In 2019, a Colorado teacher known to her students as Ms. Sailers left for winter break to get married and returned with a new name and an immediate sense of dread. She had gone from one safe, middle-school-appropriate surname to Mrs. Jordyn Glasscock, a change she quickly realized was less of a formality and more of a live comedy experiment.
“My husband was amazing and made it very clear he wouldn’t be offended if I didn’t want to take his last name,” Glasscock tells TODAY.com. “But I thought about it for a while, and it was really important to me that we have the same last name for our future kids.”
Not long after returning to school, she was standing at morning drop-off when a seventh grader approached her with a wrapped box. He proudly explained that he had bought her a gift with his own money “because you got married and changed your name,” Glasscock, 28, recalled in a TikTok video.
Red flags, she said, began going off immediately. In that moment, she was certain this was it — she was about to get fired, her career was over before it had really begun. She considered not opening the box at all. Then she lifted the lid.
Inside was a glass chicken, a gift that, in context, carried a second meaning she realized immediately.
“To this day six years later, this glass chicken sits on my desk,” she said in the clip. “It is the best thing I have ever received. I will cherish it for the rest of my life.”
At her current school, Glasscock says she’s sidestepped the issue altogether. For the past few years, students have known her simply as “Mrs. G,” rarely learning her full last name unless they stumble across it in the yearbook.
“Normally, at the end of the year, I have a bunch of kids running up to me giggling and being like, ‘That’s your last name?!’” Glasscock tells TODAY.
Her husband, Steven, had heard the jokes long before she ever did. Growing up, he was routinely teased, something he now says “made him stronger” and taught him to deflect ridicule with humor. It’s a survival skill the couple has already discussed passing along to their two daughters.
As for the origins of the name, it remains something of a mystery. The only concrete thread the family has been able to trace is a place called Glasscock County in Texas, the lone geographic connection that they have ever found.
In the first year of her marriage, she admits, it took time to grow comfortable saying “Glasscock” out loud. But these days, she just giggles along!
