A 43-year old teacher in a Massachusetts high school recently went viral. James Callahan, the sociology teacher, may have been teaching for almost 15 years, but only recently began jolting down the creative terms he overheard his students use during class. Precisely, several terms encompassing the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) were tracked down as what Callahan believed to be the core language of generation Z students. Not only is the list extremely on point, but it also contains a well-matched description to every single term you can imagine. When Callahan shared the list with his students, one of the pupils took a photo and shared it on social media. The list has since gone viral with over 165k retweets since it was posted.
The Massachusetts teacher shared with BuzzFeed News: "I love learning the words that their generation comes up with — both the unique ones as well as the ones where they take an existing word and give it a completely different meaning." He further went onto telling a hilarious story about how he learned the slang meaning of "a snack," a term he thought linked to an actual snack food: "It wasn't until a month ago that I learned that an attractive person is a 'snack.' I'm laughing again just thinking about my students explaining it to me."
The list came to fruition after began Callahan asking his students to define a slang term every time they used it in class. Eventually, the teacher began writing them down and since compiled a comprehensive list. The latter includes words like "high key," "big mad" and "nunya." And since the tweet has went viral, the teacher has made it available to the public.