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Columbus has its very own TikTok star.
A Columbus resident and La Grange music teacher went super viral with his students over the weekend after a clip of their Christmas concert on Thursday, Dec. 19, got over 17 million views and 2.5 million likes.
Phillip Brummett and his 4th grade students did a hilarious rendition of the Christmas classic “Up on the Housetop,” where they played jokes on the audience members by pulling out random hammers after singing the lyric “here is a hammer.”
The hammers kept appearing in the hands of one student named John one by one, seemingly from thin air, until the grand reveal where audience members burst into laughter after one of the students, Ben, who is wheelchair bound, turned around and showed the arsenal of hammers hanging from behind his chair.
The comical stunt, which garnered lots of laughs from audience members, also captured the hearts of millions of people all over the world after a mother of one of the students, Whitney Stark, decided to record a clip of the concert and upload it to TikTok.
Brummett says he was never expecting anything like this to happen and curated the idea with his students when trying to think of a funny spectacle to incorporate with the concert. He had no idea that what would ensue would go on to catapult himself and his students into internet fame.
“I wouldn’t expect anything like that to happen, it wasn’t even my video,” said Brummett. “I was walking down the sixth-grade hallways on Friday morning when they were having Christmas parties. And the students said you went viral on TikTok. It was 9:30 a.m. and it had 1.2 million views. I saw Ben at the class party, and I was like dude, you’re famous. I saw him and his mom later and I yelled at him and asked for an autograph. She posted the Tik-Tok at midnight and woke up to all these messages from people talking about inclusion. We both started to tear up a little bit, it was fantastic and awesome. I’m just happy we were able to shed light on inclusion. It wasn’t even an inclusion thing for us, it’s just the way we roll. These kids deserve all the plaudits because they are all rockstars. I wish I could give every single one of them a rockstar shoutout. Whatever good comes out of this they deserve it.”
Over 9,000 people left comments on the heartwarming video applauding Brummett for his creativity and going above and beyond as a teacher for his students.
“So, beyond the gimmicks, this director also managed to get that many very young kids to sing in tune and engage and make music,” said TikTok user dubbyateee. “Clearly this dude knows what he is doing.”
“This teacher has Jason Segel energy and I love it,” said TikTok user Ibbs.
“I just imagine the teacher going “you guys want to prank your parents,” and the whole class giggling,” said TikTok user Desert Mermaid.
Additionally, the video was sent or shared across multiple social media platforms over 280,000 times.
Aside from his duties as a music teacher at La Grange, Brummett is also a musician himself, working on his own music and performing as well alongside local D.J. and artist Darrel Appelt.
To watch the viral TikTok, visit https://www.tiktok. com/t/ZP8NthHCX/.
