Aspen Change Addresses Name Pronunciation
Naomi Bloom
STAFF WRITER
A new feature has been added to the Aspen Parent Portal that allows families to input the pronunciation of students’ names.
Both the typed phonetic pronunciation and an audio recording of names can now be added. Currently, this feature is only accessible to the families of seniors, but it will become available district-wide over the summer as part of the back-to-school permission forms. Seniors should have their parents or guardians fill out the phonetic section before graduation.
This feature was developed by administration, the IT department, and an Aspen consultant, with input from the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Student Advisory Committee (DEI SAC). This was also proposed by Hannah Tolla, Director of Data, and Aixa Hilario De Kelley, the Director of Guidance, who has been advocating for this feature for over twenty years.
An example of what it looks like to enter name pronunciation information in Aspen
“Our goal was to give feedback from the perspective of students and users,” said a statement from Jennie Wang and Sophia Nguyen, seniors at Andover High School and co-presidents of the DEI. “Once we discussed and shared our ideas with Ms. Tolla, they were presented [to school administration], and eventually, some of the suggestions we gave ended up being in the feature, such as the audio recording for names.” The DEI members felt that a recording feature would be especially helpful for parents who are not native English speakers that may not know how to type out the phonetics of a name, and Wang and Nguyen also said that it would provide a better understanding of how each name is pronounced. Additionally, they explained that while for some, students having their names mispronounced may just seem like a nuisance, it may be much more significant to those getting their names pronounced incorrectly. But, they hope that this new feature will help to resolve this issue.
For seniors that are graduating this year, their names being pronounced correctly is even more important. During graduation, students’ names are called and they go onstage to receive their diplomas. In the past, however, many people have had their names pronounced incorrectly. Senior Apoorva Hegde, who has had her name mispronounced frequently, was excited about this feature. “This definitely will make graduation better,” she said. “I would hate to graduate after working so hard just to have someone pronounce my name wrong.” Hegde added that she was “happy to see that people want to protect the cultural significance behind names” and “the respect that goes behind pronouncing a name.”
Along with Hegde, there are many other students who have often had their names pronounced incorrectly. AHS freshman Roos Klaarenbeek, for example, said that her name gets mispronounced nearly every time it is read. Although she noted that it doesn’t bother her much, she thought that this new feature would be helpful. This was the opinion of most of the interviewed students: The majority are used to their names being mispronounced, but are still looking forward to the new feature.
De Kelley, Wang, and Nguyen said that they are looking to implement more features in the future. “Although there remains the need to ensure that using these resources becomes common practice… we believe that this Aspen feature was an amazing first step in the process,” said Wang and Nguyen. De Kelley also said that they were planning to try to have the school include the accented letters in the names of students with accents in their names on Aspen.
