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For many students, having a sub is ‘game on’ for play time and a first thrust of the game is to lie about your name.  It’s easy, the sub will not readily know and you may just get away with it. The goal is often very small- to just share with the other students an insider joke. There is rarely malicious intent like to get credit for someone else’s work or to not have to do an assignment.  But we subs are aware of the game and of course we are to not permit it. When we take attendance it has to legally, be accurate. 

Little kids are less likely to misrepresent their names and older students have tired of the game even.  But taking attendance is not without its hurdles anyway, particularly for the sub.

I have discovered a few hurdles we face and that I have erred at in various ways. Here are a few.

1. I can’t pronounce the name and don’t want to hurt feelings

Calgary is a city of over a million people and its economy has been doing very well of late, luring many newcomers from around the country and even around the world. It is not at all uncommon now to have in a classroom many foreign names.   I am reading the name out loud and suddenly have no clue how to say  Illyca, Siria, Parisa, Kershi. I try not to treat the name as odd or to stumble with it as it is is a problem. I try to say Jenese, Shu Yan, Wen Bo, Selenge, Yuliya, Taras, Eneida, Layuneh and Igor and then ask if I said it right if there seems to be some embarrassment.  I try to read Syus, Irfan, Rushon, Ali, Omar, Alija, Himanschu and Jummy correctly though a fellow sub friend of mine says that sometimes she just hands around the attendance list and has the kids check off their names.  The reason I would not do that though is I want to is to prevent people checking off lots of names each. So I think of the list as my travel to another land and I try to make that effort as I read Fareda, Yordanos, Shona, Idan, Munica, Tonia,

2. I am not sure if this name is for a boy or girl

Often I can guess. I would expect Marlboro is a boy. I am  not sure at first glance if Alie or Waverly will be male or female. I assume Cadence and Leela and Lacey will be girls but it is not clear if Erin or Codi or Riley or Regan  will be.  I suspect Levi will be male but may be wrong.   It turned out that Indiana was a boy, Billy was a girl, Sydny was a girl, Jordan was a girl, Taylor was a girl and Noah was, wait for it, a girl.

3. I am not sure if the person in front of me is  a boy or girl

It is surprising how often in normal conversation we actually mention gender. I am a big believer that gender does not matter at all and I treat the kids as equally as possible regardless. But in speech we often say ‘he’ or ‘she’ and it is amazing how often this becomes a problem if there is a confusion about gender.   If the little person in front of me has long hair in grade one I am  pretty sure most of the time but not quite always.  Nowadays there are some little boys with very long hair.  Little girls in elementary too may be getting a little stocky but not developed and if their hair is short it is sometimes hard to know gender too.  I have several times had to address what must be in my head very deeply seated assumptions even bias about gender when I take attendance some days. The key of course is to not hurt the child’s feelings or self-esteem.

Usually something helps. The name may be confusing but the moment you see the child you know. Or the child’s appearance may be confusing but the moment you hear the name you know. The perfect storm though is when the name and the appearance are both confusing.

There are many unisex names in our culture – Toby, Jody, Terry, Robin, Cody  to name a few.  The short forms of some names can seem like the other gender, Sam for Samantha, Joe for Josephine. The person in front of me may look female but the name may seem male so I often put a star on the paper to alert me to be careful.  I have taught Alex who was a girl, presumably Alexandra, Carmen who looked like a boy but was a girl.

4. I make a mistake reading the name because I missed a vital letter

When I am reading quickly I glance down at the name then up to see who answers. It is amazing how offended kids are when you get a name wrong and though for me this is a tiny error, for them it is huge and they can hardly believe that I’d get it wrong. They have lived with their name all their lives and been correctly addressed by it several million times so how could I get it wrong? So I have learned to go more slowly, to not read Adnan as Aidan, Andreas not Andrea, Brizney not Brittney, Brandon not Brendan, Kindra not Kendra, Toria not Torie, Jerad not Jerod.  Some mistakes are minor but if the error could create a gender mistake that can be very hurtful for a child. I one time misread Amie as Arnie. It is important to not misread Bryne as Bryan or Shyla as Shylo.

5. The spelling of the name surprises me and I have to make sure to not get it wrong

if I am rewriting the list to note exam scores. The fad of each generation to slightly alter traditional names shows up in very odd spellings for some names and of course this matters to the child. It’s Markus, not Marcus, Ferras not Ferris, Karai not Carey. And I have seen a huge range of spellings for some names- Britney, Brittney, Brittnay, Britni to name a few.  I pay really close attention to spelling now, practically obsessively when I record student marks because I know these little things matter to the kids. I have to note carefully if it’s Brianne, not Breanne, Rikki  not Ricky or Ricki, Caley  not Cayley or Kaili, Mollee not Molly, Hailey not Haley, Krystena, not Christina, Mitchel not Mitchell,
Denyz not Denise, Devyn not Devin, Rashelle not Rachelle..

6. There are several students in this class with similar names

Generationally names go in and out of fashion and oddly when you have a classroom you are looking at that birth year’s naming fad too.  I have taught classes that had in them Carla, Kayla, Kirsten, Kendra and Cara.  There are classes that have Chelsea, Courtney, Calandra and Chantelle, all very different people and all not wanting to be confused with each other.  I have had a class in grade four where the students included Alanna, Andrew, Andree, Andreas and Alexa.   The class may have in it Cassie, Katie, Kaitlin, and Cassie but what is even harder if two kids have the same name just spelled differently like Kelsey and Kelsie. It happens.

g. There are several students in this class with the same name.

I put a circle around the last name in a list if two students have the same first name, and let’s face it, this has always been  common through history. There are often two kids in the class named Justin or Jocelyn or Adam, depending on what names were common that year. In elementary school the teacher will name these students by their last letter too so the class has in it “Taylor B” and “Taylor S”. But you rarely are told that in the notes for it’s a minor detail the teacher did not really need to record.  I actually taught one senior high class where there were two girls of identical first and last names, a great rarity I suspect. I know that in the medical community when two patients of similar names are on the same ward there are starred alerts placed next to their names so staff is very very sure to differentiate them for medication and treatment. Hey, it matters in schools too.

h.The name is foreign and I am not sure if it should be said the way I’d guess it is in their culture or ours.

I am not sure if Theodore wants to be called the French way with Tayodoor or the English way Theo-dore. I am not sure if Jan is J-an or Yan.  With Spanish names I risk looking very silly if I misread Juan as John unless the student wants to be called John, which I doubt.I have over time learned how to say Ceilidh and Sian. I try to go with how the name is written to give  clue to how they want it said. but am open to correction.

i. The name on the list is the foreign name and the student has also an English nickname they actually use.  This is a  glitch that is common for some cultures where apparently the child’s real  name does not fit into our alphabet well, or where the family has just decided to anglicize the name. So on the list it may say Tong but the child is known as Tim. Dong may be Doug or Don. 

j. The name has another meaning and I must not register it.
I  have taught a student whose last name is Lust, one who last name is Snodgrass, and students named Pretty, Morningstar and Sky.  I have taught kids named Hussein, Adolph, Adlai , Mohamed,  Abdullah,and Quinn and many have names I associate with other people,  even my own children or grandchildren. I try to see each child independent of my associations. And I have also to remember that the child is not remotely interested in what associations I have with the name for they concern someone they do not know at all. 

One time a fellow teacher was referring to students and called one by mistake the name of a rock star. The child’s name was something like Brittney Steeves but he had said, verbal slip, Brittney Spears.

Many teachers find that when they have their own children they have real trouble picking a name. Their associations with names have pretty well spoiled a huge crop of options for them and it may be human nature but it’s hard to delink the name from those feelings.  In our case I let my husband choose our 4 kids’ first names. I picked the middle names, the ones they rarely use.

Sometimes after I’ve taken attendance and we are just having a lesson, discussion or taking turns at something, I have to indicate which student is to speak next. I tap on shoulder, point hopefully politely, or sometimes refer by my eyes to ‘you’ or ‘the boy behind you” etc.  The problem is that once in a very rare while, I am wrong about the gender.  One time I had referred to the next person to read as the next boy and the class tittered. In a quick save I glanced directly behind the person I had planned to the one even farther behind saying that was the person I meant. That one was for sure a boy. 

It is not so much a question of my saving face. I can handle that the kids see me err from time to time. It is however seriously a question of having the student save face. Little boys are devastated to be thought of as girls, and vice versa.  I am not sure why some parents let kids wear hairdos and clothes that make it confusing but I am sure that anyone who knows the kids well is not confused. It is only a problem for the sub but one I have to be careful to avoid.

One time I was administering grade 12 final exams, the big formal departmental exams for the province where all desks are 3 feet separated and kids sit in huge auditoriums for 3 hours straight under huge tension with escorted trips to the washroom and very high security of what they bring in.  We are also to check ID cards and ID numbers so the student has laid ID out on the desk as we teachers circulate. Ninety nine times out of a hundred there is no problem but there was a time when for me there was an oafish moment. The picture in the ID photo did not look like the one writing the exam.  Different hair color for starters. And then I realized on closer inspection that this person writing had the same face as in the photo, but had just dyed her hair.  A second time I noticed the person writing appeared very much to be male but the photo appeared very much to be female. I had to check with another teacher who knew them to see that this was indeed the correct person, just coiffed differently today.

Kids have an interesting link with their names too for few actually chose the name. They were told it and had to learn how to respond to it, say it, print it. In grade one I sometimes feel sorry for the kids struggling to print out Madelyn or Courtney when the person beside them only hast to learn to print Adam, or Joe, with way fewer letters. But they survive and the  name not only becomes them but suits them, ‘becomes’ them.  I have no theories about teacher associations with names because after a lot of years you’ve just had so many students that a name is a detail like  a number. But I find it touching that little kids are often so used to being known in a friendly informal way that when they write their tests, they may sign the paper by their nickname or just their first name.

They assume the teacher knows the rest.  We subs often do not however and I have not infrequently had to hold back tests till the end of the marking to figure out who “Billy’ is on the list or to compare handwriting of the two kids who both signed the paper “Adam”. 

When students get to secondary school they are in a much larger mix, often with a different set of 30 students every hour. It surprises me then that a few of the students still sign their exams by first name only, given the odds being high that someone else may also have that name.  For classroom teachers this is not a problem I suppose since they know which Krystal is which but for subs it is handy to know last names and have them written down. And yet it is kind of endearing that some kids still believe the world is friendly enough and caring enough that they can be recognized by first name alone.

When I read kids’ names I see the dreams parents had for them, and it’s kind of sweet.  There was a tall girl in one class whose name was “Blessing”.
Seeing her I could not help but imagine a family’s journey.