Growing up in Fl, sometimes we did address our teachers when answering back to them as sir/or/ma’am but it was usually Mr./Mrs./Ms.Whatever the last name was
I’m a public school teacher. 99% of the time kids address me as “Mr. Mulaney”. The only time I’m called “sir” is if I’ve had to chastise a student and it is still rare.
“If you run in the halls again I will write you a detention. Understand?”
Where I grew up, it was always Ms/Mrs/Mr Surname, except for the dreaded times when you call them mom/dad on accident. Same with any administrative staff, although this was more difficult for me because the principal WAS my dad. Womp womp.
No, almost never, and certainly not the way I’ve heard if used in UK tv shows. It’s usually [Ms/Mr/Dr] [Surname] for K-12, although sometimes for preschool it’s “Miss [first name]” and some more laid back upper grades have teachers who are fine with being a first name basis. All rules are off in college, some want to be called Dr [surname], it’s sometimes acceptable to just call someone “Professor” but I know for the professors in my major that I worked closely with, first names were, again, fine and expected. But not just Miss or Sir (especially since those are not equivalent in American English, it would be ma’am or sir, but also that would be weird unless you are a stranger who wandered into the room).
I never called any teacher sir in my life. It was always Mrs/Ms/Miss/Mr Lastname, except for the hippie art teacher who let us call her by her first name.
No. We’ll say Miss, Mrs. and Mr., or in college we’ll say Professor, but always with the last time. There are occasions where you might say ma’am or sir without the last time, for example if you already said their name. Sometimes it’s an abbreviation of the last name, one of my teachers was “Mr. P”. A conversation might go “Mr. P, what is the function of (whatever the topic was).” then he would answer and I would reply with “But, sir, doesn’t that mean, blah blah blah.”
Either “Mr./Ms./Mrs. Surname” (this is the standard),” or some teachers just their surname with no title (less frequent). Others you can address using only their surname with no titles, or even a nickname (like a diminutive of their surname), but only if you have rapport with them; everyone else still calls them “Mr./Ms./Mrs. Surname.”
This is public school I’m talking about. I don’t know if things are more formal in private schools.
Maybe if we were just trying to get their attention / alert them, but always including names (or desired nicknames) otherwise. I had teacher become Mrs. G because her married name ws hard to say. Also had a teacher go by Mr. $FirstName because Mr. $LastName was a hugely popular media figure hhe didn’t want to be associated with. But outside special circumstances, it was totally Miss/Ms/Mrs/Mr $LastName.
I live in the South. We call our teachers Mr. or Mrs. Surname, like everywhere else. The only caveat is that you answer “yes, ma’am” “yes, sir” “no, ma’am” “no, sir.” But we don’t say “Sir, may I go to the bathroom” or anything like that.
In some cases by professional titles with or without the last name such as Coach, Nurse, Principle, Counselor or Director (band). Never just Miss or Sir, that is an insult where I am from.
My students usually call me Professor or Mr. but I’ve been called “sir” a few times. I tell them not to do that because I’m not old and I’m not British lmao.
Preschool and friends parents are always Miss/Mr first name growing up, and my kids and their little classmates seem to follow the same. I’m also in the Midwest/South so that plays into it. In primary/elementary school is when you started with the formal salutation and last name.
When I taught in Georgia, yes. Only Black and Latino kids. Asian and White kids it was Miss Pantzen or ma’am but never just Miss. My Black and Latino students, it was more often than not just Miss w/o the last name. Cultural differences, idk.
No. It’s Ms. Last Name and Mr. Last Name. Some schools use first names. At my school about half the teachers use their first names and the other half use their last names.
A lot of my Spanish speaking kids just say “Maestra,” although the English speaking kids don’t just call me “Teacher.” It sounds more polite in Spanish than it does in English.
Mr./Mrs./Ms. [lastname] and what’s funny is even as an adult if ever saw them again they were always the honorific and last name.
One of my teachers from back in middle school who I ran into several times finally said “you can just call me Aaron.” I was like 35 years old and it still was weird to use his first name.
In case this is interesting to you: It’s much more respectful to call an adult woman, especially one who’s visibly older than you ‘ma’am’ instead of ‘miss.’ Originally, it was “miss” and “master” for girls and boys respectively, and “ma’am” (shortened from madam) and “sir” for adult women and men. Master’s pretty much entirely fallen out of style, but you see “miss” used for girls/young women and “ma’am” for older women.
If I didn’t know the teachers name, yeah. But I knew most of them and they’d probably have been confused if I did that. We had two teachers my senior year that me and a group of my friends started to call by their first names (shout out Bill and William). One of them had been our teacher for 3/4 years of high school and we spent every lunch period in his class and the other we had 2/4 of the years and was SUPER chill. The later took us on a few field trips, let us build fish tanks in his class, and I’m even friends with him on Facebook now
I am a teacher who is almost exclusively referred to as Miss when students are trying to get my attention. It’s the same for most of my colleagues but we are in an urban, predominantly black area.
I am also called ma’am pretty often for someone who doesn’t live in the south. I definitely think both of these things are based on demographics. At my mostly white school in the 2010s we would always say Ms. So and So but never ma’am.
When I was in school, most teachers were Ms/Mr/ Mrs [last name]. A few extremely laid back teachers might be referred to by just their last name. The only teachers I ever had whose last name wasn’t part of how we usually addressed them were my ROTC (military oriented classes) in high school. Those teachers were typically referred to/addressed by their rank. The enlisted instructor was “Sarge”, and the instructor who was an officer was a colonel so we usually referred to him as “Colonel”.
Maybe if I was talking to a teacher whose name I didn’t know, but if I knew their name then it was Mr. or Ms. Lastname. Or Dr. Lastname if they had a doctorate.
In college it became Professor Lastname or Dr. Lastname.
when addressing them, we usually either used their whole title or none at all. When talking about them, we would sometimes remove the honorific. (i.e. “Ms. Downum” becomes “Downum”)
If I didn’t know their last name I would potentially call them that.
Like not MY teacher but one at my school I hadn’t met and didn’t know their name I could say it. Not in University, but gradeschool. In university they would be “Professor”.
PS Miss is respectfully equal to Mister
Sir is equal to Madame=Ma’am
Generally always with the last name. Sometimes when not talking to the teacher but about the teacher, just the last name would be used without a prefix. I do recall back in middle school some students must’ve been addressing one of my teachers as just “Miss” since she gave us a little lecture about how that was disrespectful.
Now when you get to college, sometimes people would just say “Professor,” and not the full title. It’s funny how varied it was. Some professors let people call them by their first names while others got mad if people said “Professor so-and-so” instead of “Dr. so-and-so”
In the south, I think ma’am and sir are a thing, but where I grew up in NY, it was always Mr./Mrs./Miss [Last Name].
When I was in eighth grade a student moved to our district from Alabama. He was talking out of turn in class one day, and the teacher told him to be quiet. He replied, “Yes Ma’am”. She paused for a few seconds, and then she asked, “Are you being smart or are you genuinely calling me ‘Ma’am’?”. He said he was being sincere and that where he was from it was respectful to say Ma’am. I have no doubt he was, but up north if a kid said that they were probably being sarcastic.
I have said, “Yes sir” or “yes ma’am” to a teacher, and I had a couple of teachers that were Ms. Paula or Mr. Gerald (their first names) but I never only referred to a teacher as “miss” or “sir”.
My Sociology teacher in high school also had us call him JC. No honorifics, no surname. Just JC. He was a Birkenstock wearing, tie-dye shirt every day, ponytail having holdover hippie. So it seemed pretty on brand.
I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone just “miss” – that feels belittling to my ears. Sir and Ma’am are semi-common for people in positions of authority over you in my experience. It was drilled into me to always call referees by those two as a kid. Teachers were definitely called those words while I was growing up, but not regularly and never “miss” without a last name attached.
They (teachers) generally prefer “Mr/Ms/Mrs Surname” but many many students just go with “Miss” or “Mister”. Was a public school teacher for a few years in TX, as was my spouse. We are in FL now and it’s the same. It’s super common, depending on where you are. Some teachers get pretty aggro about it, but I honestly didn’t give a damn.
During my school days, I heard more Miss/Mrs/Mister, with the last names. And Professor or Dr.. in college (except for the young teaching assistants, who often wanted to be addressed by their first names).
The most polite way to address them is however they introduced themselves. Usually that’s Mr/Mrs [surname], but not always. I’ve had teachers go by first name, first name surname, and Mr/Mrs last initial.
Most places it is mr or ms, but after I moved to new york I noticed the kids used both mr or ms AND sir or miss. I visited some college classrooms with my girlfriend who was still in college at the time and they would call someone professor even if they weren’t a real professor. When I went to college (not in ny) nobody called the professors as professor, they called them mr or ms. even if they were actually a professor.
Sometimes you don’t want to say the whole ‘mister or missus whoever’ and just say miss, sir, mister, or similar. Form of address varies a lot region to region and even person to person, but yes sir and miss are options
Went to orthodox Jewish girls school: generally we called them either morah (Hebrew for teacher) either their first or last name depending on the grade or Mrs/ms last name. Male teachers were rabbi last name.
It’s a big country, with lots of different kinds of students, so there will be different answers. (And the question is in the present tense, so why are so many commenters responding about the past?)
In the school where I teach (NE urban HS), students almost always address teachers as “Miss” or Mister”. That’s it. They can’t be bothered to use our names, even when they know them (which, even in May, is not true of all students). It’s irksome, because we learn 100 or more names in the first few weeks, but what are you gonna do?
I’m in a small city in the Midwest. As a miss, I occasionally got only miss from certain kids but it was much more common for them to say Miss Last Name or Miss First Initial of Last Name.
It was very common for many K-12 students in my town, but it fell along cultural lines almost all of the time. Native English speakers tended to use the title plus last name. Others tended to use Miss/Mr. alone. Still using a title of respect—just without the name. I suspect that to them, it was the equivalent of just generic “teacher.”
Ms. and Mr. Surname is what we used. The only teachers that wanted you to refer to them as Ma’am or Sir were the weirdly military-obsessed teachers who ran their classroom like basic military training and you would have hated to get their class. The kind of person that comes to mind when you think “murrica fuck yeah”
Lol…you did when I was a kid. I grew up in the south when schools were desegregating and all of my teachers before high school were older black women who were NOT playing around with a little white boy who didn’t call them “Madam” or “Miss” or “Mrs” (and we were NOT to mess up the distinction between Ms and Mrs either).
Violations were dealt with via the ruler and the paddle most often. If they were in a good mood, it was writing lines on the chalkboard or some sort of cleaning task……like take all the erasers outside and clean them until the water rinses clean.
They were not playing around. And it’s fine. I’m not scarred and being in my mid-50s now I do appreciate where those old ladies were coming from….but I didn’t know that at the time. And it wasn’t just one mean teacher……it was all of them. Like the collaborated over cigarettes in the teachers’ lounge.
But when I hear someone talk about reparations, I feel like I’ve already had my share of beatings and actual blood.
This hugely depends on the region (and, to a lesser extent, the type of school.)
The very few students at our top-ranked PA public district schools who “sir” and “ma’am” teachers are
children of rednecks who have Confederate flag stickers on their trucks or
children of extremely disciplinary parents, who are afraid of being physically punished for misbehaving and are therefore using subservient politeness as a defense mechanism.
Basically, when a student calls me “sir”, it’s a pretty significant red flag that we need to watch out for them.
There are parts of the country, of course, where “sir” and “ma’am” are perfectly innocent and normal.
It’s always Miss., Mr., Mrs. (insert last name here). I have never encountered a Ms., Mx., or a Sir. in my normal day-to-day activities or in my years of school. Sir is like if you are knighted like Sir Elton John.
Generally I would say you’d address them as Mr. / Mrs. / Ms. / Mx. Last Name (at some schools). However, I’ve noticed some Hispanic or immigrant populations will say just Miss or Sir, without a surname.
Kind of depends. I called some teachers I respected sir or ma’am, but not exclusively. Usually I’d call them by Mr./Ms./Mrs. [Surname]. But I would often say things like “Good morning, sir” or “Excuse me, ma’am”.
Teacher: Only got “sir” when it was somewhat ironic or joking. But “miss” and “mister” without the last name is pretty common. I worked at a school that was all hispanic or African American and they almost exclusively called me mister
A school with more white and Native American kids all call teachers by their last name with no mister or miss.
Now i work with Japanese kids and they call me just “teacher” because it translates from when they call their teachers sensei and i hate it because it makes me think of elementary kids calling their teacher that.
We usually say the last name too. When I was in school it was pretty much only the burnouts or kids who didn’t care whether they failed out that only said “Yo Miss” Teachers HATED it.
In the classroom, we addressed the teachers as Miss/Mr last name. In the south, outside of the classroom, we addressed adults as Miss/Mr first name. I have no idea why we switched from last name to first outside the classroom.
In elementary-high school people addressed teachers as Mr/Ms/Mrs (last name) but it doesn’t happen in college. Instead people say professor (last name) or casually address them.
At my kid’s school in the northeast US, it’s purely Ms./Miss/Mrs./Mx./Mr. Lastname. Never miss or sir or ma’am alone, and only very rarely a nickname (that is usually people with hard to pronounce last names shortening to “Mr. K.”). Using no form of address is not seen as rude, so they aren’t saying the whole thing all the time.
When I was in school we usually said “Miss” and “Mister” to teachers without a last name. However I grew up in a very Latino community where most people are bilingual to some degree, and I think this is a holdover from Spanish since you can say “Maestra/o” (teacher) or “Señor/a”(Miss/Mister) to address people.
Where I grew up and live now, no. When we lived in Texas my kids were taught to call their teachers ma’am. There were no male teachers so they started calling adult men ma’am to be respectful. Gotta love kindergartners
Depends on where in the US you are located. in the south they use Sir, Ma’am and Miss. In the north east and out west this is very rare. As a kid my family moved from NY to AL and I got my knuckles rapped with a ruler for not addressing my teacher as ma’am.
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s in New York City and New Jersey, it was always Miss/Mrs. or Mr. and the last name, for all teachers.
My daughter is 11 and has grown up exclusively in Central New York. When she was in preschool, the teachers were Miss or Mr. and the first name. (Strangely, all female teachers were Miss, irrespective of marital status.) By the time she got to kindergarten and beyond, it was Miss/Mrs. or Mr. and the last name. Additionally, she has a few non-teacher familiar authority figures these days who are occasionally referred to as Miss/Mrs. or Mr. and the first name, but it’s not consistent.
In the west it’s usually Mr./Mrs. + Last name. We also have a few who prefer students use “Teacher + first name”. I’ve also had the occasional Mr./Mrs. + First name if the last name was tricky for kids (especially in preschool).
Public school teacher here. It’s always Mrs/Mr/Ms [Last Name], or just [Last Name] with no honorific if the teachers and students have a good relationship with each other. There are also a few of the hippydippy schools where teachers go by their first name.
I live in upstate NY and my wife teaches in a public school. When she taught in an urban district where the vast majority of students were black, the students tended to refer to female teachers as “Miss” without a last name, but didn’t refer to the male teachers as “Sir.” She has since taught in a rural and now a suburban district, and that’s very rare, except among black students that formerly attended the urban district she used to teach in. In the other districts she taught in, it was “Ms./Miss/Mrs.” or “Mr.” and then the last name of the teacher.
It’s a big country, but for my part no. Teachers are ‘Mr./Ms. Last name”, or sir/ma’am depending on context. Every now and then a teacher would have a nickname, but it’d be like “Ms B” for a teacher who had a really long or hard to pronounce last name, and IME they’d have chosen that and introduced themselves that way, not a student choice.
I did work with young children a bit as a teenager and I was often called ‘miss firstname”, felt right since I was not a peer but also wasn’t really an authority figure either. I have found the Mr/Miss Firstname to be very regional.
I’m older from the south, it’s beaten in to us. If you know their last name, it’s Mr. or Mrs./Ms. (pronounced Miz for respect, Miss for a younger stranger) and sir or ma’am in response to adults. Certainly for teachers, or your parents make you pick a switch and light your ass up.
Mr./Mrs./Ms. Last Name is most common. We wouldn’t say “Teacher” but would use teacher in the third person.
In university we would say, “Professor” or”Professor Last Name” regardless of terminal degree held or level of professorship held, or “Doctor Last Name” if they specifically have a doctorate. In the UK, we’d only call a full professor “professor” and all others as “doctor last name”. Associate professors would correct the American students that they weren’t full professors and don’t have the title. Germans who hold two doctorates (or an MD/Ph.D.) are called Doctor Doctor.
No. It was always Mr. or Ms. and their last name. Some teachers were less formal and let’s say their last name was Davis but everyone would call them Mr D. That was fairly common.
I was a teacher for 7 years and often got called “Miss” instead of “Mrs. Muppetmaniac.” But no one ever called the male teachers sir. It’s not a separate title, it’s a shortening of the name. If a male teacher were, say, Coach Anderson, they might say “Coach” instead, or if they were Mr Cooper, a student might say “Mr.” or, if the students were on a more familiar standing (which often happened with male teachers) they might call him “Coop” or “Mr. C.”
Depends on the school and grade. Majority in grade school it was Mr./Mrs./Miss. And their last name, but one elementary school I went to used only Mr./Miss. and their first names.
I always used Ms/Mr Last Name growing up. Ma’am and Sir are how I address people whose names I don’t know (like a store clerk I’m getting the attention of to ask a question).
I’ve noticed lately that a lot of young kids are calling their teacher Ms/Mr First Name.
No. Only with the last name included and sometimes teachers will ask you to just use their first name because it feels a bit weird to be called that to some people.
I work in a school that’s 99% immigrants, so I guess they aren’t American, but everyone is just “Miss” or “Mr”. That staff has started doing to too which I find annoying 🙄 A lot of kids don’t even learn their teachers’ names
Always, always, always Mr.Ms.Mrs/lastname. I remember one time very clearly where a student shouted to the teacher “Miss can you help me” and the teacher completely ignored them until the student corrected themselves.
We’d call them Mr/Mrs/Ms/Doctor/Coach Last Name one hundred percent of the time. In college, it’s more common to just call your instructors “Professor” with no last name attached
You can (should!) say “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” No one would say “Yes, Miss” or “No, Miss.” You will hear that usage on TV shows from the ‘50s and ‘60s, but I’ve never heard it in real life anywhere. It would be “Yes ma’am” or “No, ma’am.” (But check regional differences, as a New Englander below said that’s only an ironic usage there. In the South, you say “Sir” or “Ma’am” or you get corrected on the spot.) To address a man as “Mister” without using a name would be a sort of accusatory, and dated, usage: “Now you listen here, mister!” You’d say that with clinched fists (and sound like a doofus).
ive lived in philly for my whole life, and at my current school “mr./ms./mrs. lastname” is standard, as is around the city. however at my old school it was “teacher firstname.” pretty sure it wasn’t a quaker school or anything, just weird.
Addressing elders as Ma’am, Miss, Mrs. or Sir is an older custom, but it’s still common in the Southern US. So you’d say “Yes sir.” when answering your male teacher.
In most schools, teachers are addresses as Ms./Mrs./Miss/Mr. Lastname. With younger students, or if their name is hard to pronounce, they might use an initial or shortened version of their name. For example, my kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Wojeckowski, but we called her Mrs. W. We had an ongoing battle with the teachers over what to call the custodian. He would ask us to call him Dave, but the teachers insisted that he was “Mr. Malone.” We settled on Mr. Dave.
Comments
No.
When and where I was in school, it was always “Mrs./Mr. [Last Name].”
Usually last name only in CA
Never, to my knowledge
It’s always “Mr. Surname”/ “Ms. or Mrs. Surname”
Mr. X or Mrs./Ms. X
Depending on the school, yes.
No. It was always Ms./Mr. [lastname].
Sir and ma’am are mostly a Southern thing. “Miss” isn’t used much anymore.
Not for the last 50 years outside of the deep South
Growing up in Fl, sometimes we did address our teachers when answering back to them as sir/or/ma’am but it was usually Mr./Mrs./Ms.Whatever the last name was
Not by default at least not in public schools. Prep schools might be more formal.
More frequently in the south also I think (but that would be sir or ma’am, which is part of their culture, in or out of the classroom.)
I’m a public school teacher. 99% of the time kids address me as “Mr. Mulaney”. The only time I’m called “sir” is if I’ve had to chastise a student and it is still rare.
“If you run in the halls again I will write you a detention. Understand?”
“Yes sir”
that’s generally considered disrespectful
Where I grew up, it was always Ms/Mrs/Mr Surname, except for the dreaded times when you call them mom/dad on accident. Same with any administrative staff, although this was more difficult for me because the principal WAS my dad. Womp womp.
100% yes. It’s the more urban or under educated kids but in the 00s I’d always hear teachers addressed by “hey miss, can I go to the bathroom?”
E: to be clear, it was neither respectful or necessarily disrespectful but clearly neutral. They’re calling you a title but not your name.
Miss, Mrs, or Mr. is customary. Sometimes Dr. if that is applicable.
Growing up it was ms or Mr (last name)
No, almost never, and certainly not the way I’ve heard if used in UK tv shows. It’s usually [Ms/Mr/Dr] [Surname] for K-12, although sometimes for preschool it’s “Miss [first name]” and some more laid back upper grades have teachers who are fine with being a first name basis. All rules are off in college, some want to be called Dr [surname], it’s sometimes acceptable to just call someone “Professor” but I know for the professors in my major that I worked closely with, first names were, again, fine and expected. But not just Miss or Sir (especially since those are not equivalent in American English, it would be ma’am or sir, but also that would be weird unless you are a stranger who wandered into the room).
no. I’ve seen this in British TV shows but it’s not a thing I’ve ever experienced in the US.
Miss, yes sometimes. Usually because it’s shorter than Miss So and So. Never heard sir. Mr. Sometimes or most often “Coach!”
Miss yes
Not in this century.
I never called any teacher sir in my life. It was always Mrs/Ms/Miss/Mr Lastname, except for the hippie art teacher who let us call her by her first name.
In TX it was almost exclusively Miss/Sir by itself
No. We’ll say Miss, Mrs. and Mr., or in college we’ll say Professor, but always with the last time. There are occasions where you might say ma’am or sir without the last time, for example if you already said their name. Sometimes it’s an abbreviation of the last name, one of my teachers was “Mr. P”. A conversation might go “Mr. P, what is the function of (whatever the topic was).” then he would answer and I would reply with “But, sir, doesn’t that mean, blah blah blah.”
Miss? No. Ma’am. And sir.
Either “Mr./Ms./Mrs. Surname” (this is the standard),” or some teachers just their surname with no title (less frequent). Others you can address using only their surname with no titles, or even a nickname (like a diminutive of their surname), but only if you have rapport with them; everyone else still calls them “Mr./Ms./Mrs. Surname.”
This is public school I’m talking about. I don’t know if things are more formal in private schools.
Maybe if we were just trying to get their attention / alert them, but always including names (or desired nicknames) otherwise. I had teacher become Mrs. G because her married name ws hard to say. Also had a teacher go by Mr. $FirstName because Mr. $LastName was a hugely popular media figure hhe didn’t want to be associated with. But outside special circumstances, it was totally Miss/Ms/Mrs/Mr $LastName.
I may have said Sir before, but I don’t think I’ve ever called a teacher “Miss”
No
I live in the South. We call our teachers Mr. or Mrs. Surname, like everywhere else. The only caveat is that you answer “yes, ma’am” “yes, sir” “no, ma’am” “no, sir.” But we don’t say “Sir, may I go to the bathroom” or anything like that.
No, we never said “sir”. What is my science teacher a fucking knight? It’s always “Mr” for male teachers.
The only exceptions to Mr./Mrs./Ms.(last name) was when they had a phd.
No. Only with yes and no. Like no, sir. Yes, ma’am.
In some cases by professional titles with or without the last name such as Coach, Nurse, Principle, Counselor or Director (band). Never just Miss or Sir, that is an insult where I am from.
My students usually call me Professor or Mr. but I’ve been called “sir” a few times. I tell them not to do that because I’m not old and I’m not British lmao.
Geographically dependent
In the southeast, Ma’am and Sir are quite common.
Preschool and friends parents are always Miss/Mr first name growing up, and my kids and their little classmates seem to follow the same. I’m also in the Midwest/South so that plays into it. In primary/elementary school is when you started with the formal salutation and last name.
When I taught in Georgia, yes. Only Black and Latino kids. Asian and White kids it was Miss Pantzen or ma’am but never just Miss. My Black and Latino students, it was more often than not just Miss w/o the last name. Cultural differences, idk.
No. It’s Ms. Last Name and Mr. Last Name. Some schools use first names. At my school about half the teachers use their first names and the other half use their last names.
A lot of my Spanish speaking kids just say “Maestra,” although the English speaking kids don’t just call me “Teacher.” It sounds more polite in Spanish than it does in English.
Mr./Mrs./Ms. [lastname] and what’s funny is even as an adult if ever saw them again they were always the honorific and last name.
One of my teachers from back in middle school who I ran into several times finally said “you can just call me Aaron.” I was like 35 years old and it still was weird to use his first name.
Usually just Mr. or Ms./Mrs. Surname.
In case this is interesting to you: It’s much more respectful to call an adult woman, especially one who’s visibly older than you ‘ma’am’ instead of ‘miss.’ Originally, it was “miss” and “master” for girls and boys respectively, and “ma’am” (shortened from madam) and “sir” for adult women and men. Master’s pretty much entirely fallen out of style, but you see “miss” used for girls/young women and “ma’am” for older women.
If I didn’t know the teachers name, yeah. But I knew most of them and they’d probably have been confused if I did that. We had two teachers my senior year that me and a group of my friends started to call by their first names (shout out Bill and William). One of them had been our teacher for 3/4 years of high school and we spent every lunch period in his class and the other we had 2/4 of the years and was SUPER chill. The later took us on a few field trips, let us build fish tanks in his class, and I’m even friends with him on Facebook now
Mr/Mrs/Ms last name. To the direct question no we didn’t. I don’t think I ever did that until working in food service initially.
No, Mr or Mrs or Miss plus last name. Have noticed on British shows they just say miss or sir.
Nope it was always Mr Last Name or Mrs/Ms Last Name.
Never. Where I am (PNW) it sounds like something a student would do sarcastically, not respectfully.
Yes in my area (worked at 3 different schools) most of the students use Miss/Mister, and a few use Miss Smith or Mr Smith.
A teacher would be m’am miss is used kind of insultingly in the south.
I am a teacher who is almost exclusively referred to as Miss when students are trying to get my attention. It’s the same for most of my colleagues but we are in an urban, predominantly black area.
I am also called ma’am pretty often for someone who doesn’t live in the south. I definitely think both of these things are based on demographics. At my mostly white school in the 2010s we would always say Ms. So and So but never ma’am.
Not usually, no. It’s normally Ms. Smith, Mr. Jones, or Mrs. Brown. “Miss” is dated and not used.
Our school still requires Mr./Ms./Mrs. and last name. Sir or Ma’am are taught as well for addressing all adults.
When I was in school, most teachers were Ms/Mr/ Mrs [last name]. A few extremely laid back teachers might be referred to by just their last name. The only teachers I ever had whose last name wasn’t part of how we usually addressed them were my ROTC (military oriented classes) in high school. Those teachers were typically referred to/addressed by their rank. The enlisted instructor was “Sarge”, and the instructor who was an officer was a colonel so we usually referred to him as “Colonel”.
Its miss/mrs/ms/mr and last name. In lower grades its sometimes miss/mrs/ms/mr and first name
Maybe if I was talking to a teacher whose name I didn’t know, but if I knew their name then it was Mr. or Ms. Lastname. Or Dr. Lastname if they had a doctorate.
In college it became Professor Lastname or Dr. Lastname.
Depending on the age group it’s either Mr/Ms.Surname or Mr/Ms.First Name.
The latter is more likely the younger the students are.
I have been teaching almost 30 years. I’m Ms. Last name. Everyone I know is Mr., Ms, or Mrs. Last name.
when addressing them, we usually either used their whole title or none at all. When talking about them, we would sometimes remove the honorific. (i.e. “Ms. Downum” becomes “Downum”)
If I didn’t know their last name I would potentially call them that.
Like not MY teacher but one at my school I hadn’t met and didn’t know their name I could say it. Not in University, but gradeschool. In university they would be “Professor”.
PS Miss is respectfully equal to Mister
Sir is equal to Madame=Ma’am
My students just call me Teacher.
Generally always with the last name. Sometimes when not talking to the teacher but about the teacher, just the last name would be used without a prefix. I do recall back in middle school some students must’ve been addressing one of my teachers as just “Miss” since she gave us a little lecture about how that was disrespectful.
Now when you get to college, sometimes people would just say “Professor,” and not the full title. It’s funny how varied it was. Some professors let people call them by their first names while others got mad if people said “Professor so-and-so” instead of “Dr. so-and-so”
In the south, I think ma’am and sir are a thing, but where I grew up in NY, it was always Mr./Mrs./Miss [Last Name].
When I was in eighth grade a student moved to our district from Alabama. He was talking out of turn in class one day, and the teacher told him to be quiet. He replied, “Yes Ma’am”. She paused for a few seconds, and then she asked, “Are you being smart or are you genuinely calling me ‘Ma’am’?”. He said he was being sincere and that where he was from it was respectful to say Ma’am. I have no doubt he was, but up north if a kid said that they were probably being sarcastic.
The last name is standard
I don’t think so except for yes sir or yes ma’am but actually addressing it’s Mr, Mrs miss last name
Depends where you live in America.
I have said, “Yes sir” or “yes ma’am” to a teacher, and I had a couple of teachers that were Ms. Paula or Mr. Gerald (their first names) but I never only referred to a teacher as “miss” or “sir”.
My Sociology teacher in high school also had us call him JC. No honorifics, no surname. Just JC. He was a Birkenstock wearing, tie-dye shirt every day, ponytail having holdover hippie. So it seemed pretty on brand.
No. Maybe in the South they use formal vernacular more
I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone just “miss” – that feels belittling to my ears. Sir and Ma’am are semi-common for people in positions of authority over you in my experience. It was drilled into me to always call referees by those two as a kid. Teachers were definitely called those words while I was growing up, but not regularly and never “miss” without a last name attached.
At my schools it was Mrs./Mr. “last name” or coach “last name” if they were a coach
Depends.
They (teachers) generally prefer “Mr/Ms/Mrs Surname” but many many students just go with “Miss” or “Mister”. Was a public school teacher for a few years in TX, as was my spouse. We are in FL now and it’s the same. It’s super common, depending on where you are. Some teachers get pretty aggro about it, but I honestly didn’t give a damn.
Mr. And Ms. Lastname growing up. Now sometimes first name instead. If we called them something without their name it was usually “teacher.”
We were not allowed to do this when I was growing up in the south, but my mother in law is a teacher in Texas and this generation of kids does this.
I never did.
During my school days, I heard more Miss/Mrs/Mister, with the last names. And Professor or Dr.. in college (except for the young teaching assistants, who often wanted to be addressed by their first names).
The most polite way to address them is however they introduced themselves. Usually that’s Mr/Mrs [surname], but not always. I’ve had teachers go by first name, first name surname, and Mr/Mrs last initial.
Most places it is mr or ms, but after I moved to new york I noticed the kids used both mr or ms AND sir or miss. I visited some college classrooms with my girlfriend who was still in college at the time and they would call someone professor even if they weren’t a real professor. When I went to college (not in ny) nobody called the professors as professor, they called them mr or ms. even if they were actually a professor.
Sometimes you don’t want to say the whole ‘mister or missus whoever’ and just say miss, sir, mister, or similar. Form of address varies a lot region to region and even person to person, but yes sir and miss are options
Entirely depends on the individual teacher and student.
Went to orthodox Jewish girls school: generally we called them either morah (Hebrew for teacher) either their first or last name depending on the grade or Mrs/ms last name. Male teachers were rabbi last name.
It’s a big country, with lots of different kinds of students, so there will be different answers. (And the question is in the present tense, so why are so many commenters responding about the past?)
In the school where I teach (NE urban HS), students almost always address teachers as “Miss” or Mister”. That’s it. They can’t be bothered to use our names, even when they know them (which, even in May, is not true of all students). It’s irksome, because we learn 100 or more names in the first few weeks, but what are you gonna do?
I’m in a small city in the Midwest. As a miss, I occasionally got only miss from certain kids but it was much more common for them to say Miss Last Name or Miss First Initial of Last Name.
Just Mr./ Ms. /Mrs. Lastname. Teachers also usually tell students how they want to be called first day.
It was very common for many K-12 students in my town, but it fell along cultural lines almost all of the time. Native English speakers tended to use the title plus last name. Others tended to use Miss/Mr. alone. Still using a title of respect—just without the name. I suspect that to them, it was the equivalent of just generic “teacher.”
I never heard it in college.
Pre-K, daycare, after/before school services, dance class teachers all go by miss/mrs./ms./Mr. First name.
Grade school and high school teachers all go by last name.
Higher education is a free for all where it might be Dr. last name, or it could be “just call me Dave”
no
No.
Sir or ma’am or miss firstname or ms/Mr lastname are frequent flyers where I live.
It’s somewhat common at school but that’s something that you will here more at church.
NO, that’s weird
Ms. and Mr. Surname is what we used. The only teachers that wanted you to refer to them as Ma’am or Sir were the weirdly military-obsessed teachers who ran their classroom like basic military training and you would have hated to get their class. The kind of person that comes to mind when you think “murrica fuck yeah”
No
Lol…you did when I was a kid. I grew up in the south when schools were desegregating and all of my teachers before high school were older black women who were NOT playing around with a little white boy who didn’t call them “Madam” or “Miss” or “Mrs” (and we were NOT to mess up the distinction between Ms and Mrs either).
Violations were dealt with via the ruler and the paddle most often. If they were in a good mood, it was writing lines on the chalkboard or some sort of cleaning task……like take all the erasers outside and clean them until the water rinses clean.
They were not playing around. And it’s fine. I’m not scarred and being in my mid-50s now I do appreciate where those old ladies were coming from….but I didn’t know that at the time. And it wasn’t just one mean teacher……it was all of them. Like the collaborated over cigarettes in the teachers’ lounge.
But when I hear someone talk about reparations, I feel like I’ve already had my share of beatings and actual blood.
This hugely depends on the region (and, to a lesser extent, the type of school.)
The very few students at our top-ranked PA public district schools who “sir” and “ma’am” teachers are
Basically, when a student calls me “sir”, it’s a pretty significant red flag that we need to watch out for them.
There are parts of the country, of course, where “sir” and “ma’am” are perfectly innocent and normal.
Not in my experience, no.
College students who’ve served in the military will often call their teachers “sir”/”ma’am”, in my experience.
Otherwise, no.
No. In American culture, it’s rude to do that. Other cultures do that, I’m aware, but in our culture, no.
Sir or Miss was very rare, it was always Mr./Ms./Mrs. [last name]. In high school I would usually just use their last name if I was close with them.
It’s always Miss., Mr., Mrs. (insert last name here). I have never encountered a Ms., Mx., or a Sir. in my normal day-to-day activities or in my years of school. Sir is like if you are knighted like Sir Elton John.
Not that I’ve seen.
It’s mostly Mr./Mrs./Ms. Lastname. And in some places it’s just Firstname.
Generally I would say you’d address them as Mr. / Mrs. / Ms. / Mx. Last Name (at some schools). However, I’ve noticed some Hispanic or immigrant populations will say just Miss or Sir, without a surname.
Kind of depends. I called some teachers I respected sir or ma’am, but not exclusively. Usually I’d call them by Mr./Ms./Mrs. [Surname]. But I would often say things like “Good morning, sir” or “Excuse me, ma’am”.
Teacher: Only got “sir” when it was somewhat ironic or joking. But “miss” and “mister” without the last name is pretty common. I worked at a school that was all hispanic or African American and they almost exclusively called me mister
A school with more white and Native American kids all call teachers by their last name with no mister or miss.
Now i work with Japanese kids and they call me just “teacher” because it translates from when they call their teachers sensei and i hate it because it makes me think of elementary kids calling their teacher that.
We usually say the last name too. When I was in school it was pretty much only the burnouts or kids who didn’t care whether they failed out that only said “Yo Miss” Teachers HATED it.
In the classroom, we addressed the teachers as Miss/Mr last name. In the south, outside of the classroom, we addressed adults as Miss/Mr first name. I have no idea why we switched from last name to first outside the classroom.
Yes. I was a teacher and it was extremely common to just say Miss or Mister. It’s not proper. They forgot our names.
Nah, we either use “Ms” (if they aren’t married), “Mrs” (if they are), or “Mr” (if they’re a male).
Usually ma’am, not miss.
No. Maybe if we didn’t know the teacher at all but in that case it would be “Mister/Missus/Miss”
Nope.
In elementary-high school people addressed teachers as Mr/Ms/Mrs (last name) but it doesn’t happen in college. Instead people say professor (last name) or casually address them.
Mr and Mrs(married) Miss (unmarried) or Ms (“mizz” for us being unsure or their choice)
One teacher was even my mom’s cousin and someone I saw regularly outside of school. I still had to call her Mrs. when at school
I find in the south, students with say Mr or Mrs or Miss with your last name OR just Miss or Sir
At my kid’s school in the northeast US, it’s purely Ms./Miss/Mrs./Mx./Mr. Lastname. Never miss or sir or ma’am alone, and only very rarely a nickname (that is usually people with hard to pronounce last names shortening to “Mr. K.”). Using no form of address is not seen as rude, so they aren’t saying the whole thing all the time.
The only place I hear “Miss FIRST NAME” is at my toddler’s day care, but at older ages it’s Mr. Or Ms. LAST NAME
When I was in school we usually said “Miss” and “Mister” to teachers without a last name. However I grew up in a very Latino community where most people are bilingual to some degree, and I think this is a holdover from Spanish since you can say “Maestra/o” (teacher) or “Señor/a”(Miss/Mister) to address people.
I don’t think most of the us does this.
Where I grew up and live now, no. When we lived in Texas my kids were taught to call their teachers ma’am. There were no male teachers so they started calling adult men ma’am to be respectful. Gotta love kindergartners
Depends on where in the US you are located. in the south they use Sir, Ma’am and Miss. In the north east and out west this is very rare. As a kid my family moved from NY to AL and I got my knuckles rapped with a ruler for not addressing my teacher as ma’am.
In the South maybe they use “miss” and sir”. Where I live, it’s always Mr./Mrs./Ms. Lastname.
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s in New York City and New Jersey, it was always Miss/Mrs. or Mr. and the last name, for all teachers.
My daughter is 11 and has grown up exclusively in Central New York. When she was in preschool, the teachers were Miss or Mr. and the first name. (Strangely, all female teachers were Miss, irrespective of marital status.) By the time she got to kindergarten and beyond, it was Miss/Mrs. or Mr. and the last name. Additionally, she has a few non-teacher familiar authority figures these days who are occasionally referred to as Miss/Mrs. or Mr. and the first name, but it’s not consistent.
In the west it’s usually Mr./Mrs. + Last name. We also have a few who prefer students use “Teacher + first name”. I’ve also had the occasional Mr./Mrs. + First name if the last name was tricky for kids (especially in preschool).
Public school teacher here. It’s always Mrs/Mr/Ms [Last Name], or just [Last Name] with no honorific if the teachers and students have a good relationship with each other. There are also a few of the hippydippy schools where teachers go by their first name.
It’s regional/cultural so it depends.
I live in upstate NY and my wife teaches in a public school. When she taught in an urban district where the vast majority of students were black, the students tended to refer to female teachers as “Miss” without a last name, but didn’t refer to the male teachers as “Sir.” She has since taught in a rural and now a suburban district, and that’s very rare, except among black students that formerly attended the urban district she used to teach in. In the other districts she taught in, it was “Ms./Miss/Mrs.” or “Mr.” and then the last name of the teacher.
It’s a big country, but for my part no. Teachers are ‘Mr./Ms. Last name”, or sir/ma’am depending on context. Every now and then a teacher would have a nickname, but it’d be like “Ms B” for a teacher who had a really long or hard to pronounce last name, and IME they’d have chosen that and introduced themselves that way, not a student choice.
I did work with young children a bit as a teenager and I was often called ‘miss firstname”, felt right since I was not a peer but also wasn’t really an authority figure either. I have found the Mr/Miss Firstname to be very regional.
I’m older from the south, it’s beaten in to us. If you know their last name, it’s Mr. or Mrs./Ms. (pronounced Miz for respect, Miss for a younger stranger) and sir or ma’am in response to adults. Certainly for teachers, or your parents make you pick a switch and light your ass up.
Mr./Mrs./Ms. Last Name is most common. We wouldn’t say “Teacher” but would use teacher in the third person.
In university we would say, “Professor” or”Professor Last Name” regardless of terminal degree held or level of professorship held, or “Doctor Last Name” if they specifically have a doctorate. In the UK, we’d only call a full professor “professor” and all others as “doctor last name”. Associate professors would correct the American students that they weren’t full professors and don’t have the title. Germans who hold two doctorates (or an MD/Ph.D.) are called Doctor Doctor.
No. It was always Mr. or Ms. and their last name. Some teachers were less formal and let’s say their last name was Davis but everyone would call them Mr D. That was fairly common.
I was a teacher for 7 years and often got called “Miss” instead of “Mrs. Muppetmaniac.” But no one ever called the male teachers sir. It’s not a separate title, it’s a shortening of the name. If a male teacher were, say, Coach Anderson, they might say “Coach” instead, or if they were Mr Cooper, a student might say “Mr.” or, if the students were on a more familiar standing (which often happened with male teachers) they might call him “Coop” or “Mr. C.”
When I was in school we were not taught to call the teacher sir or ma’am. It was always Mr/Mrs/Miss Lastname.
I called teachers miss and sir growing up.
No.
Depends on the school and grade. Majority in grade school it was Mr./Mrs./Miss. And their last name, but one elementary school I went to used only Mr./Miss. and their first names.
In college I just call every teacher Professor
“Ms. first name” is sometimes used in pre-school and daycare but not in grades Kindergarten to High School.
My students (middle school, so 12-14ish) call me either Ms. Lastname or just by my last name. I never get just Miss.
I always used Ms/Mr Last Name growing up. Ma’am and Sir are how I address people whose names I don’t know (like a store clerk I’m getting the attention of to ask a question).
I’ve noticed lately that a lot of young kids are calling their teacher Ms/Mr First Name.
No. Only with the last name included and sometimes teachers will ask you to just use their first name because it feels a bit weird to be called that to some people.
My friend teaches middle school in South Florida and pretty much hears “Miss! Miss! Miss!” all day long despite introducing herself as Mrs. —.
Typically it’s Miss (last name)
Not in the 1960s. Not now.
I work in a school that’s 99% immigrants, so I guess they aren’t American, but everyone is just “Miss” or “Mr”. That staff has started doing to too which I find annoying 🙄 A lot of kids don’t even learn their teachers’ names
It’s
“Mr. Teacher’s name”
“Miss, Ms, or Mrs. Teacher’s name”
When talking about, or getting the Teacher’s attention.
Where I’m from.
If the “sir” was added, it was “Mr. Teacher’s name, sir”
Or
In response “yes, sir” or “yes maam” “no, sir” “no, Ma’am” after a direction.
In the north sir and Ma’am are hit and miss if they re used.
Yes!
Always, always, always Mr.Ms.Mrs/lastname. I remember one time very clearly where a student shouted to the teacher “Miss can you help me” and the teacher completely ignored them until the student corrected themselves.
It’s Mrs/Ms/Mr or Ma’am/Sir, and the ma’am and sir are used more in the South as a sign of respect for elders
But you wouldn’t say Ma’am/Sir insert teachers name. It’s more like “thank you sir, can i go to the bathroom sir?”
We’d call them Mr/Mrs/Ms/Doctor/Coach Last Name one hundred percent of the time. In college, it’s more common to just call your instructors “Professor” with no last name attached
You can (should!) say “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” No one would say “Yes, Miss” or “No, Miss.” You will hear that usage on TV shows from the ‘50s and ‘60s, but I’ve never heard it in real life anywhere. It would be “Yes ma’am” or “No, ma’am.” (But check regional differences, as a New Englander below said that’s only an ironic usage there. In the South, you say “Sir” or “Ma’am” or you get corrected on the spot.) To address a man as “Mister” without using a name would be a sort of accusatory, and dated, usage: “Now you listen here, mister!” You’d say that with clinched fists (and sound like a doofus).
ive lived in philly for my whole life, and at my current school “mr./ms./mrs. lastname” is standard, as is around the city. however at my old school it was “teacher firstname.” pretty sure it wasn’t a quaker school or anything, just weird.
Addressing elders as Ma’am, Miss, Mrs. or Sir is an older custom, but it’s still common in the Southern US. So you’d say “Yes sir.” when answering your male teacher.
In most schools, teachers are addresses as Ms./Mrs./Miss/Mr. Lastname. With younger students, or if their name is hard to pronounce, they might use an initial or shortened version of their name. For example, my kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Wojeckowski, but we called her Mrs. W. We had an ongoing battle with the teachers over what to call the custodian. He would ask us to call him Dave, but the teachers insisted that he was “Mr. Malone.” We settled on Mr. Dave.
I’ve noticed that it’s common in the south for children to address nearly all adult women as Miss then first name. Especially teachers etc
Teachers no. This would be more common for strangers.