A mother went viral after thousands of people struggled to find the answers to her second grader’s homework, leading her to contact her teacher and discover there was an error.
Ariel Villarreal, 32, took to TikTok on March 17 and asked users to “help me solve my son’s homework.”
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Even though the video was viewed more than 1.8 million times and received more than 1,100 comments, no one came closer to getting the answer. After contacting the teacher, it was agreed that one answer had a major error.
Villarreal, who lives in Texas with his son Anthony, said news week that the “moral of the story is to check your children’s homework and work with them one on one.”
Villarreal added that the teacher usually doesn’t set graded assignments but rather “supplemental” work in case kids need practice, and said she was “quite surprised” that it seemed like the worksheet hadn’t been reviewed beforehand.
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In the viral clip, Villarreal (who posts as @themermaidrealtor_), showed a series of cartoons with partially spelled words and without a syllable. While most of the puzzles were simple, two left her stumped, along with 22,000 users who liked the video.
TikTok @themermaidrealtor_
Showing a series of musical notes with the letters “in” at the end, he asked: “What is this supposed to be? Just look at the picture, I’m looking at it. I know it’s not interfering.”
The next image appeared to show an oval with another smaller oval inside, with the mystery word ending in “ro.” Villarreal asked: “What the hell is that? What the hell is that?”
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Homework is an important part of school life, and as children get older, it takes up more of their time. In 2015, a Statista report found that about 6.1 hours of a 15-year-old American’s week is spent doing homework.
It was considered one of the highest in the world, behind only Italy with 8.7 hours, Ireland with 7.3 hours and Poland with 6.6 hours. At the opposite end of the scale was Finland, whose teenagers did about 2.8 hours of homework a week, and South Korea with 2.9 hours.
Hundreds of people commented on Villarreal’s post, with many guessing that the musical question was a typo or typo. Some correctly guessed that the oval must be a “zero”, despite the second oval inside, another joked that the answer to the first is “confusIN” and one claimed that the musical notes could be “Chopin”, also known as 19. Classical music composer of the 19th century.
The mother later shared an update, thanking the “500,000 people” for their help and confirming that there was a mistake in the music question and the teacher didn’t know what it was supposed to be.
She said news week: “I texted the teacher the next day, she agreed it was a typo and the answer key didn’t have an answer. She said the next to last one was ‘zero’, I still don’t understand it.”
Villarreal noted that a commenter on his video claimed that the creator of the downloadable worksheet had corrected the typo.
His son, meanwhile, is now working on his calligraphy and jobs that “really interest him.”
“He just completed a report and made a drawing about Bluey, and he’s much happier doing things like that instead of working over the weekend,” she said.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
