"The Gibberish Some Of You Choose To Use Is Improper English": This Teacher Is Going Viral For Punishing Students Who Use Slang In Her Class, And People Are Calling It A "Power Trip"
"If you are caught using these words, you will write a short essay."
Most would agree that a teacher's job is to create a safe space for all students to express themselves. Teachers often implement classroom rules to clearly state behaviors that are deemed "appropriate," but at what point has a teacher gone too far when it comes to monitoring students' speech in the classroom?
That is the debate that has been raised on Twitter by @hearts4zaniyahh, who posted a teacher's now-viral list of banned words and phrases that she deems as "inappropriate for an academic setting," including words like "Rizz," "Bet!" and "Motion."
At the top of the list, a brief paragraph states that the punishment for using the banned words/sayings is the student must write an essay explaining why they chose to use those words to express themselves in an academic setting.
The teacher goes on to write: "Please know that using slang in an academic setting can diminish your capability to become a successful writer. More often than not, the way you speak is the way you write. The gibberish some of you choose to use is improper English and sometimes inappropriate for an academic setting."
This teacher's viral list of banned words/sayings has garnered a ton of backlash online from many Black users who felt that the majority of the words on the list come from African American Vernacular English (AAVE), with one user writing: "Seems anti-black to me."
Another user agreed that the list was targeting AAVE, writing: "'The way you speak is the way you will write,' baby, I use slang/AAVE 98% of the time and I'm an award-winning journalist."
“The way you speak is the way you will write” baby I use “slang”/AAVE 98% of the time and I’m an award-winning journalist. https://t.co/lZgvs2Ofy3
A former English teacher that goes by @AH_Belonging called out the teacher for not "valuing the language of her students":
She’s on a power trip & and doesn’t value the language of her students. She is more concerned with compliance than learning about her students, because she does not value her students’ identities.
Another user completely disagreed, saying the list "makes total sense" because the teacher will have to correct the slang in their written classwork:
As a former English teacher, I taught students to translate African American English to “Standard” American English rather than punish them for their home language.
When you tell students that their language is wrong, you tell them that their cultures & identities are wrong.
This user felt that the list was simply the English teacher "doing her job":
This is an English teacher's memo. This is a writing class. If you think that this goes against black people sounds a lot like you think black people are the only ones not capable of writing in proper English. Do you think black people are not capable of writing proper English or…
And finally, this user expressed that they understood the teacher's intention, but still felt the list was problematic:
I get where they're trying to go with that but I don't agree with cutting out slang. Language is always evolving and there's more than one way to speak English. This just seems like power tripping and respectability politics to me 😐
What's your take on this teacher's banned word list? Is she over-stepping and targeting Black students for using AAVE? Or is she justified for trying to enforce formal English in an academic setting? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
