My Best Hack for Memorizing Student Names
Matching student names with faces isn’t easy, but it’s important. Google Classroom can help.
I will teach 219 middle school students this year. It’s the highest number I’ve ever taught.
I’m also a vice-principal for our small middle school, which means that culture has to be my jam. School is fundamentally a people business, and relationships matter. A lot.
Maslow before Bloom was a clever phrase that came out of the pandemic. It was a poignant reminder to all of us: before kids can learn, think creatively, and self-actualize, the fundamental needs of humanity must be taken care of.
Students can’t learn about linear equations if they don’t feel safe, known, loved, and appreciated for who they are. That’s just how it goes.
And here’s the thing: for me to have a chance at knowing, loving, and appreciating each of my 219 students in any kind of meaningful way, I need to know their names.
The trouble with names
Learning the names of a lot of students isn’t easy, and the pandemic makes it even harder.
I only see some of my students once a week, and many of them only for a 10-week window in the year (for a technology elective).
Some students are quiet and introverted, preferring to keep interactions low-key or nonexistent. Some students seem to resemble others, at least until I get to know them better. All are behind masks, meaning there’s not much face that meets the eye.
It’s a challenge.
My best solution: icebreaker questions + the Google Classroom student selector
This year, I’ve come up with something that helps me learn student names. I’m not yet fully proficient with all 219 of my students, but I’m getting close.
Here’s what I do.
When I come into a classroom, the first thing I do is pull up a list of sharing circle questions intended to build community. These questions have no curricular objective. They simply break the ice and allow me to get to know kids.
The list includes questions like:
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Each visit, I select a new and interesting question from the list and project it on the screen in large font or high zoom. Then I pull out my phone.
I open the relevant class in my Google Classroom app. I select People at bottom right, then the student selector at top right. Up come student names from the class.
As the names appear, one after the other, I get a chance to engage with each student. To say his or her name at least a couple of times. To make friendly eye contact. To hear a crumb of information that gives me a glimpse of insight into their personality, and possibly a nugget that I can use to reconnect with them in the future.
I don’t always get through the whole class. Depending on the question and the length of answers, I may only aim for 10 students.
It’s a practice that only takes a few minutes, but each time I do it, I’m making progress. I’m learning student names, I’m cementing my memorization, and I’m getting to know each student just a little bit better.
Why not just go around the room?
Yes, I could just project my questions and then work around the classroom in some logical fashion. But to reap the rewards of name memorization, I’d have to ask students to say their names for me each time.
Kids aren’t big fans of that. And if I’m still requiring them to say their names by my third visit to the class, it makes it embarrassingly clear that I haven’t memorized them yet.
I could also read student names right off the class roster. But that’s boring, predictable, and arbitrary. Instead of ten randomized student names, I’m calling on ten students that I’ve hand-picked. That just hits differently.
Cementing: interacting by name at every opportunity
Once this hack is in motion, the memorization doesn’t stop there. These recently memorized names will start leaking from this 43-year-old brain quickly if I don’t put them to work in a hurry.
And that’s the fun part. I say hi at the front door in the mornings. Bye after the final bell in the afternoons. I chat students up while they’re eating lunches. Connect by name in the halls.
As Dale Carnegie once said, “A person’s name is to that person, the sweetest, most important sound in any language.”
And so it is. If we want to build meaningful culture, community, and relationships in our schools, we need to learn our students’ names.
This is one way to do it.
Executive Visionary | Strategic Planner | Collaborative Leader
3 年Connection & relationships are key! Using names frequently is important (not only to learn the names) but for the students to know that they are known.