A Teaching Perk Not in My Contract

The role of names in my sense of belonging at school

It’s day three of my nature and eco-poetry unit with Creative Writing and I’m headed up to the second floor hefting a box overflowing with poetry books and issues of Orion and Ecotone. The rise and fall of students’ laughter and shouts fills the halls as they bustle to their next class.

As I cross the hall between the library and stairwell, one student waves, “Hi, Ms. DeGroat” as they rush by. More students nod acknowledgements as I ascend the stairs; I echo their gestures. Later, when class wraps up, I repack my box to a chorus of “Thanks, Ms. DeGroat,” as students swing their backpacks onto their shoulders. When I approach the library entrance, a student who’d just walked past backs up to open a door for me. “Thanks, Ben,” I smile.

Names.

There’s something about someone knowing your name. About the sound of it finding your ear across a classroom, hallway, or field. I can’t claim that Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School (MLWGS) is like that bar in the 1980s sitcom Cheers, “where everybody knows your name,” but when schools are places somebody does, especially several somebodies, it fosters a sense of belonging—not just for students, but for teachers.

This is one factor that numerical finish lines like 30 years of service, Medicare eligibility at 65, or full Social Security age miss for educators. Hearing your name several times a day in the positive ways many of us do is special—and hard to walk away from.

It hasn’t been like this in my other jobs.

When I wore my first name pinned to my chest in large letters at Arby’s, the YMCA, a luggage shop, and a shoe store, it sometimes led customers to thank or compliment me by name, which felt nice. But they would also wield my name as part of a command—like a parent might. Even worse were the times I felt my name bruised as someone disgruntled or just plain mean sneered it like a schoolyard bully might.

Names are tender, especially first names. Think back to when a teacher on the first day of school, or a substitute teacher, called roll. Did you hold your breath to see if they’d say yours correctly? Wince, sigh, or slump when they mispronounced it? Glow when they got it right?

It’s one thing to have fidgeted through teachers garbling DeGroat as DeGroot, DeGrout, or DeGoat—that last one accompanied by the snickers of kids around me—but nearly all of them said Wendy correctly, whether they knew it from a previous student, friend, or relative, or from Wendy in Peter Pan or Casper the Friendly Ghost. Hearing someone pronounce your name properly and with genuine kindness is an affirmation. One regret I have about names at school is not yet learning to sign our ASL teacher’s name even though I keep telling myself I will.

A physics teacher who retired from MLWGS a few years ago after 40 years of service, Harold Houghton, exemplified attention to names as an aspect of welcoming. The week before school started, he printed his class rosters with students’ names and photos and carried them with him, studying them several times a day. On the first day of school, he greeted each student by name when they entered his class.

These days, some employers issue I.D. cards with names and photos to regulate building access. I had one at an assisted living home where I worked. When employees wear these, exchanges in which people invoke the worker’s name in both positive and negative contexts can occur. Unpleasant ones probably happen more often at places like hospitals where staff interact with a broad cross-section of the public, many of whom are distraught when they arrive.

There are also public-facing professions like law enforcement in which the officer’s name engraved on their badge omits the first name, sometimes replacing it with an initial. This practice facilitates greater respect by revealing only the person’s last name as a potential form of address.

If we’re lucky, even in schools where we don’t wear name tags or I.D. cards, educators receive the respect of students addressing us by last name and the sunshine of hearing our name spoken mostly in greeting, gratitude, or kindness. This can even extend to the local ice cream shop or grocery store when we run into students working or shopping there. Although on this point, I’ll also admit my appreciation for self-checkout which now rescues both students and teachers from the awkwardness that would descend when a student staffing the only open register had to ring up a teacher’s toilet paper or tampons. Knowing their teacher’s favorite ice cream flavor might be cool, but there are some things students would rather not think about.

Other than teaching and coaching, there aren’t many professions where your name has the potential to be such a favorable part of even the most mundane workday.

Watching the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, I wondered about the relationship star athletes must develop with their names. Not only do most wear their last names on their jerseys and hear their name announced multiple times during a game, but they also see fans hoisting up signs proclaiming “Cardoso Can Do It All!” or “I Want to Be Like Clark!”, hear them chant their names, and stand for an hour or more after the buzzer signing their name on balls, shirts, caps, and programs for adoring fans.

At times it must feel like everybody knows their name, and in other moments as if their name doesn’t belong just to them anymore. Imagine how quiet the air around them must sound after they retire from their sport, especially in those first few months out of the limelight.

I get to sign my name too—on recommendations for college or scholarship applications. But even though there’s no one writing Ms. DeGroat on posterboards with markers and glitter or chanting it from the bleachers, I anticipate missing the consistency with which I feel seen at school. The pandemic’s abrupt shift from face-to-face teaching and hallway moments to Zoom provided a glimpse of what that absence will feel like.

Next week is one of my favorites of the school year: Teacher Appreciation Week. At MLWGS, students in the National Honor Society leave handwritten thank-you cards in every faculty member’s mailbox. A few years ago, one such card reframed my old memories of classmates snickering when a teacher called out DeGoat instead of DeGroat. In their note, a student wrote that I was the G.O.A.T. (an abbreviation for Greatest Of All Time that’s pronounced like the animal rather than as an acronym)—and went on to say why. Hyperbole? True. Yet I still felt like the Grinch when his heart grew.

Some of the cards currently in my smile file.

For school days when I feel discouraged, I save cards like this in a “smile file,” a manila folder with a smiley face on its tab that I keep in the file organizer on my desk. Lately, it’s often news of another law targeting librarians for checking out books about queer characters that leads me to reach for it. In those moments, the tug to retire intensifies because it would give me more time to fight against such legislation.

When I retire from school, where might I hear my name from someone other than family or close friends? Sure, there are chatbots or other AI-enhanced interfaces that could greet me, answer my questions, or even act as a thinking partner (a topic for another post). But what if I want to hear it spoken warmly by a real human being in the same physical space as me? Since alcohol is expensive and I’m a morning person, a bar like Cheers is not the answer.

Our church will be one of those places. But where else? As I write this post, I’m sitting in a cozy indie coffee shop a couple miles from our house. One morning a week, I treat myself to a latte here before school, arriving when they open so I can write for about 40 minutes while I sip. My pen drifts to a stop. Coffee shops across the U.S are one of the few places—whether you drop in every day or only once—where you can slip from anonymity for a minute and hear, instead of “Order #8!”, your name.

“Wendy! Your London Fog is ready,” the barista calls. I look up to see Sam sliding my travel mug to the front of the counter, her pink and orange hair aglow under the banner above the espresso machine that says “HUMAN” in textbook-tall rainbow and pride-flag letters. A grin flickers as I set down my pen. Maybe coming here more often is another part of the solution.

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Here’s a poem for your pocket until the next post: “On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

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