I’ve always been very careful to use the name a student wants me to use, even if I feel like I am talking to a dog – over the 18 years (yeah, I’m rubbing that in but for a reason) I’ve had two kids with dog names.
One had the same name as the dog I grew up with and wasn’t a normal name.
The other one is the name of a really famous beagle and it wasn’t Uno. But now I am off topic.
My family calls me Kathy still – and everyone called me Kathy until I hit middle school. In fact, I thought my given name – Kathleen – was a dirty word, since it was used only when I misbehaved.
This caused a real problem with my first grade teacher who called all students by their “roll name”. I went for weeks, seriously, very unhappy and wouldn’t explain it to anyone. I don’t remember it myself, but the family tells me. I’m really bad about not talking when I’m upset – and I’ve even taken that to the internet.
Anyway, I switched to Kathleen when I started going to large schools. I was one of 15 or so Kathy’s, but the only Kathleen and I liked that. In college, they called me Kat, which was cool too. My favorite nickname is Kath, and I actually know someone who went by Kath, which is why I have a lot of accounts with the username kathweaver.
But definitely on the internet, I’m kath or Kathleen – NEVER Kathy. So I was a bit surprised when I was called that on a blog post by a good friend. He’s fixed it already and it was all cool. But names are really important.
My real point though – as teachers, it really important we use the names the students want us to use – it helps build a good classroom relationship.
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