CNK: What do your students call you?

What do your students call you?

Oh, WOW, hi everyone. It’s such a beautiful day to start a day, right?

Well, I beg my pardon that for such a long time, I did not post anything. The days were just freaking out. Kidding. 

Well, I heard that time for internship is coming. It is when the student teachers or pre-service teachers go to school to practice their skills in teaching. Are you sure? Of course, Yes. Well, welcome to the jungle. Evil Smile. 

Hei, everyone. Please, don’t mine the angel and evil on my mind. They are just coming out and fighting each other. Students are not that bad, they are fun. You gotta be kidding.

Okay, today I want to share a little bit experience in my teaching internship. Hopefully, you can take a little good thing from these. 

This is about what do your students call you? Is it Miss/Mister/Mam or Teacher or else? This is actually not really big deal dealing with the teaching and learning process. However, this is one of ways to manage my classroom. Maybe, you have ever heard about “Building good rapport” among your students. In this case, ask the students to call me in a different name is my way in building good rapport. 

Pict Source

In the book "Classroom Management Techniques" by Jim Scrivener, Rapport here means the relationship among students and students or among you “the teacher” and the students. As a teachers, we need to have good relationship to our students. It is because we want them to listen to us and see us. One of ways to make the students listen to us is being their friends; being their friends inside or outside the classroom. Meaning that you are not merely talk about the lesson, you make jokes and ask about their condition. 

In fact, being really close to your students as a friend is not always good thing. Sometimes, they will just ignore you because they think that you are no more than their school friends; no longer teacher. So, when you want to be friend of your students, make sure that you have limitation or border. In the other words, you can be their friends, but you also need to keep your position as a teacher. 

Another true story from my facilitator in CAMP EPIC 3 is that, she was fine to be friend with her students. However, she did not want to share her ID for social media since she did not want to be friends with her students. She wants to keep her privacy and her stuffs secretly. But after she finished teaching in that school, she were fine to follow or add her students in social media. In sum, there is no exact way on how you can build good rapport to your students. You as a teacher decide this. 

Okay, those are above a little bit about rapport. Here, get back to my different name. Who are curious about this? Wooho. No one is excited, Sist. Keep your voice down. Oh, whatever. Yup, in building good rapport, I wanted my students to call me “Gomez”. God, like Selena Gomez? You must be kidding me! Hey, this is the fact. Calm down.  This is just pure my nickname in my real life. So, my purpose is that I want my students to be just like my friends. Of course, I did not tell them directly like “Hi everyone, I’am Hamidah but you must call me Gomez.”, oh. No. You need to have a little plan to make them do so. 

Pict Source

Here it is, in the first time I teach a new class in my internship, I take for 15 to 20 minutes to run this plan. I introduce them to my “International Class”. Do you have an idea about this? Hey, is that a title of Pitbul’s song? So international, So international. Hei, stop it. The writer needs to be focus. Yeah, this is just my trick to ask the students to call my nick name. 

•     I introduce them like, “Welcome to my International Class, a place where you should speak English and have your own International name.” Then, I ask them to have 3 to 5 minutes choosing and deciding their International name. I ask them to write on the name on small paper, then stick it on their clothes (to make me see and read their names if I forget)

•      Well, the next step is that “what is your International name?”. Before calling their names, I will firstly introduce my International name like “Hi everyone, my name is Hamidah Salam and my International name is Gomez.” (That is very short example, if you want to say more, it can be like; “Hi everyone, my name is Hamidah Salam and my International name is Gomez, yupp, that Gomez, the one with beautiful face and voice”. Then, your students leave the class.)

• Yeah, I call everybody and the students copy me in the way of introducing their International names. You will just smile and see what the students can show you. Well, my students were just so creative and unbelievable. They came out with very different and unique names. Some of them were fine, like the name of top singers, top footballers, top basketball players or maybe, top Korean actors, actresses, singers. Then, some of them came out with very unique and unpronounceable name like Drinkwater, Black…. (Russian name). That was very one and I like that. 

• So, in my attendance list, beside their real name, I also write their International names. In the next meeting, I will call their International names in my class, while they also call me “Gomez” as a return.

Well, those are not just for fun. From those “International Class”, I was able to know my students’ favorite people or their activities or dreams. As an example, there was my students with an International name “Kyri Irving”. I had no idea about that since I did not know him. Then, when I ask the student, “who is Kyri Irving?”, he explained that he was basketball players. Here, I can see that he loves basketball, or maybe, he is able to play basketball well. Those favorites can help me if I want to have short conversation to the students. This also can give the students the opportunity to practice their English. In my opinion, starting with the topic they love is a good thing. Another thing is that, from knowing the students’ favorite thing, you can decide and choose material (text, song, news) that deal with their favorite. It is aimed to make the students are engaged and interested in the learning process. 

Yup, don’t forget, in doing this, you also need to prepare yourself as a role model. Yes, of course, as a role model in pronouncing the name. As we know that, in different country or places, the way of pronouncing the alphabet is somehow different. So, prepare yourself to maybe know and practice your pronunciation. 

Well, as a conclusion, those are above my way of building good rapport to my students. To keep building good rapport, don’t forget to remember all your students’ name and their face. It looks like simple and small thing, but actually this is important. By memorizing the names and faces, the students will feel that you know them like “Oh, my teacher knows my name.” or “Wow, my teacher calls me.” They would be very sad if you forget or wrongly call their names. 

Wohoo~~~ this is the last from me, hopefully, you can have good rapport among your students. Oh, Come on. Stop talking and finish it soon. Everyone needs to go. Okay Okay, calm down. Just one more sentence.  Stay SWAG and Keep Going!!

Don't forget to check my other posts. Chiao :D

Read More »