“I can’t hail chicken nugget because I have to hail Allah.”

Hailing the chicken nugget is a popular callback currently circulating social media in the world of teaching.

It all started with one teacher who was given a chicken nugget keychain by her friend that she then turned into a fun call back with her class that was designed to get their attention in a creative way.

The teacher holds up the nugget and says to the class, “chicken nugget rising.” The students then pretend to bow as they repeat back, “all hail chicken nugget,” and then fall silent.

In our class, we started doing this trend as a fun way to get the kids’ attention. However, one little boy who is a practicing Muslim has begun to struggle with worrying too much and has developed some anxiety.

Naturally, after beginning the chicken nugget call back, he began to develop a worry, not realizing that the call back was meant to be for fun and not serious.

He told us one day that he “can’t hail chicken nugget because” he has “to hail Allah.”

This poor, sweet boy was so worried. We told him it was just for fun, but that he didn’t have to participate if he didn’t want to.

When we decided to initially begin the callback, never once had we thought that this would be something we would have to think about, but it was. In teaching, you just have to expect the unexpected. That’s just how it is.