What's That Name? (Continued)

As a class we'll take the pledge tomorrow. 

I passed the woman in the hall at least ten times last week and I could not remember her name. I have worked alongside this woman for about ten years. I was both embarrassed and moved to action. So today I looked up her name and will work to use it each time I see her.

We want students to do the same with each other and with staff. We want to foster respectful use of each others' names as we work with one another. That's why we're creating a grid for students with photos and names to help them know the many, many staff members including teachers, custodians, paraeducators, administrative assistants, cafeteria workers, after school staff, playground monitors, and more who work with them each week to help them learn, solve problems, and have a great experience at school.

As I wrote in an earlier post, The Saturday Night Live skit, "What's That Name?," illustrates how easy it is for us to not know or forget names of those who work with us and serve us each day.

So tomorrow as we continue to co-construct our class community, we'll do the following:

Listen to this song:

Then I'll ask why they think a whole song was written about names? Why are names important, and why would we want to use people's names correctly. After that we'll take a look at the name website listed above and take the pledge. Then we'll take a look at the teacher name grid and work on our own name video. Later we'll likely practice using each others names and writing them down too.