Amusing list of 'banned words' in Gen Alpha classroom hits millennials with major 'growing old' feels

As slang words continue to shape our everyday language, one high school teacher took a humorous approach to the trend with her Gen Alpha students. She brought a list of “banned” slang words to class, which has since gone viral online. According to a Reddit post by her adult son, u/signal-replacement85, the list wasn’t a strict rule but rather a lighthearted attempt to connect with her sophomores and get a glimpse into how they think.

“My mom teaches sophomores in high school, and she has this on her board,” the educator’s son wrote, sharing a picture of the slang words that were banned in the class. The list highlighted major pop culture references, featuring terms like "bruh," "bro," "lowkey," "finna," "rizz," "sigma" and others. The list was apparently created with the help of another teacher who teaches history at the undisclosed high school in Texas.

Calling it a lighthearted classroom joke, the teacher’s son added, “I told her it could be a lot worse.” He likely meant that, with the constant changes in everyday language due to external influences, they might have missed some other terminologies. Gen Alpha has grown enough to reach school age, and this development could serve as a catalyst in advancing this ongoing linguistic evolution. 

As seen in the teacher's list of banned terms, the most commonly used are “rizz” and “bruh,” with the former now included in the dictionary and the latter becoming a social media phenomenon. “On God” is a substitute for “I promise,” and “bussin” is a term used to describe good food. Other catchphrases like “low key” and “high key” are often mostly used by the younger generations to describe their mood. “Cap,” “finna,” “sigma,” and “baka” have also been included in the banned list, along with popular social media expressions like “love that for you” and “you doing too much.”

Meanwhile, the veteran educator’s son told Newsweek: "She's a high school sophomore teacher just trying to have fun with her students,” as opposed to “some people in the comments section who were thinking she was serious, but it was all a nice little joke in her classes.” Additionally, the teacher, who has 17 years of experience, did not take any strict action against her students for not following the guidelines. In fact, the entire banning act was aimed at eliciting laughter from the students rather than reprimanding them.

The so-called “banned” list of slang words has managed to garner around 55K upvotes, including hundreds of comments. u/WidmanstattenPattern wrote, “High school teacher here, one who had to teach his AP Chemistry students about sigma bonding today.” Adding to it, u/jmc286 remarked, “As a high school physics teacher, I taught net force equations this week and last week, which are expressed as ΣF\Sigma FΣF. The amount of chuckles this elicited was quite notable.” "I’m a bus driver for high school and a girl on the bus has rhotacism. She says, “bwuh” way too many times during the route," u/tequilavip shared.