My Name, My Identity

Important point being raised by "My Name, My Identity" as written up in EdWeek this week:

As a kindergarten student in 1950s Brooklyn, Carmen Fariña, a native-Spanish speaker, had a teacher who marked her absent every day for weeks because she didn't raise her hand during roll call. The teacher assumed Fariña was being defiant, but the future New York City schools chancellor never heard her name called; the teacher had repeatedly failed to pronounce it correctly, including rolling the r's.

"Mispronouncing a student's name essentially renders that student invisible," Fariña said during a keynote address at the National Association for Bilingual Education annual conference in March.