This week's readings included excerpts from “Teaching Multilingual Children” by Virginia Collier and “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez. The most important message that I took from both of these excerpts was the importance of recognizing and honoring the cultural identity of students. In Teaching Multilingual Children, Collier uses 7 guidelines to discuss how important a child’s native language and culture is for teaching and learning English as a second language. In the excerpt “Aria”, Rodriguez writes about the difficulties of assimilating into a new culture and learning a new language, as well as the sadness and loss that came from leaving behind his native culture to fit into a new one.
What’s in a name? Few things are more important and thought-provoking than choosing a name for your child. It is one of the most identifying pieces of information that your child will carry for the rest of their lives. In many cultures, names are chosen and combined to represent the melding of two families. Before the birth of my first child, I spent months searching/ discussing/debating with my husband over the name of our first daughter. Do we choose a family name? Something to honor our culture? A meaningful name from my childhood? A name that brings me joy? So many thoughts and ideas to consider, undoubtedly a huge task. Finally, you settle on the perfect name for your beloved child, a name that means a great deal to your family, one that both you and your child are proud of, and you move to a new country. With heartbreaking sadness and frustration, the name that you’ve chosen with such care, is now mispronounced, shortened, and unrecognizable. Worse, your child wants to fit in so badly, and/ or doesn’t have the English language skills to correct the mistake, that they allow others to “Americanize” their name. Talk about losing a piece of your cultural identity! This happens every day in the school I work in.
Although the readings for this week focused more on learning English as a second language, they kept bringing me back to the importance of saying our newcomer’s names correctly. I think about how good I feel when someone I’ve just met remembers my name at the end of our conversation. I feel seen, heard, accepted, and important. Imagine how amazing these students feel when we make the effort to learn their names, learn to pronounce them correctly, and then use them. In a school that has a high population of newcomers, the least I can do is make it my goal to learn and pronounce all the students’ names correctly.
A worthy watch: Getting it right; why pronouncing names correctly matters | Gerardo Ochoa |
Video: Your name is your crown, so wear it | Toluwanimi Obiwole
Hi Amanda, I enjoyed reading your post and loved your focus on names. Richard Rodriguez's comments on this as well and it reminded me of stories I had read about Hall of Fame outfielder Roberto Clemente, who objected to the media referring to him as "Bob" or "Bobby". And thank you for sharing your experiences and insights on name pronunciation. Even as an ESL teacher I sometimes do not put enough conscious effort to pronouncing students' names as their parents intended. It's so easy for instance to shorten the vowels of Spanish-speaking students' names or to pronounce names starting with the letter "j" with a /j/ sound. As you say it's important to honor their original names and perhaps even important to have conversations with students on how they would like their name to be pronounced and let them know that they should not feel pressured in our classrooms to Anglicize their names in order to fit in or to make it easier for others to pronounce them. Thank you for reminding us how important those home languages are to the student and to their families. Again, nice post!
ReplyDeleteAmanda, I agree completely with the value in ensuring we are pronouncing names correctly. I can personally relate. My name is Susana, but so very often I get, Sue, Suzanne or Susan. And I'll be honest, it does annoy me sometimes. Because my name pronounced with Portuguese accent sounds beautiful to me.
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