Super shitty, my friend. I’m sorry. I lost my teaching job when I came out too, but I worked for a sort of alternative Christian high school/middle school with like 30 students max so I kinda knew mine was coming.

Good for you, but that is your choice.

It’s actually policy at my institution. When students have preferred names, they are recorded. Teachers are asked to us them, and if they make the child upset by not using them repeatedly they get in trouble. If the child does not want the parents to know about their name change, they are not told. This protects trans students.

You make a lot of wrong assumptions.

What I’m saying is that legal names are legal for a reason. If you don’t like your legal name, change it. If you can’t, well, that’s a whole nother problem.

Can a child do that yet? If no, expecting them to do so denies them freedom of identity and expression. Abusing children used to be ‘legal’. People disagreed, even though it was ‘legal’. It was made more and more ‘illegal’. In Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development, I seem to be at the post-conventional stage (reasoning based on personal ethics) when responding to tasks designed to identify these stages. Where are you in those stages? Your strict adherence to legal records over human expression seems to give a clue.

Your imagination is wild.

Your lack of imagination is boring, and leads you to think and express yourself in a mechanical, anti-human way.

Bigotry doesn’t make an exception wether it is showcased in an official capacity/private or personal capacity. As you demonstrated with your comment.

You believe in objective morality, don’t you?

then little Timmy can go legally change his name to Tim.

How I ‘legally changed’ my name:

1. I told everyone that knew me by my old name what my new name was.

2. This involved sending letters to places of business I had an account with, e.g. bank and utilities.

Do you have to do that for a nickname?

3. No.

So, if Timmy says “I prefer Tim”, is that going against a ‘contract’? Doesn’t seem so.

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Im so glad you have insight on this. You see, I get a lot of international students in my class and I’ve had to deal with this type of thing a lot. Maybe you can help me out.

Let’s say I have a polish student whose name is “Żółć”, which is somewhat difficult to pronounce in English. After a few failed attempts, he just tells me he prefers “George” because it sounds close enough, he likes that it sounds like English, and is easier for everyone to pronounce. His English-speaking friends call him George as well.

Do I…

1. Go on and call him George since he prefers it, everybody knows him as that, and move on with the lesson?
2. Call his parents to request that they have his name legally changed to George so I can use it in the classroom, then butcher his actual name in front of his friends until they do?
3. Assign him a nick name (not a pet name, because that might be a little weird) “Polish kid” or “Student number 8” so I can call him something easy, be technically correct, and disregard his preferred, yet technically incorrect name?

I could really use some help with this since it happens all the time. Please let me know what you think.

So the name on your birth certificate is “lath”?

Do you realize how disconnected from reality you sound? Kids’ legal names aren’t as important as you think they are. Honestly, neither are adults’ legal names.

If someone comes up to you (outside of a school) and says their name is Will, do you say you’re only going to call them William? If yes, wow, you are so weird. If not, why does it matter inside of a school and not outside?

As an official, fraternizing individually only creates problems overall.

You appear to be imagining that using a nickname will turn into sleepovers at some point.

Just invent robots to teach children. Then they can be ‘objective’ in exactly the way you prefer, as you can train them up from the facts as you see them… without you realising that your ‘objectivity’ is in fact a personal preference.

What is your government name so I don’t accidentally call you the wrong thing?

A good chunk of a teacher’s job is to build appropriate relationships with your students. Students don’t want to learn from someone they dislike, and you have significantly better learning outcomes when the students feel safe, accepted, and cared about. Appropriate nicknames, like Tim for Timothy, help in that relationship building. I don’t know what your position is at that school, but Wisconsin teachers are literally taught stuff like this in college so that we know how to manage a classroom with the best learning outcomes and the fewest number of behavioral disruptions. We are taught how to keep those relationships appropriate and healthy, although much of that is just common sense.

Yes, you should separate work and home life for both your own sanity and for modeling good boundaries and work-life balance. But that doesn’t mean you have to drop your decency at the door. At the end of the day, the goal is learning, and not being a douche is one of the easiest ways to get to that goal.

Extracurricular activities are an extension of these same principles, not an exception or something with a different set of standards. I think you might be mixing up appropriate relationship building with inappropriate fraternizing, and I’m concerned that you are having difficulty finding that line.

As a fucking educator, you should be connecting to every single student in your classroom on a personal level, or you’re unredeemably shit at your job.

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The name registered is the one that should be used.

Hi, I’m a teacher.

The names I use are the ones that make the students comfortable. Trans student with parents who don’t accept it? Student is more important.

If I change your name in the school system to “Cunty McNonce” - and, obviously, I have access - would it be okay to use that name? After all, that’s the record of official documents that the school uses to confirm a name.

What you’re actually saying is that the personal desires of parents to control their children are more important than anything else. In human society, there’s generally some level of personal desire getting in the way: eliding that is a means to pretend that those who have power are more ethical than they really are.

Confirmation bias. Got it

Bullshit

Every teacher, instructor, professor I’ve had from kindergarten through graduate school across three states and as many decades has asked every class I’ve been in if a student has a preferred name over the name they’re officially registered with. Every one made a note in their register to call them as such. Refusing to call a student by their preferred name is a new level of pettiness at best and discrimination at worst. A teacher’s job is to make their classroom a place where children feel welcome and safe. Regardless of whatever their personal views are. So, I say with all sincerity and with no irony, fuck your feelings.

And guess what happened to them. Parents complained of favouritism and the grades they gave were questioned.

Was this in the educational institutions of North Korea?

Are you an annoying PTA parent that tried to ban Harry Potter? That would explain so much

I don’t think he is capable of learning, sadly.

Nah, actually i am just trolling

We are who we pretend to be. If you’re so good at “pretending” to be a bigoted idiot that no one can tell, what’s the difference between that and actually being a bigoted idiot?

Aaaaand now I wonder if you (and your friend) are experiencing a wicked case of DID. Please consult your totally real psychologist on that for more info on how to reign in your diverging personalities. (Wouldn’t wanna have to get your lawyer involved, you know, like if your online troll personality state starts wreaking legal havoc in real life. Who would be to blame? You?! Or you?!!?!)

Serious question. And making the forgiving assumption your “friend” wasn’t just a cover story. This troll business you opened up here, do you you actually believe and stand behind what you profess?

Sounds fair to me, Mr. Poopyface.

It’s not. The point is: you don’t get to decide what you call others. Especially when they’ve already corrected you and you know better. And it’s Miss btw, by your own logic.

Ha ha ‘burnt peter’.