To think that teachers should be able to distinguish BAME students by name?

[maggiethecat]

I have 2 DDs at different secondary schools and we have recently been having animated table discussions arising from the BLM protests. Both girls separately experienced teachers repeatedly confusing their names with the handful of other BAME students in the class. 13 yo DD cannot understand why she is repeatedly confused with another BAME girl who is much taller than her and unlike DD wears glasses. Apparently the offending teachers do not have this memory deficit with white students in the class

In one class I had Lara, Mara, Maren, Luna, Leah, Annaliese, Amelie and Melanie. They all sat in a line.
I knew these girls really well, all their hobbies and things but I frequently just blurted out the wrong name or made a hash of saying the name.
They are all white, it's just the names were so similar!
I had a cohort of Korean students last year and had no problem with their names because they were all very different sounding.
It's the same when I get a bunch of Markus/ Marius/ Mattius/ Moritz.. and they always insist on sitting together!

My Y6 daughter (white, blond, blue eyed) is being taught by a different teacher than normal in her bubble of 8, she hasn't been called by her own name once by her new teacher, who is black. I don't think it is a race issue just a teacher getting mixed up and DD says she doesn't mind as teacher is lovely.

I get my kids names mixed up sometimes and I only have three so I can see how easy it is to get confused.

*LolaSmiles
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We aren't allowed photos on the seating plans any more (GDPR or something,,,)

I have an awful memory for names anyway, i really hope they tell us what's happening in September before the end of term - I usually start trying to learn names when I get my class lists in July!

It does get easier once you know some of the older ones already but I'm only 2 years in so still 'new' at this!

So if the white teachers are racist or at best unconsciously racist, what are we calling the BAME teachers who muddle white names up.

Obviously it wouldn’t work to call them racist but what us the word for these type of universal race led biases?

I am forever getting children mixed up.
There are two girls I am forever calling by the wrong name, and two boys.
The boys are both white and very good friends, so never apart - both are the same height and build with similar hair colour and cut. Both very common names.
The girls, well one is mixed race and has long curly light brown hair, very tall and willowy. The other is very short with short blond hair. Both very common names again. No idea why I call them the wrong name. I know which is which and it’s not like I’m mistaking one for the other, I’m just mixing up the names.

Leflic - 'unconscious bias around race' works, regardless of who we're talking about. We all have it, based on the society we exist in. No-one's saying she should be branded racist and punished for it (at least the OP certainly didn't give that impression), but the teacher should at least be made aware of it and given the opportunity to address it. It's not an either-or thing.

Always muddling up names. White girls, Indian boys. Gender and race irrelevant with me I am afraid. At school I was always called a sisters name rather then my own.

Thanks for all of the input since I was last on this thread (about 1am!). I find it difficult to understand how people like Theweepies think that I concluded that the teachers, without knowing more about them, were racist and advocated their punishment . My intention is to raise the situation with the head for her to ask her teachers to examine if this is happening and to take steps to address the problem. I think Zoya, upthread, has had this type of issue dealt with at her school which recognised it was a problem.
It's good to know that so many of you are not content to dismiss my daughter's concern as being trite and recognise that it's important to raise awareness. There is a problem, cross race effect, unconscious racial bias, whatever we call it, that can result in children feeling undervalued or ignored. And until it is recognised and owned it cannot be corrected.

White girls, Indian boys.

They were all born in India, were they?

Lancrelady80 - But you are BU to ignore all the posters giving you many examples of mix ups and saying that it just happens sometimes regardless of race, and saying we are all either blind, racist or apologist. It seems (rightly or not) that you came on here with the mindset that staff are institutionally racist towards BAME students either consciously or not. And you won't listen to others saying that may not be so. Not everything is about race.

Gulabjamoon - this must be a classic case of gaslighting! has she actually bothered to read my posts

Couple of things I want to point out from some of the posts - DD has a name that's common, in the vein of Emma or Lily, and is confused with girls with Asian sounding names. So not likely that it's the unfamiliar name problem in her case.

I can only go by DD's account that mis naming does not happen to white girls but it's interesting that she told me that the white girls usually exasperatedly correct the teachers when the BAME girls are misnamed. There are some like Theweepies who may doubt this account but I suspect that the girls all understand the bias that is on display. Hopefully their generation won't be shy of calling out and not tolerating racial bias.

When I worked in a school I found the 'different' names easier to remember. There were some kids that I'd always get mixed up, but they were ones with very similar names!

My parents gave me a traditional English name to prevent this and yet I was constantly mixed up with the other black or sometimes even Asian children.

Of course some white children were also mixed up but for the white children, they either looked alike (same hair colour, eye colour, make up style etc) or were very close friends.

Also, it went beyond mixing up names, I would be given the other black girl's work, told off when she did something wrong, my work I labelled with my own name would even sometimes have comments like good work "other girl's name". It really made me hate the subject that teacher taught.

Frlrlrubert I'd be lost without the photos at the start of the year.

One of my colleagues got amusingly uppity over GDPR and the various messages because technically 3 pieces of information (if I remember correctly) is too much information about someone. An exercise book has their name, several pieces of marked/graded work, their tutor group or class. Ergo, exercise books can't exist under GDPR.

maggiethecat I'd speak to the head of year about the situation. BAME or not, a teacher routinely getting your DC name wrong this late in the year won't be doing anything for your child's self esteem and it certainly is hindering the development of positive relationships. When you have the conversation you could mention that your DC has reported that it seems to disproportionately affect non-white students.

Lola, she hasn't been in school since lockdown but the situation was happening enough for her before then to be frustrated by it.

@maggiethecat - wouldn't it be great to print this whole thread out and your daughter use it as a learning project for the school! It wouldn't even have to be personal (to her) if she didnt want. It's great qualatitive research material, seriously.

My dd (white and blonde) thinks that teachers have one or two kids in the class that they can't get right. She has a teacher who she's had 3 years but still mixes her up with the Asian girl who sits next to her in class. I suspect it's because the teacher is used to saying their names together cos they are chatting and the other girls name comes first so it's the first one she says.

If it's just the Asian girls then this must annoy your girls. I remember teachers who wouldn't even try and pronounce "difficult" names correctly and ask the child to come up with a nickname that was easier to remember.

I am english and live in a small village in an english speaking country abroad. I am always getting people call me by the name of another english woman who lives locally. The chemist has even tried to give her my prescriptions. We don't look alike. So I think it is people homing in on one 'different' characteristic and ignoring others.

@maggiethecat I don’t dispute your daughters account and I think your course of action is sensible and is actually what I proposed if you read my initial post. That it is raised and see if this teacher muddles up student outside of your daughters class and which students - as your daughter only sees what happens in her class which is less than an hour of this teachers day. While I am not saying her experience is invalid if it came to light that this teacher also frequently confuses students of all ethnicities and is just terrible with names it’s not racism.

I was significantly derailed in this thread by a poster who insisted it was racism and that you didn’t need to even find out if the teacher was bad with names in general of investigate further. That your daughters experience is all that’s required to go after the teacher for racism. This I do not agree with especially as multiple teachers have posted on this thread saying they confuse children’s names all the time and I posted initially as my DH constantly muddles up our two neighbours who are nothing alike.

Maggie If she's not been in since lockdown then I'd be inclined to leave it for now then.
It would seem a bit much to have a situation that's bothered her for ages when she was in school, not say anything and then want to raise it as a race issue when they've not been in school.

It depends, if the teachers confuse Sarah and Danielle, who are both white, and also confuse Nicole and Carly who are both black then I’d say no. But if they ONLY confuse Nicole and Carly then yes.

I spend several years living and working in West Africa, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Ghana to be precise. I really struggled with names and telling people apart when I first arrived. The issue I had with names was pronunciation, I simply at first could not get my head around some sounds that were required, I spent months contorting my face trying to generate correctly the 'tsssssssk' sound that was part of some every day languages. I slowly got there and after several months I had no problems. Conversely, the local people I was working with really struggled with my very Irish name.

As for not telling some people apart at first, that was probably the most embarrassing thing. Unless someone was very tall, or had some very obvious distinguishing feature I really struggled. It is not uncommon having difficulty distinguishing between people of different racial groups. Again,several months after my arrival I could recognise what ethnic group or tribe someone was from how they physically looked, dressed, ritual scaring and other subtle signs that denoted some belonging to a group. I had long chat about this with my (black) work colleagues, and they freely admitted themselves that they really struggled to tell two white people of similar build and hair colour apart, we 'all looked the same' to them.

@Theweepies - There has been a lot of focus on whether the teacher is racist and in your case you unreasonably seem to feel that people are baying for the teacher's blood. The teacher may or not be racist, without knowing more about her behaviour, I cannot say. My dd has not otherwise complained about the teacher and therefore I have no reason to be requesting an investigation into her behaviour. The important point is that I would like her specifically (and the teachers generally) to be aware that the affected girls are likely to feel marginalised and not valued when this happens and understand why it is important to work at correcting the behaviour.

Each child should be identified correctly but it is all too easy to dismiss the concerns of BAME students and regard them as being too sensitive by citing that other students suffer the same problem. This is the same kind of dismissiveness that permeates other areas of life.

I totally understand where your opposing poster is coming from. For too long these types of concerns by BAME people have been trivialised and it is right, given this moment when people seem more willing to listen, to actually stop and listen. It is not necessary to hold enquiries into this teacher's possible memory failure in other classes. It is sufficient that it happens in this class, to this group of girls and while it is likely that there is no malicious intent the teacher should deal with it. People on here seem more concerned about the inference of the teacher being racist rather than her acknowledging that there is an issue and dealing with it.

Have you noted what a number of BAME people have said about their work place experiences and the carelessness in naming them correctly? I would like to think that if people understood how the offended party felt at being constantly mis identified (marginalised, ignored, not valued/taken seriously....) they would make the effort to correct their behaviour and it is only right that this awareness should begin in schools.

I am usually good with names, but I struggle with associations. I sometimes call siblings by each other's names for example, or even by their parent's names if I know the parents well (I teach in catchment). Hair colour and type is another, especially if kids with, for example red, curly hair sit in a similar place in the classroom, I sometimes mix names up. It's not about not bothering to learn names, it's about the fact that teaching is absolutely full of small interactions, and sometimes your brain just jumps to the wrong name.

I agree it can be a problem with BAME students in a mainly monocultural school. I think it's something teachers really need to guard against.

Maggiethecat, Your right the teacher should addresas the situation, but your saying "it is no necessery to hold enquiries inot the teachers possible memory failures in other classes.". Your right it is not necessery but your saying it,s because the gilrs were a non white background and if you lok into the teahers memory failures you may find it,s just a memory failure and not due to racism.

@MichaelCaine - there are 16 pages of this thread and this point has been raised quite a bit. Hair colour, eye colour, height, friendship group etc being reasons for confusing kids. In this case (which others on here have experience of) the common factor seems to be skin colour and this can be attributable to the cross race effect or even racism (although without knowing more about the teacher/her behaviour I cannot say this is the case).

I agree that particular attention should be paid when it happens to BAME students.