Teacher Shares Students’ Christmas Wishes on TikTok and Gifts Start Pouring In

Las Vegas isn’t usually the first place to come to mind when one thinks of holiday cheer (bright lights notwithstanding, of course). The city usually invokes thoughts of either fun and games or wild, seedy, behavior, but there’s more to the city beyond the Vegas Strip – including a very special high school that serves a lot of students from hard places. One teacher from Desert Pines High School, recently went viral when she posted about her students on TikTok, and the responses from total strangers have brought some holiday miracles and joy to Sin City.

In her TikTok video, teacher Cheri Guy shared about the school’s “Wishmas” program, where the faculty and staff strive to grant Christmas wishes for some of their 3,000 students. The program is simple: kids write down something they would like to open on Christmas morning, and are encouraged to share why it’s important to them.

But it’s why it’s important to run the Wishmas program in the first place that has tugged at the TikTok community’s hearts. “We have a lot of kids who are in the foster system, we have a lot of kids who are living in poverty,” Guy told TODAY.com. “These kids are facing enormous stress outside of the classroom.” The wishes are mostly quite simple, and  in some cases, quite heartbreaking.

In Guy’s TikTok video, she openly cries as she reads some of the requests, which range from a bag of Taki chips “so I won’t feel hungry,” to “help paying for my cap and gown for graduation,” to “I would like a Wingstop gift card. It will give me free food for the day.”

@attagirlguy Even if you can’t help, maybe you can share #teacher #wishlist #students #holiday #highschool ♬ original sound – JustSomeGuy

Guy’s tears turned into a plea for help to get all these wishes met for the kids she teaches each day.