Yesterday marked the first day of Summer Academy and my first official day of teaching. Suprisingly I wasnt nervous at all. In fact, I was more nervous about the fact that I wasnt nervous for fear that it would hit me in the middle of my lesson.
I am working with four other teachers and each of us is in charge of teaching one lesson a day to a group of 2nd and 3rd graders. While one person is teaching the others are in the back observing and at the end of the day we get together for a debriefing.
During the debriefing we all share things we thought the others did well and things that we think they can approve on. For the most part, my lesson went pretty well. However, there was one very apparent thing that the entire group felt I needed to work on..
Stop using the word “y’all”.
As the only Texan here I am constantly made fun of for my “accent” (even though I have no such thing outside my use of y’all and fixin to…ok so fixin to is pretty bad but y’all is just convenient!)
This task seems impossible. How do you train a southerner to stop saying y’all when its become a term so embedded in our brain it could be considered innate?!
I would love nothing more than for my precious honduran babies to learn the word y’all, its the only thing I proudly claim from Texas (other than being from Austin of course).
But thats not what Im here for I suppose. I can convert the teachers all i want (and some I have) but its only fair to teach the kids “proper english.” So I will bite the bullet and do just that. No more y’all during class.
I’ve asked the other teachers to help me with this little habit of mine and they have taken to the challenge well. They often speak to me with the most horrid country-bumpkin accents and even put the word ‘all’ in front of the word “y’all” to make it sound even more ridiculous.
I would just like to point out that I have never said “all y’all” in my entire life..that doesnt even make sense.
