The TikTok teacher: How one 16-year-old is taking remote-learning to the next level

Alexis Loveraz, 16, has been using his math skills to teach other students on TikTok. (Alexis Loveraz)

TORONTO — As the pandemic pushes more and more teenagers into remote-learning to keep up with their studies from home, some students are getting schooled on an unlikely platform: TikTok.

Alexis Loveraz, a 16-year-old from the Bronx, New York, has been posting videos with crash courses in subjects such as geometry, algebra and chemistry, among others, since February.

Since he started his makeshift online classes, he has racked up over half a million followers on his TikTok account alone, and his teachings have reached students across the world, including in Canada.

Loveraz told CTVNews.ca over email that it all started after he posted a quick video to TikTok while he was making notes for a test, asking his followers if they needed help learning chemistry, geometry, algebra or physics.

“The next day when I came out of school, my notifications were blowing up,” Loveraz said. “I had requests to go over math topics like quadratics, systems of the equation, etc."

Soon, he was posting his first math lesson -- a video of him explaining Pythagorean theorem using a whiteboard.

It only snowballed from there. Loveraz said he was “speechless” when comments started pouring in with praise for the teen’s ability to condense information.

He said one thing that stuck with him was a commenter who said they’d learned more from a “1 minute video (than) a 45-minute class.”

One person wrote that Loveraz explained the concepts better than their math teacher.

He felt a "mix of feelings" seeing the reaction, but was mostly "extremely happy."

“I was just very excited to gain an audience where students would want to learn,” Loveraz said. What makes him feel the most satisfied is when his videos are described as “simple” and “understandable,” he said — words that are not often applied to math lessons.

Loveraz said he has always had a knack for math. The junior attends Harlem Prep Charter School in Manhattan, N.Y., and has a 4.0 GPA. Over the past few months, the 16-year-old has used his TikTok account to explain inverse functions, polynomials and how to balance chemical equations, among numerous other topics.

Since COVID-19 shuttered schools across the world, there has been even more of a demand for videos like Loveraz’s. Loveraz said that some students are likely struggling during the pandemic because they’re used to learning in person.

Some of his most viewed videos have him going over SAT questions, from basic to hard.

“I want to make the most out of this school year for these students,” he said.

Loveraz isn’t stopping at TikTok. He’s already made a YouTube channel to create longer videos, and he started working on Google Classrooms in March. He said he wants to create assignments for students, and hopes to continue giving lessons into the summer.

“I realized if I can score well on a subject like math, why not share (with) others of how they can do it as well and what practices … they need to succeed,” Loveraz said.