I have this policy against using actual student names on the blog. They are minors. And while I am telling stories of things that happened in class, I don't want to publicize who they are.
But this story is predicated on the name.
I hate calling out roll. There are many students who have "interesting" names. And I always manage to mangle them. I didn't massacre Makai's name too badly. I was in the ballpark.
I was closer than one teacher. The one teacher that made him cry. The one teacher who got "Monica" from "Makai".
"Monica? How do you even see Monica? There's no N in there. It's not even close."
Apparently, one of his elementary school teachers on the first day of school called Monica. And a couple of the other students in class remembered this. The boy shook his head.
I told him that I could see it happening. I had mangled so many names that I could totally see me doing something like that. But I understood his pain.
I dread being that pain. And yet, some days I just can't quite get it right...
