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

Without knowing the teacher, it's impossible to say if they are being racist or just useless with names. I have been teaching for over twenty years in different capacities - the one child whose name I got really stuck on was a (white, blond-haired) boy I taught one a week a couple of years ago, a white child whose name was say 'Luke' but I kept calling him 'David' - he looked exactly the same as a 'David' who had been in my very first class and was obviously imprinted on my memory! (We ended up making a joke of it and he would call himself 'not-David'. Not my finest hour but a genuine blank). He genuinely did look like a twin of the original 'David' - who must be about thirty now!

Name pronunciation is generally OK unless you are doing supply and reading the register I find - if a child has an unusual way of pronouncing a name you can guarantee you will cause offence by getting it wrong - this I find happens more with 'white' names than those from other origins - if in doubt I tend to stop and ask so these catch me out less. But you do get names wrong from time to time, just because of the huge number of children you teach, especially over decades.

So if a BAME teacher did this with white children would that be racist or a genuine mistake, or possibly the race effect?

I don't mix up my students except when I very occasionally call a student by the name of an older sibling who I've also taught.

The names I struggle most to pronounce are some of the Russian surnames which I practise over and over again but find really hard to get right. I don't consider myself racist because of this, however.

It may be unconscious bias but there also may be the unconscious bias of the OPs daughter who only notices when the teacher mixes her up with another student and doesn't notice when the teacher gets other students mixed up too - because it's natural to notice when it affects you, others not so much.
I went to a completely white school (rural area) and whilst some teachers were really good with names others were crap and I frequently got called Claire (not my name, or even close) by my PE teacher & Claire got my name, we didn't look alike but we're friends.
I'm working on a new team project at the moment and there is one lady whose name just doesn't stick in my head, I have frequently called her Nicky, she is not Nicky. I don't mean to and I've consciously tried to get it right as I manage with the rest of the team but for some reason my brain thinks Nicky when I see her. I always get it right when I write to her though.

dontdothis, I do find it uncomfortable you are claiming this is racial, when you are white, tbh. I really don't like it when people say it's this or that, when you don't really know.

I don’t think (well would hope not) it’s direct and intentional racism (I’m sure at times it is) gbut at times yes it will be unconscious racism

At times just a muddled teacher

But if its happening so often why not listen to those that experience this rather than trying to explain to them what you think they are experiencing

It’s time to listen and accept and it’s uncomfortable at times

I'm a teacher and tend to mix names up. More now than when I was a young teacher. I am aware of the kids I mix up and think hard before I address them to make sure I get the right name. I think they find it a little bit unnerving when I stare at them for a moment before speaking but better than being called the wrong name. It is easy to confuse kids regardless of their race but you can avoid it with a little effort. Other than this, does your daughter get on with this teacher? Is your daughter confident enough to have a quiet word with the teacher and tell her how she feels?

The names I struggle most to pronounce are some of the Russian surnames which I practise over and over again but find really hard to get right. I don't consider myself racist because of this, however

Acknowledging one's own shortcomings and working hard to counter them to treat foreign pupils with the same level of respect as everyone else isn't racist, no.

@bluevioletcrimsonsky

"MN never like to admit people are operating on racial bias, but it's pretty obvious when you're on the receiving end"

But I am not white, and so is my ds. And I don't think it's racial thing. As PP said, it does happen to white people too. If we take offence in everything, it just makes our lives even harder.

I'm not offended whatsoever and I never said people were white, but what explanation do people have for getting two BAME women's names mixed up whose names sound nothing alike, who have a huge age disparity and look completely different, when this person can get everyone else's names correct and doesn't mix them up? I have never heard our boss do it to anyone else at our team meetings, just to us two BAME women. Hardly rocket science, is it?

Have your daughters asked other pupils whether this is happening or has happened to them before assuming it’s a race issue? My DH cannot and I mean cannot get the names of our next door neighbours on either side right. He constantly muddles them up with each other (drives me nuts) one neighbour is 20 years younger than the other and blonde and slim the other is older with glasses and short dark hair and a extremely broad northern accent. There’s no reason for him to muddle them up on looks - he just seems to have confused himself when we moved in and now 3 years later can’t figure it out. If they were two black women who looked different he would be so upset if he was accused of racism.

It's not racist to make a mistake based on unconscious bias. It is everyday racism to not make the effort to correct that mistake.

I know I've done it as a lecturer but I am cringingly aware of it especially in the case of two female students of southeast Asian decent. I have made conscious effort to make sure I quickly got it fixed as its totally unacceptable and embarrassing for me and them.

@Useruseruserusee

I teach in an inner London school where the vast majority of pupils are BAME. None of us have this problem.

This is hardly the same is it. I'd have thought it much more likely that teachers would get BAME children confused when there are only a few of them, because they would, consciously or unconsciously, think of them as 'the black girls' (or whatever). That won't happen when that group is not a minority within the class.

I think it is racism. The fact that many of us mix up the names of own children doesn't change that. I do that and I only have two of them.

I also know that I can sometimes find it difficult to distinguish people of different ethnicities. It's not a simple race issue for me, because sex and age play a part too.

Personally, I find it hardest to distinguish between young men from a Chinese background. I find older people of either sex and any ethnicity easier, because their faces are more 'lived in'. Women are often easier because of more variety in hairstyles, but I can find it difficult to distinguish between a group of young white women with dyed blond hair and lots of make up.

In the OP's position I wouldn't complain to the head but I would encourage my daughter to challenge it politely every time, just by saying 'I'm x not y'. I'd leave it until after half term though, to give teachers a chance to learn all names in their class.

Theweepies the op’s daughter has noticed this doesn’t happen to white pupils in her class

She doesn’t need to ask further to clarify this she is there

How do your daughters know they are the only ones in their schools to be affected? They surely aren’t present in every classroom with every teacher during the day?

@enthusiasmisdisturbef How can she possibly ‘notice’ this? Has she been with every student in the school on every occasion they’ve interacted with a teacher on every day of the school year? She cannot know without asking other students whether this is a common issue or isolated to her.

Saharafordessert because the op’s daughters experiment this and witness this

Is that not enough ?

@maggiethecat are you suggesting that there is something special about BAME students or something that makes them stand out and therefore more memorable ? Or is it that teachers should make more of an effort to remember BAME students' names ?
It sounds a bit crazy as I used to teach and there was a point where I had masses of Clares and Claires and could not distinguish every single one of them . On a normal timetable I would have 350 girls a week - hard to remember every single name . The ones who were very good or very bad featured but the average just blurred.

I have a very poor memory for faces and names, to the extent that I have taught identical twins in separate classes for multiple years without noticing the fact they were twins. I do not recall my own teacher's names, nor many of the names of people I have been friends with at workplaces over the years. I think there is something in my brain that does not store this information correctly. I have to work very hard with things like revising the seating plan to get around my unbelievably poor name/face recognition and I can assure you there is no laziness or lack of care involved. Over the summer holidays, I forget a great many names and have to start almost from scratch in September. If I close my eyes, I struggle to picture my own children, though I can strangely recall specific pictures of them quite clearly.

At school, I mix up blonde girls, red heads, boys with the same haircut. I mix up teachers names as well. We don't have many black children in my school, but we had two black girls who were the same age, build and had very similar haircuts. I use a random boy girl seating plan with new classes and it unfortunately placed both of these girls in the same seat, at different times of the day. Unfortunately, I use seating plans to remember names almost exclusively, at least at first. I absolutely got their names mixed up. I felt horrendous, it was far worse because of the implication that I was racist for doing this. The students totally noticed and looked at me with disgust when I did it, otherwise I would probably not have noticed my error immediately.

I have ensured that I sit children from ethnic minorities in completely different areas of the classroom now (I live in a very white area). I have always spent additional time in learning BAME children's names to ensure that I do not make the mistakes I make with white children with them, because of the far worse optics. Perhaps this is a form of racism in itself, but it is my practical solution.

On a tangentially related note, the amount of effort it takes for me to differentiate the Louis's between the Loo-ees and the Lewises is simply insane.

I had a teacher at school who called me Katie for years and called Katie my name. So mixing up of names does happen to white pupils too.
However, I taught in a couple of schools with a lot of BAME children and there were a lot of teachers who regularly mixed up the names of those children and not the names of the white children.
There were also teachers who consistently mispronounced names. I find that worse than mixing up - mixing up can happen. It shouldn't but it does when teachers teach 300 different students in a week.
I don't really know why people consistently mispronounce names when they would hear the parents using the name pronounced correctly or other children using the name correctly. I'm not talking about minor mispronunciations but things that are way off. Minor mispronunciations are things like not being able to reproduce foreign language sounds exactly correctly - how you can tell I'm English even though I am fluent in another language.

An example was when I taught a child in year 3 and when she arrived in my class I pronounced her name correctly. She told me I was the first teacher who had pronounced her name properly. But all the children pronounced it correctly! I brought it up in a staff meeting and all but one of the teachers changed their pronunciation to the correct one. The headteacher continued to pronounce the name as she had been doing before which can only have been deliberate.

It's not just names being mixed up but the actual children too, seeing a BAME child and mixing them up with a completely different child. This is unacceptable.

Yep, totally agree. If it's muddling children with each other then it's lazy, inexcusable and awful. And there are examples of dreadful racist behaviour and attitudes that some people have experienced and these are shocking - I'm appalled at those.

If it's just "mislabelling" as in teacher knows all about the individuals but just sometimes for whatever reason makes a blip in attaching the name, that may be unconscious racism or may be just a momentary error. Not okay either and extra effort should be being made to sort it.

I teach 240 kids in 10 week blocks for an hour a week and then 200 of the kids change to another teacher. It’s unbelievably difficult to learn all of the names during that time, when I make my seating plan I let the kids pick a friend and then I tell them which table to sit on, I find that I know the majority of the names on the table but not which kid they belong to. Sometimes I will muddle the names with another class completely but they sit at the same table, my school is around 50/50 white and bame.
It’s nothing to do with race, it’s the amount of time I have, as well as names I’m also learning which kids can read, which kids can write, which kids have an SEN need that needs a different approach to what the rest of the class (I have 10 hours to get my head around it and implement strategies so they gain as much as the rest of the class), which kids can follow instructions, which kids need their behaviour managing and then actually teaching them! As much as I would like to spend the first few lessons leaning their names, they wouldn’t learn anywhere near as much as they need to if I did because somewhere else would have to give!

It’s noted in the classes attended

Why is it so difficult to accept their experience ? It’s not a one off an issue that has never been spoken about before many many (probably the majority) of BAME people will have experienced this at some point it’s often passed off as a joke as it’s so frequent

I think for me it would be the attitude of the teacher/boss who was doing this. If they were genuinely apologetic and you could see they were trying to get it right I would feel differently than I would if the person couldn’t care less.

I’m a teacher and although I am really good at learning and remembering names quickly, I do call children by the wrong name from time to time. I always feel more self conscious if I mix up two children of the same race or nationality because I wouldn’t want the child to feel how I expect the OP’s daughter must feel.

When I get names wrong, I always apologise to the child and explain, ‘oh silly Mrs Goat, I know you’re Jessica and not Sophia, I just called you that because Sophia was standing behind you doing something she shouldn’t be doing and I was giving her a stop doing that look whilst you were telling me about your missing tooth.’

I’m white and in high school was often mixed up with my friend in the class who had copied the same (quite dramatic) haircut as me. I used to find it really irritating because to me we looked incredibly different and in my head, the adults didn’t care enough to to distinguish between us. I imagine it’s an even worse feeling if you’re being mixed up on the basis of your skin colour.

My current class are very ethnically diverse, so when I do mix up children (pre lockdown), they often look nothing alike. I have mixed up a blonde boy and a boy from Ghana quite a few times. The Ghanaian boy told his mother in front of me at home time and she was very bemused, but the reason is because they both always race to sit right at my feet on the carpet, both wear cardigans and their names, although one very Ghanaian and one very Anglicised, rhyme.

And it’s not about numbers you teach or remembering every pupils name it’s about confusing pupils names because they are both black/Asian and so on

Why connect the two pupils just because they are black

I’m astounded that so many teachers are so defensive and lack such awareness.

I’ve done it myself at work or made assumptions it happens but that needs to be challenged