The stories of our names

do

not ever

be 

afraid to tell me

who you are.

i am going to find

out

eventually.

...

                   (Nayirrah Waheed)

Each year I begin my advisory by learning the stories of my student's names. Each student is assigned a day during which they spend the first few minutes of the morning describing to their classmates why their parents chose their name, where their last name originated, and any other meaningful elements they wish to share.

I love learning these stories. I love seeing who is proud of their name, who tells funny jokes or stories ("If I'd been I a boy..." or "My dad totally wanted to name me..."), and who loves their own name. I learn things about my students by the way they describe their names. I learn not just what they're called, but who they are.

And, truthfully, this is what the year's beginning is really about. It's the mutual dance of orientation through which a student and teacher go in developing a symbiotic relationship of trust and coexistence.

I edit papers, but they aren't graded.

"But do they count?" a student asks.

Of course they count, my child. Everything counts, doesn't it? But no, you won't earn a grade for this essay. This is about me learning how you write and you learning how I communicate. It's about me learning how I can work for you and you learning how you can work for me.

I assign homework and tests ( I call them "opportunities for success" to acknowledge that I understand the stress-inducing nature of that simple, mono-syllabic word: "test") but I remind them that I am the designer of both the assessment and the classes during which we review for it...that my job isn't to trick or bewilder...rather, my job is to simultaneously challenge and inspire, to empower and celebrate all that they know.

Today in World Cultures class my students and I watched a video about a culture in northeast India where children are given songs instead of names. It struck them as odd, but it was also so immediately beautiful. It made me wonder how those children's identities are formed, hearing every person they encounter in their village sing their name each day.

What if we approached our names, our identities, as being sung instead of spoken? Imagine how a child's sense of self would blossom if their parents created a song, inspired by the moment of love during which they first gaze at the child's face.

When the video finished, my students were sad. They made the connection that fewer and fewer children are being given songs for names today. They realized that, with westernization and modernization and globalization (terms they now know!!), the Americanized sense of manifest destiny, of rugged individualism, of upward mobility, and the pressure to thrive
and succeed
and do more
and be more
and...
and...
and...
all those things that my students are beginning to experience for themselves about "growing up" in America...

...those things are erasing the songs from children's identities.

I feel blessed to work at a school whose mission includes the aim that "...we value the imagination and curiosity of children and respect childhood as an integral part of life."

In the video, the narrator notes that "the songs [chosen for each child's name] have no meaning." We still sing songs here at my school. But more than any of the lyrics or traditions, I hope my students hear a melody in the ways they are known, the ways they identify themselves, and the ways they are valued here. The narrator, I think, was wrong: the songs that hum inside of children, and from the communities that love them, mean everything.