As I’ve walked through the hallways, I’ve noticed a stark difference between this year and years past. Excited cries of “Jerry!”, “Nate” and “Katie!” have been replaced with a monotone “hi Mr. Jones,” “hi Mr. Colon” and “hey Mrs. Smith.”
While I initially thought nothing of it, this change was deliberate.
At the beginning of the school year, ELHS administration provided a clarification to an existing school policy focusing on how students should refer to staff members. The clarification suggested all ELHS staff members should be referred to by their last name. While well-intentioned, this change ignores the nuances of student-staff relationships.
Although this isn’t a formal policy, the administrators strongly suggested that students call building staff members by their honorific (Ms., Mr., Mx., Coach, etc.) and last name.
The catalyst for this change was the hiring of the new safety team to ELHS staff, as many of the new hires were used to being referred to as “Officer” at their previous schools. Since the members of the safety team are technically not security guards, they can no longer be referred to as officers. This caused administrators to reevaluate the way that students refer to and interact with staff members.
According to principal Ashley Schwarzbeck, this change was enacted in order to promote an environment of respect for every staff member, as well as establishing healthy boundaries between students and staff. The school administration stressed the fact that it is just a suggestion, with no actual enforcement other than reminding students to use the correct names.
As part of the change, student advocate Jerralmier Jones, who went by “Jerry” until this year, is now “Mr. Jones.” As a student advocate and Black Student Union (BSU) advisor, it is vital that Jones develops positive relationships with students. For him, the change was mostly an issue of students respecting staff members. However, Jones hasn’t seen much of a change in respect this year because of his solid foundations with students.
“I think that the respect is there because of the relationships that I’ve built with the students, not just because of having them call me Mr. Jones,” Jones said. “You know, that is a sign of respect. But also the relationship is much deeper than [a name].”
Similarly to Jones, many of the staff members who went by their first names, like Michigan Virtual mentor Katie Smith, did so because their jobs required nurturing positive relationships with students. Smith is also a water polo and swim coach, which adds to the complexity of the issue. Many coaches develop friendly relationships with their students and let them call them by their first names.
“I do think some of the things I’ve seen since they’ve changed the policy have made me think that I was potentially on the right track,” Smith said. “I‘ve watched making a point of correcting kids as to what they’re supposed to call impact moments where that probably shouldn’t have been something at the forefront of the conversation.”
While the clarification was made to ensure good boundaries between staff and students, the change seems overly focused on semantics. If there’s no actual enforcement, then what’s the point? Students will continue to do what they’re used to doing: calling people they trust by their first names. If administrators want to address the issue of respect, they should look at things on a case-by-case basis instead of trying to address a nonissue.
