adventures in first day attendance

One of my personal top ten tips for teachers is:

Learn every student's name, how to say it and spell it, ASAP.  Learn the names of students in your school who are not in your class.  It will get you miles ahead with your students.

I work in a school in which many students have unique names with unique spellings and unique pronunciations.  Frequently, the names do not follow traditional grammar rules.  I have learned to unlearn, relearn, and be open to learning how to spell and pronounce my students' names.  I have also learned that knowing how to properly spell and pronounce names is a simple thing that makes students feel important, liked, and remembered once they have left the classroom.

In my experience, I have had to learn how to spell Brittany, Brittney, Brittani, Brittni all in the same class.  I have had a student with two apostrophes in her name and multiple students with an accent mark at the end.  The tricky part is reading the unique names on the first day of school.  To prevent mispronouncing names I read over my photo rosters a number of times before the first day, check with other teachers who may know how to pronounce certain names, and even check with the attendance secretary in order to avoid student embarrassment as well as my own.

I have had students become angry at my initial, incorrect, pronunciation.  Some students have simply responded to my pronunciation, never suggested it was wrong, and I have learned months later that I'd been saying it wrong the whole time.  I have also had a student whose name still remains a mystery to me.  She corrected my pronunciation on day one, I repeated what she said, she corrected me again, I repeated, she corrected me again, and I repeated again.  She gave up and said "close enough."  I really thought I was saying it exactly the way she was...

My adventures in linguistics have been just that, adventures.  As adventures go, sometimes they are successful and sometimes they end in a manner of defeat.   I have experienced both, but I always admit to my students that I am doing my best to learn every student's name and commit to being the first teacher my students have to learn all of the names on the roster.  Knowing your students' names makes classroom management easier, makes grading easier, and makes building rapport infinitely easier.  Learning names will get you miles ahead with your students.