Back to School: Getting to Know Your Students’ Names
We are excited to feature an original blog written by our team member Dr. Kelsey Nussbaum, Assistant Professor of Music Education at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music.
That's right, as our social media feeds and Amazon Wishlists can confirm, it is back-to-school time. Whether you’re starting a brand new job or returning to your school for another year of teaching, you have an opportunity to make sure you are recognizing your students as they wish to be seen and cultivate a community in your classroom. Even if you have mostly returning students, remember that adolescence is a time of change and you may have students who wish to be known differently this school year.
Study Your Rosters Take the time to read through your rosters and look into student information (including pictures) that you may be provided with through your school’s system. Make notes of names you think it will take you longer to become comfortable saying and look for pronunciation help online before the first day of classes. Export your rosters to a preferred format so that you already have a space set up to take notes.
Develop a Welcome Form Provide students an opportunity for them to introduce themselves in a personalized and private manner. Using either a digital platform or physical form, include basic information like pronouns, preferred names, birthday, instrument, etc. (making more personal responses optional). Avoid using terms like “Real name” and instead put “Name seen on Roster.” Rather than making this form exhaustive, you can treat this more as a “Orchestra ID Card” and then take other opportunities throughout the first few weeks to get to know more about them as a student and human.
Record Your Students’ Names On the first day of class, ask your students to all introduce themselves with their full preferred name. You can choose to have them also include a fun fact piece of information (favorite color, song that is their current “anthem”, etc.) if that would be helpful to you in developing an association. Let your students know that you are going to audio record them doing this so you can learn their names more quickly. By doing this, you are taking the burden off the students whose names you may struggle to pronounce and not having to single any one student out to hear their name multiple times.
Provide Students Multiple Opportunities to Introduce Themselves Within the first few days of class, embed opportunities for students to introduce themselves both to you and their peers. Develop activities where students have the opportunity to interact with peers within and outside of their sections and practice using each other’s names.
Other Reminders
Never tell a student that they have a weird name or ask if they have an “easier” name that you can use. Always correct yourself or acknowledge when you realize you have mispronounced a name or misgendered a student. You do not need to dwell on it, but it is important to model to your students that it is OK to make a mistake and that you learn from your mistakes.
Credits: I would like to thank Lorelei Batisla-Ong (Baldwin Wallace University and Decolonizing the Music Room) for teaching about the importance of not placing the burden on students to educate you on their own name. We have technology that can help us do this work, because it is our lack of familiarity that needs remediation and not the students’ “hard” name that needs correcting. Also, thanks to Sundas Mohi-Truong (ASTA Board Member) for being an advocate on centering student relationships and who shared many of these ideas for getting to know your students at our DEI Roundtable session at the 2023 National Conference.
💡 Disclaimer: I am learning too and hope this can serve as a springboard for additional ideas any of you may have on this topic. If you read something in this article that you disagree with or think is problematic, please send me an email at knuss@arizona.edu.
