A new TikTok trend has taken off at Mills, where students participate in a social media trend in which they shoot paper darts into ceilings. Inspired by TikTok tutorial videos that showed how to fold sticky notes into darts and launch them, some students decided to try it out at school.
One student, who wished to stay anonymous, spoke about why he participated in throwing paper darts.
“Sometimes in class I get bored, and there’s nothing else to do, and it’s fun,” Anonymous states. “So I just decided to play a little fun game.”
Math teacher Jonathan Lee expresses his thoughts on students participating in this activity.
“I think it’s a trend or a fidget,” Lee explains. “I think it’s something that’s novel. I’m gonna equate it to bottle flipping a few years ago. So it’s a new kind of almost a cool thing we can do, like fidgeting when we’re sitting around here. So I think that’s where the paper dart thing kind of showed up.”
Paper dart launching has been happening all around the school. Different teachers have different policies on their tolerance and consequences for students participating in the trend. Nyah Manansala-Smith, a social science teacher, allows students to throw the darts in a small area of the classroom as long as they finish their assignments.
“It’s a general distraction, but it doesn’t hinder my ability to teach,” Manansala reflects. “And the students who do the paper darts are still getting their work done.”
Manansala continues, “I’ve directed students who prefer to do the paper dart stuff into just one square in the back of the classroom in the last five minutes of class, when we’re not really doing much. So it’s more of a controlled chaos, rather than just free balling. ”
Lee speaks about his views on students in his class folding and throwing paper darts.
“Once they start going into my ceiling, and they don’t clean it up, it becomes a distraction and more of an issue,” Lee says. “But if a kid was doing origami and they’re doing their work, I wouldn’t be opposed to that.”
Elise Jang (9) shares her opinions on how the dart throwing affected students’ learning time after witnessing some of her peers try it during class.
“I think that if people see other people doing it, it will distract them,” Jang says. “And it will encourage more people to start doing it and the teacher will spend less time teaching and more time dealing with those guys.”
As teachers are experiencing these situations and implementing more rules to prevent further distractions in class, students have thrown less paper darts into school ceilings. Lee advises students: “If you watch it, that’s one thing. It’s another thing to then send them up to my ceiling because you think it’s funny. So be responsible, children.”
