Want to create a welcoming classroom community? Say your student’s name (correctly)

In her poem “Say My Name,” Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi provides a powerful assertion about the importance of her name: “Say it right or don’t say it at all.” The poem was featured recently on one of my favorite podcasts, “Poetry Unbound.” In his introduction to the episode, host Pádraig Ó Tuama reflects on the poem’s declaration that a name is a powerful representation of heritage and place and “needs to be taken on its own terms, and not translated into any name that sounds like it’s from somewhere else.”