Professional+Teaching+Standards

Knowing students’ names is important for meeting many aspects of the professional teaching standards. The main graduate teacher standards which are helped by knowing students’ names sit within the area of “Professional Practice” and are listed below with examples of why knowing names helps that particular standard.

**Effective communication and classroom discussion**
4.1.3 Listen to students and engage them in classroom discussion If a teacher were to ask “the boy in the back row by the window” for an opinion, he might feel that he’d been picked on. If the teacher were to say “What do you think about that John?” it sounds like the teacher really wants to know and John would be more willing to join in.

**Create an environment of respect and rapport**
5.1.1 Demonstrate a variety of strategies to develop rapport with all students. It is much easier to start developing a rapport with students once you know their names.

5.1.2 Establish supportive learning environments where students feel safe to risk full participation. As in 4.1.3, students will feel safer and more supported in answering questions, or offering opinion, when the teacher knows their name and shows that they are interested in what the student has to say.

**Establish a climate where learning is valued and students’ ideas are respected**
5.1.3 Demonstrate strategies to create a positive environment supporting student effort and learning How will a student believe that you value and respect their ideas if you don’t know who they are? Rewarding student effort verbally is tricky without knowing their names.

**Manage classroom activities smoothly and efficiently**
5.1.4 Provide clear directions for classroom activities and engage students in purposeful learning activities. To split a class into groups, or instruct certain students to collect equipment, is very hard when you don’t know who you’re talking to. It would take a lot longer to go around the class pointing to each student in turn to provide instructions, rather than being able to call out their names.