Some Students Really Don't Want Their Names Read on their Birthdays

 

*FREE TEMPLATES: Linked here!*

As we get to know our students and families, it's important to be mindful of the ways that we celebrate. Often, we celebrate birthdays, achievements, and milestones based on our own preferences, cultures, and experiences. We cannot assume that everyone has the same preferences!

Truth be told, I hated the panic of having a student walking into my classroom and announcing "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY" when I didn't have anything prepared or ready for them. So one summer, I spent hours on Pinterest looking at fun, inexpensive ideas of things that I could share with a student to celebrate their birthday. I ordered materials and prepped all of my students' "birthday" materials and stored them in a cabinet in my classroom. I plugged dates into my Google Calendar so that I could have the items ready to go on their desk when they walked into the room. 

In schools, many times we desire to acknowledge students publicly on their birthday. Often, we will read student names over the announcements in the morning. Sometimes, this can be a very welcome thing! Other times, though, it embarrasses students. Some students prefer to not have their name announced publicly. It is also incredibly important to note that many times, when we do this, we actually mispronounce our students' names on their special days. This happens often when the person reading the students' names don't have a relationship with the student! So instead of being a positive experience, it's humiliating- or even degrading. 

Think about it! Many of us are embarrassed when we go to a restaurant and a member of our group shares that it is our birthday. All of the sudden, we have a huge number of folks running to our table and shouting a song. We don't know where to look, what to do, or how to react. It launches us into a few minutes of PURE. AWKWARD. Although- some of us love this (or at least don't mind it!)! 

How do we avoid this? ASK! Ask the students & families about their preferences!

At the beginning of the year, I tend to ask a lot of getting-to-know-you questions. One of the questions we can all ask our students is how they prefer to acknowledge special days in their life. You can list birthdays/adoption days as an option. You may even share with students and families how you typically acknowledge birthdays/adoption days in your classroom. "I typically give students a prize from the prize box, kids can choose the class Brain Break activity, and we sing Happy Birthday or Las Mañanitas." Or, you can provide students with a checkbox of options! 

Here are two free templates that you may use to help you, your students, and families. Be sure to go to FILE and MAKE A COPY so that you can edit these to meet your needs! 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Language Proficiency Tool for Teachers

Image
 One of the most popular posts from my former blog (Innovative EL) was this- so I knew I had to get it back up and available for folks on my new blog!  This tool is based on WIDA performance descriptors. It is meant to serve as a starting place for educators who may not be as familiar with supports and scaffolds for multilingual learners. Each page features one proficiency level (printed twice: so page one has Level 1 at the top and also at the bottom for easy printing). Please note that these are based on general composite scores, and not on language domain scores. Ready to access the tool? Click here!  A deeper look into each individual students' scores (which I absolutely recommend providing to anyone who supports multilingual learners) can be found in the WIDA Name Charts (available on the WIDA website).   These charts are a fantastic resource that I'd recommend printing and giving to each classroom teacher, content teacher, social worker, psychologist, teaching assistant,
Read more

"I Need" Cards: Printables for Newcomers

Image
At the beginning of the school year, I always encourage folks to prep a ton of these in anticipation of newcomer students that will arrive throughout the school year. Please note that this is one example of a template. You can open the templates, go to FILE and MAKE A COPY so that you can customize these to better fit your needs! This sample template I have ready is for English/Spanish newcomers . I Need Cards - please note that this template has the same tool but presented a few different ways. These are a tool that I reference in my proficiency snapshot tool for classoom & content teachers (a scaffold I'd recommend for level 1 students). As students are beginning their language journeys in English, they may just feel comfortable raising their hand and pointing. As they grow in confidence and have had ample time to practice, they may say these sentences out loud. Here's a quick TikTok that walks through these. **I recently (9/10/23) used AI and digital translation resour
Read more

Reflections, Celebrations, & Goals

Image
 It's MAYYYY! This means a lot of different things to students and teachers. As many of us are starting to receive preliminary scores back from annual language assessments, I wanted to share a few templates that you may wish to use with students you serve! For any of these templates, they're all viewable. If you would like to EDIT any, please go to FILE & MAKE A COPY so you can tweak these to meet your needs!  Stems & Frames Goal Settin g: This doc has stems that are tied to Conditions Needed to learn, Goal Setting, and Action Steps. Celebrations & Reflections     This doc has stems for Celebrations, Maintenance, and Reflections Interpretive & Expressive Goals     This doc has stems and frames to set goals for interpretive & expressive language skills. Simple Template by Domain     This doc is a very simple template for a goal by domain. Last Year/This Year Simple Template by Domain     This doc looks like the one above, but it has a space for students to re
Read more