By day, David Jahn ’24, ’25 teaches high school biology in Texas. Online, he is JahnifestDestiny, the Gen Z teacher whose classroom stories have drawn hundreds of thousands of followers in under a year.

Jahn earned his master’s degree through the Graduate Certification Program (GCP) in the College of Education and Human Development’s Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture. Now he is using his platform for a mission he sums up in four words: make teaching cool again.

A Calling to the Classroom

Teaching was never the plan. Jahn graduated from high school at 16 and spent the summer of 2020 renovating his family’s farmhouse, ripping up subfloors and hauling tiles through the Texas heat. One July day on the roof, in 103-degree weather, he decided his future needed to be indoors and lucrative. So he enrolled in biomedical engineering at Texas A&M University with plans to become a patent attorney.

Jahn during his mission trip to Tokyo, where he first discovered his passion for teaching.

That plan did not survive his sophomore year, when Jahn said his faith changed what motivated him. He switched his major to history with pre-law certificates, aiming to become a prosecutor instead.

Then came Tokyo. The summer after his junior year, Jahn spent a month in Japan on a mission trip and visited a school, where he taught for a day.

“Whilst standing in front of one of the high school classes, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace, like I was doing what I was made to do,” Jahn said. “I felt entirely whole.”

Back in Texas, he applied to the GCP. Jahn did not initially meet the GPA requirement and was accepted on the condition that he raise it during his senior year. He answered with back-to-back 18-hour semesters, earning a 3.8 and a 4.0.

Planting Seeds of Ambition

Jahn said his teaching philosophy comes from the way his parents raised him and his sisters: “Everyone is capable of achieving great things, and hard work really does pay off.”

It was also shaped by his own teachers, from the high school art teacher who made sure every student felt safe to the English teacher whose love of literature won over a future engineering major. At Texas A&M, Jahn found the same faculty suppo

rt in GCP Drs. John Williams III, Sharon Matthews and Matthew Etchells, who he said, “marked me as a man and educator.”

“I try deeply, to instill as much confidence and ambition in my students as they did in me,” Jahn said. Three years in, the students remain his favorite part of the job. His role, he said, is bigger than history or science standards. He is teaching them how to be human.

“What many people don’t realize is that kids are hilarious, especially during these transformative years,” Jahn said. “They are far from being adults, but they are adults in training, and this training season is incredibly fulfilling to be a part of.”

A JahnifestDestiny video about things his students said while playing The Oregon Trail. (Photo: JahnifestDestiny)

The Origins of JahnifestDestiny

The account began as an inside joke. During his student teaching and first year in the classroom, Jahn posted funny classroom moments to his private social media stories. When he returned to Aggieland for football games and weddings, friends told him they looked forward to the posts every day and urged him to start making TikToks and Reels.

Jahn held off for two years. When he finally started posting in October 2025, he made a deal: if the account did not reach 50,000 followers by New Year’s Eve, he would delete it and never post again.

By December 31st, JahnifestDestiny had over 362,000 followers on TikTok and 122,000 on Instagram.

“While the accounts have exploded in popularity these last 10 months,” Jahn said, “at their core they are still my attempt at making my friends laugh while sharing what it’s like to be a Gen Z teacher.”

Making Teaching Cool Again

Jahn has no interest in joining the steady stream of viral videos of teachers quitting the profession, a genre he said is so prevalent that, “TeacherTok is synonymous with QuitTok.”

David Jahn in his classroom

His content is not classroom tips or aesthetic lesson plans. It is, as he put it, his attempt to make his friends laugh while highlighting the perks of the job, largely that students are endless sources of entertainment and that, “it is a blessing to get to pour into the next generation.”

“If I can use my platform to make teaching cool again,” Jahn said, “and encourage young people to pursue their dreams of teaching, encourage professionals to consider teaching as a career change and support current teachers to persevere through the very real detractors, then I will.”

His advice is the same whether someone is an undergraduate dreaming of their own classroom or a professional considering a career change. He has seen both thrive, and said schools need the variety.

“I am not a teacher because I wasn’t qualified to do anything else,” Jahn said. “I am a teacher because I couldn’t stomach doing something unfulfilling.”

For media inquiries, contact Ruben Hidalgo.