
"Or ‘chewing loud,’" she added. "I got three of them. When I put them in order, it just sounded like a story, and I was able to piece together what happened just based on what they said."
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Since the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers have reportedly been frustrated — and 55 percent said they plan to leave their profession earlier than planned, according to a recent survey by the National Education Association (NEA).
"I think that those statistics are real," Magee said. "There are very tough days that we have…when you have little notes like this that you can just kind of giggle over, it makes you feel better about what you're doing."
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Magee shared the "Tattle Forms" in a series of TikTok videos, which are garnering millions of views.
Magee said she was shocked to learn her video went viral, but it also meant she was reaching other educators.
Jillian Magee has gone viral for sharing the "tattles" from her third grade classroom's "Tattle Box." (Jillian Magee)
"This is like gold for teachers because this is something that's happening in every classroom, every day," Magee said.
"It's very relatable for teachers to realize ‘I'm not the only person who is experiencing this.’ I’ve seen a lot of comments from teachers saying that they are going to implement the ‘tattle form’ in their classrooms too."
