- I love hearing my name.
I love my name.
I don't care if that's vain,
'cause I spent a lot of time hating my name.
- [Narrator] Our names are powerful, literally.
Our brains have a unique reaction to the sound of our names,
sometimes even while sedated,
but many students have their names
mispronounced or disregarded every day in school.
So what impact does that have on their education?
And what can educators do?
- [Woman] My name is Adenis.
- Ajani. - Jamara.
- Javia.
- Nekbakht. - Alilia.
- Nadesh Visimungu.
- Raghdan.
- It's actually Nichbacht, not Nichbat, Nichbich, Nichbod.
(bright music)
- [Lilia] Two of the embarrassing
the moment when there's a pause
and you know it's 'cause of you.
- [Raghdan] It just goes so far
that sometimes it's even concerning.
Like, Rajakada.
- [Amara] I remember just being like, "Oh, that must be."
- Especially if they said David.
Everyone would laugh.
- [Ajani] I learned pretty quickly
that it was easier to just go by AJ,
which is something that I, quite honestly,
regret doing now.
- [Narrator] In 2012, researchers Doctor Rita Kohli
and Doctor Daniel Solorrzzano published a study called,
"Teachers, please learn our names!:
racial mioxcroaggressions and the K-12 classroom."
Here's Doctor Kohli.
- [Doctor Kohli] Schools are not a power-neutral space.
Teachers are an authority figure.
Teachers how power in those contexts.
And so, often, what they say goes.
Often, what they say is viewed as
the legitimate knowledge in the space.
- [Narrator] So it takes a lot
for a first grader to say to their teacher,
"Excuse me, you pronounced my name this way,
"but it's actually this way
"and it matters to me."
In fact, it takes a lot for a student of any age.
- The first time I ever tried to confront a professor
was actually last semester,
and it wasn't really a good experience.
- Some professors
just don't even ask.
They're just like, "Can I call you by this name?"
- She mispronounced my name
then asked me if she can call me something else.
- Regardless of whether we want
to be called a certain way or not,
it's an elder person
who has a PhD, and this, and that.
- Later on, I felt like it was my responsibility
to actually email and tell her that,
"Professor, I get that it's the first day of class,
"but you don't even have the right
"to ask me if you can call me "something else."
She later on apologized,
but it's only because we pushed the conversation forward.
- [Narrator] So, what is the big deal?
- If you can't understand my name
how can you understand me?
- [Narrator] A microaggression is a subtle form
of discrimination that can occur
intentionally or unintentionally,
and it can include telling a student
their name is too hard to say.
- We're centering a particular cultural vantage point
when we say things are difficult to pronounce,
because they're not really
difficult to pronounce inherently.
They're difficult to pronounce for us.
- [Narrator] Doctor Kohli's research underscores
that a person's name is their entrance point to the world.
So, what happens when those names are mispronounced,
disregarded, or even mocked?
- [Doctor Kohli] They start to feel
like their name was a burden,
they start to feel like they themselves were a burden,
and so they begin to withdraw sometimes
from participating socially and academically in schools.
- [Narrator] There's actually a term
for the unintended lessons kids learn in school.
Things that live between the lines, and in hallways,
and in roll call.
- [Al-Jawhara] There's a lot that we impart
onto our students or onto each other
that is complete subtext.
We don't say it out loud.
- [Narrator] Al-Jawhara Al-Thani is the head of educational
and community programs at Qatar Foundation.
Her work focuses on hidden curriculum
and how to fix it.
- [Al-Jawhara] I was in a class once,
a sixth grade all boys English class,
and it was like like 15 minutes quiet reading time.
I was sitting at the back of the class.
At one point, the boy puts his hand up
and asks the teacher, he's like,
"Sir, I have a question."
He goes, "Yeah?"
He goes, "Why are they all white?"
You think kids don't register?
It registers.
- [Narrator] There are decades worth of studies
examining how curriculum, sometimes the world over,
is primarily Euro-centric, male, and upper class
with names to match.
It registers.
But, the curriculum is not always something
that's up to a teacher themselves.
Learning names, on the other hand, is.
- You're sitting in the back row in a lecture
of 200 students meeting on your phone.
You're gonna get me calling you by name,
"What are you doing?"
- [Narrator] Professor Susan Dun has been teaching
at Northwestern University in Qatar for over a decade.
Her undergrad experience at a liberal arts college
with small classes influenced her decision
to memorize the names of every student in her classes,
wherever she teaches.
Even in the 200-person lectures.
- [Susan] For me, teaching is about a lot more
than just transmission of knowledge.
It's about the growth and development
of human beings,
and so I can be far more effective in doing that
if I have at least a recognition of
know the identity of people, know their names,
know a little bit of something about them.
Even in a large class.
That they know when they walk in and I say, "Hi,"
and use their name, that I really know who they are.
- When I hear someone say my name correctly,
I'd be like, "Oh my god.
"Finally this person!
"They know how to say my name!"
- I think in our increasingly globalized world
where we have people from all sorts of
walks of life interacting,
that the idea that we're gonna mispronounce
each other's names is pretty much a given.
And so the question and the challenge is
to do as much as we can to figure out
how to embrace each other,
which sometimes starts with simply
taking the time and effort to figure out
how to greet each other properly.
- Why we're not asking teachers
to be able to say everybody's name correctly
the second they walk through the door,
but I think there's a difference between
imposing that, "Oh, your name is hard to say,"
versus, "I haven't learned how to say a name like this yet,
"but I'm working on it because you're important,
"and your name is important, and I want to honor that
"in my classroom."
- [Narrator] What working on it looks like in practice
might be different for every educator.
What's key is allowing teachers the room
to be students in this too.
- If we flip this around
and we think about the expectation for students
to learn lots of new things all at the same time,
and we encourage them to fail,
and we encourage them to keep trying,
and we encourage them,
I think that vulnerability that we expect of students
should be the same expectation that we have of our teachers.
They aren't the holders of all knowledge.
We know that.
We know that they're human.
- [Davia] What would I tell my younger self?
I would tell her to be proud that you have a unique name.
- [Raghdan] The fact that you have such a unique name
doesn't make you stand out in a negative way,
but instead it makes you shine.
- Know that's like snithing, embarrassing.
- It's gonna take time, but you will understand
how important your name is actually,
and how your parents did not name you
just for the sake of naming someone.
- I would tell my younger self
to learn about the significance of your name
and call that teacher out when they mispronounce your name.
- I would probably just
take my younger self by the shoulders,
look him dead in the eye, and tell him, "Your name means
"He who wins the struggle, and it'll be
a prophesy if you let it be."