PHOTOS PROVIDED BY PAOLA BENEVENTO
What’s in a Name Henninger High School students illustrate children’s book by alumna | BY COURTNEY KLESS
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or her entire life, Paola Benevento’s name has been spelled or pronounced incorrectly.
“When you are constantly confronted with that as a kid, it makes you develop anxiety around your name and a discomfort,” she said. “And that’s something that’s really continued to follow me around through life. I’m 30 years old now, and in the last week alone, I’ve had that happen to me three times.” Benevento, a Henninger High School alum, has been a teacher in the South Bronx for eight years, and has noticed a similar frustration in her classroom. “Some of my students have names that may not be more common, and it’s like, ‘Oh, well that’s close enough.’ And it’s like, ‘That’s not close enough. That’s your name. That’s something you should really take pride in, and you should correct people with, even if it is uncomfortable,’” she said. “That was the urgency with it, where I said, ‘Ok, this isn’t just something I’m going through, but now it’s something I see my students going through from ages 6-13.’ And then as I started to share the story with more people, so many adults said, ‘Wow, this happened to me,’ or ‘This happens to my child.’ Again, that prompted the urgency of we have to keep going with this.” Based on Benevento’s personal experiences, Philomena and the Name Game tells the story of Philomena, an Italian-Haitian-American fourth-grader, who is moving to a new school on the other side of town. She worries that her teacher and classmates will be unable to pronounce her name. Though some of her fears do come true, for the first time, her teacher takes the time to say her name correctly. The class is then assigned a project where they must explore the history and meaning of their names. “The story focuses on Philomena, but also all the students are now benefiting from digging deeper and speaking with family members to really understand and gain pride in their name,” said 18
EDUCATION
Philomena.
Benevento. “By the end of the book, she really starts to say, ‘Ok, I’m going to correct people, and this is how I’m going to say my name with confidence, and this is who I am without settling for a mispronunciation.’” Benevento started a company, Empire Orange Publishing (she said its mission is to “highlight and elevate voices that exist