Call me Ishmael?

I've had an influx of new students over the past couple of weeks, but so far the best story to tell has to do with the one who showed up today.

Normally, when I post about kids here, I replace any and all names with the letter A. That just won't work for the purposes of this story, so I'll call this new boy Kevin. Kevin comes to us from a nearby school, and his arrival has been foretold for over a month. My partner, Miss Jenn Ed, had an ARD involving him last week, just so we could be prepared for his situation.

Several times, I've heard Kevin referred to as Kev by the teachers discussing him, so today, when I saw him in my line in the morning, I said, "Hi! You must be Kev!"

One of my other kids, A, immediately corrected me -- "Kevin!" So I asked the new kid, "What do you prefer to be called, Kevin or Kev?"

He mulled it over and told me, "Well, sometimes people call me Kevin, and some people call me Kev. But my real name is Bartholomew. My mom just likes how Kevin sounds."

Not once had I heard the name "Bartholomew" mentioned in any discussions about this kid, so I had my suspicions. I asked him, "What should I call you -- Kevin or Kev?"

He replied, "Bartholomew."

OK, we have a winner. For the next 10 minutes, I called him Bartholomew. "Bartholomew, do you have a pencil?" "Bartholomew, come and get a breakfast." "Did you do division at your old school, Bartholomew?"

At about quarter after eight, one of the special ed teachers dropped by to see how the new kid was doing. When I told her about the name change, her mouth dropped, and she took him out into the hallway to talk with him. A couple of minutes later, they came back into my classroom, and the little boy said to me with a sheepish grin, "You can call me Kev now."

Oooooookay...

If this happens again tomorrow, I might just make my own executive decision and start calling him the Hamburger.