A video of a past Michigan Teacher of the Year has gone viral after it was featured on Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account popular with conservatives. The video features the teacher defending the use of gay pride and Black Lives Matters material in the classroom.
In the 37-second video, Owen Bondono, a ninth grade teacher at Oak Park Schools, boasts about the Black Lives Matter paraphernalia on display, which includes “the 13 principles of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
“I want my students to know that flag is not just a decoration,” Bondono says in the video.
The Michigan Department of Education has previously honored Bondono with the 2020-21 Michigan Teacher of the Year award. The department stated that Bondono is “Michigan's first openly transgender Teacher of the Year.”
The video has accumulated over 527,000 views as of 1 p.m. on April 27, just two days after it was posted. The Twitter account known as Libs of TikTok has 1.1 million followers. Libs of TikTok made national news when The Washington Post published the name of its creator, who had chosen to be anonymous.
A Jan. 14 story in the Tennessee Star reported on Bondono’s classroom activism on display.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.