Miss Gill and her kindergarten students are seen cheering after a viral video of them was featured on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! late night show Tuesday evening. Kimmel used the video filmed at École St. John Paul II school during his opening monologue.--NEWS PHOTO BRENDAN MILLER
newsdesk@medicinehatnews.com
A heartwarming viral video of a local kindergarten teacher connecting with her students has been seen by more than 86 million people on Instagram, with more than three million likes, and has now made an appearance on the on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Show, used as part of his opening monologue Tuesday.
“Summer is almost upon us, for a lot of kids this is the last of school,” Kimmel says to his audience as he opens his popular talk show that receives an average of more than 1.7 million viewers per episode.
“And this is fun, a kindergarten teacher in Alberta, Canada, named Miss Gill, she did a cute thing,” Kimmel continues before showing his audience a portion of the viral video that shows Miss Gill naming each one of her students just by the sound of their voice.
Mackenzie Gill, a second-year Kindergarten teacher at École St. John Paul II school, filmed the video of her guessing each of her 19 kindergarten students’ names in January, and since then the video has exploded in popularity since it was posted to the Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education’s Instagram page.
Gill says the inspiration for the short 90-second video came from other viral videos that have been appearing on social media recently.
“I feel like, with this challenge in particular, I was able to showcase how strong the relationships are that I built with my students this past year,” says Gill. “Just seeing how excited they were for me getting them right just shows how they had a strong enough relationship with me, that’s something I really strive for.”
However, neither Gill, her students, nor the school division could have predicted how quickly the video would gain traction online. According to MHCBE, the video had received more than 100,000 views within the first day being posted to Instagram.
It was shared so many times over Instagram it eventually caught the attention of Kimmel’s wife, Molly McNearney, who shared it with her husband. During the Easter break the school was contacted by “Jimmy’s people,” who were interested in featuring the video on the show.
Robert Dumanowski, school principal, says he was hesitant of the validity of the email he received in April.
“I thought, do I open this? Is this spam?” explains Dumanowski when receiving the email from Jimmy Kimmel Live! producers.
Moments after a voicemail came through Dumanowski’s work line, confirming the request.
The school quickly reached out to parents of students in the video, who had previously consented for it to be shared online, to gather permission forms to allow the late night show to use the footage.
“We’re really grateful to the parents for their support and enthusiasm with it,” said Derrian Hallas, MHCBE director of communications. “Because it is a vulnerable situation to have your child out there and they were all supporting the process and trustworthy of our consent process and how we handled it, and just excited.”
Nonetheless, the parents were not quite as excited as kindergarten students in the video, who still may not fully comprehend how many people’s smartphones, tablets and TVs they have appeared on.
“It was cool and my dad showed me this morning and I was surprised how many people liked it,” said Bria Chabluk.
During the clip featured on Tuesday’s show, Gill is able to identify four students’ names quickly before struggling to identify Theo Lafourtune, creating a gratifying moment as Gill is able to guess Lafourtune’s name correctly.
“It was really good, my dad showed me on my iPad. It’s pretty fun,” said Lafourtune.
“How I got it was that last time she said, “Hi Miss Gill,” she kind of giggled a little bit and I just knew it was her instantly, just from that giggle,” says Gill.
Dumanowski says it’s not uncommon for teachers to go above and beyond in their role as educators.
“A special teacher who possesses an incredible relationship with the students that she has been given to capture in every way, their imagination, their learning, their spirit, the joy and really in short form kind of crystallizes that relationship,” explains Dumanowski. “By having a teacher, who at the time, had only known her students for a number of months, but through simple words, “Miss Gill,” she was able to call them by name … It is an exercise that was meant to illustrate and celebrate kids and our school, and Miss Gill as an incredible teacher.”
In 2024, Gill was nominated for the Edwin Parr Award by MHCBE for her excellence demonstrated as a first-year teacher.
Gill teaches two half-day Kindergarten classes, one spent with the French Immersion group featured in the video. The other half day she teaches students in English.
“Her drive to educate kids and make them feel good, I think really helps the class succeed,” adds Hallas. “All the parents are floored at the work she does … these kids felt loved in her classroom.”
“This experience has been nothing short of amazing,” says Gill. “I am humbled that people are responding so positively to a snapshot of a moment in our classroom.”
A clip of the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show from Tuesday night has been shared on the Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education Facebook page. The original video with more than 86 million views can be seen on the ‘mhcatholic’ Instagram page posted Jan. 23.
In 2016, Jimmy Kimmel featured another Hatter on his show, when a video of Bart Houben coming down from dental surgery went viral.
