How Administrators Can Learn Students' Names Quickly

School leaders, how can you learn students' names quickly?

Let me know in the comments if you have a good trick for this.

I'm going to share a couple of techniques that worked for me, and just depending on what information is available to you, hopefully something in here will work and help you build relationships with students by knowing their names, right?

That is one of the key foundations of a relationship with any human being is knowing their name.

So a couple of things you can do.

First of all, if you're at the elementary level, get into classrooms and the names are written on the desks.

That's the nice thing about primary classrooms, especially the teachers write the names on the desks.

So it's pretty easy to walk around and just get a sense of them if you're in classrooms frequently enough.

At the secondary level, typically the names are not written on the desks, but look at student work.

They have their name on their paper, typically their first and their last name.

And personally, I cannot remember names worth squat if I do not have the last name.

I have to have first and last name.

So looking at a student's paper is a great way to learn their name, and you can show an interest in their work while you're doing that.

A couple of other things you might want to consider at the secondary level, it's also a good idea to print all of your class rosters.

Just go to your registrar or your head secretary or whoever manages rosters, counselor maybe, and have them print a roster for every single class throughout the building.

And that will also make a good kind of checklist for you for getting around to every single class.

And that will take a couple of weeks.

So you're not going to get around to every period of every class, you know, every section of teacher teaches very quickly, but you can do it and it's an important priority.

So take those rosters with you.

Check off all the names as you figure out who's who.

and you could do like a different kind of check mark once you know the name for sure versus when you initially figure out who's who.

So just use those checklists, those staff rosters as a checklist to make sure not only that you're getting around to every class but that you know every kid.

A couple of other things you can look at.

Your photography company that takes your school yearbook pictures, they can probably give you what's called a contact sheet and it will be just a single sheet of paper for every class or however they're set up, maybe homerooms at the secondary level, with every kid's photograph on it.

First name, last name, photograph.

That's a great resource to use that can help you as you go around to classrooms.

So if you can get those, those are even better than class rosters.

They just may be organized differently.

So your contact sheets from your yearbook, your student ID vendor may also be able to provide something similar, as well as your student information system.

So you may have a department in your school or district that's capable of printing something like that with photographs.

It might be last year's photograph if your pictures haven't been taken yet this year.

But those are some great ways to learn names.

And of course, run into kids as often as you can in the lunchroom, in the hallways, in playgrounds, and use those names.

If you have them on ID badges, that can help, but your rosters are going to be helpful to you.

Student work, names on the desk at the elementary level.

Most of all, just hold yourself accountable for doing this.

And I think it's probably feasible to learn all students' names.

If you have, you know, four to 600 students, you can do that in a couple of weeks.

It takes getting into classrooms.

Check out my book if you want to know how to get into classrooms every day.

Now we're talking, and let me know what tips you have for learning students' names in the comments.