Legal Commentary

was in the fall 2001 semester, my first one teaching.  I was reluctant to use last names to call on students to begin with--it seemed needlessly formal and my own teachers hadn't done it--but a lot of people had advised me that it made sense to do as a new teacher, particularly because it's easier to ramp down the formality if you decide you're being too formal than to one day suddenly start being more stodgy ("today, class, I will become more stodgy; got that, Mr. Johnson?").  But one weekend day about half-way through the semester I was out walking around in the world when a student drove up in a car near me with some friends and called out, "Hi Professor Wexler."  I didn't know what to say back.  The only way I had ever referred to her was as "Ms. So-and-So."  Luckily, my "Doofus Prevention System" kicked in (it rarely works, but in this case it did) and I realized that I would sound like a total doofus if I said "Hi Ms. So-and-So" out there in the world with other people around who don't refer to each other as Mr. or Ms. So-and-So, and so I instead just said "Hi."  It would have been much easier to just say "Hi Liz."

I started using first names the next semester and haven't gone back.  It's much more natural, and I've never sensed any student resistance.  It might help that I don't really care what the students call me: "Jay," "Wex," "Jaywex," "the Wexmeister" (if they're not into the whole brevity thing), whatever.  The only thing I ask is that they don't call me "Jayferd Weakslobber," which is what Dawn R. used to call me in fourth grade, from time to time.