When Brandalyn Shropshire decided to make light of her newfound teaching duties at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, she didn't expect to go viral and make national headlines shortly after.
"Had I known that this would happen, I wouldn't have done the video in a bonnet and a robe," Shropshire joked in an interview with the Times Free Press.
A video she posted to Facebook March 18, titled "A Desperate Mother's Prayer," garnered over 15 million views within a few weeks, and has since been featured on various national media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, and shared to numerous online platforms.
This Friday, Shropshire's video will be featured in a new CBS program called The Greatest #AtHome Videos, which is hosted by Cedric the Entertainer and scheduled to air at 8 p.m. The one-hour episodes will air each Friday through August 14, and showcase the next generation of viral home videos in the age of social distancing, according to a news release.
Shropshire works as assistant director of admissions at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and is a professional comedian that provides "clean comedy to audiences everywhere" according to her fan page on Facebook. When schools across the Chattanooga area closed earlier this year in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Shropshire took on additional responsibilities in helping her daughter, Sydney, with her schoolwork.
"One morning I was trying to do a Zoom call for my job and help my daughter with her homework," Shropshire explained.
"Then the final straw was when I was struggling to figure out a math problem and when I got the answer my daughter said 'that's not the way my teacher showed me to do it,' so I just literally picked up my phone and did a prayer."
Shropshire's prayer is a light-hearted plea in which she asks that every teacher be blessed "because ain't no way that I could do it Lord God, ain't no way," as she says in the video.
In the video, she also notes how frequently she finds the refrigerator door open at her house, stating that she is neither a "Denny's, Shoney's, IHOP nor Waffle House."
Ahead of Chattanooga area schools scheduled to reopen through online and in-person hybrid instruction, Shropshire said the best thing that parents like her can do during this time is extend grace.
"Give yourself grace, give your child grace, give the school grace, give the teacher grace, because we're all going through this together and no one has all the answers," she said. "We just have to go with the flow."