Supportive Classroom Practices

Attendance

For reasons ranging from student safety to program requirements, all K–12 and many postsecondary teachers must confirm whether enrolled students are present. Teachers access a centrally produced class list, whether downloaded on their own from an online system or received as hard copy from an administrator. Class lists are generally populated from government-issued identification such as a birth certificate, which states a student’s legal name. On the first day of school or at the first class meeting, a teacher commonly reads the class list aloud or (in postsecondary) circulates the class list and asks students to append their signature or initials next to their name. These practices publicize the (often legal) name appearing in each student’s institutional record. The assumption here is that a student would like to be publicly known by that name or, moreover, that publicizing it will not place a student at risk.

This assumption does not hold true for many transgender-spectrum students, who can be outed if their legal name does not align with others’ interpretation of their gender expression and/or visible body. A student’s birth-assigned legal name may be completely irrelevant to who they are today, such that being introduced to peers with this name is both invalidating and requires self-advocacy to ensure that others do not use the “real” (legal) name with which the student was initially, erroneously identified. While many North American jurisdictions allow legal name change for gender identity reasons, this can be costly and complicated, and the need to present one’s self in person to apply for a name change on gender identity grounds can be a barrier if a transgender person believes they will experience discrimination or violence due to the outing this process requires. Transgender and/or nonbinary children or youth likely require parent/guardian consent to legally change their name, which may not be forthcoming. In other words, teachers cannot assume class lists contain public information.

Teachers can assume instead that all students’ legal names are confidential, whether cisgender or not. Practices acting on this assumption include circulating a piece of paper with the first name they go by, last name, and/or student number columns for each student to fill in (with private follow-up if the teacher cannot match a name to the class list) and inviting students to create a nametag with their chosen first name, thereafter using nametags to take attendance (with private follow-up as needed, as chosen names can change).

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