etiquette - How to deal with an inappropriate greeting in an email?

I'm relatively new to teaching (I was just hired as a tenure-track English professor at a local community college and have been teaching for just about 2 years). I recently received an email from a male student (he is in his mid-50's), and he addressed me as follows:

A great morning to you my dear lass,

Now, the email was complimentary. He thanked me for teaching a great course and said that he learned a lot in my class (all of these things are nice to hear). He has, at times, been difficult to teach (he questions academic conventions regarding basic essay structure, such as not beginning or ending a body paragraph with a quote), but he eventually concedes and makes the necessary adjustments (I am teaching a developmental writing course).

Usually.

I was just a little surprised by his choice of greeting. I am not overly familiar with my students, and I am not young (I am a divorced, 40-year-old woman). I like this student, and I am unsure of how to address this (or if I even should...) situation without causing offense. I feel certain he didn't mean to sound condescending and sexist, but... I also feel certain that if I was a 40-year-old male professor he would not have began his email with "A great morning to you my dear lad."

I would really appreciate any advice concerning how to address this issue. Additionally, I am teaching a combo course, and we just completed the first half, so he will continue to be my student for another 8 weeks.

Answer

Personally, I would address it in a friendly way, but one that makes it clear that you think it's a bit of an odd form of greeting. It doesn't sound like it was intended in an unfriendly or disrespectful way (and I definitely wouldn't characterise it as sexist), but it does sound inappropriately overfamiliar (it would be a bit like one of my students starting an email to me with "Dude! ...").

The easiest way to deal with it, to my mind, is just to send a fairly normal-sounding (but obviously more formal) email back, and mention it in passing in a friendly way at the end. For example:

Dear ,

Many thanks for your email - really glad to hear that you've been learning a lot from the course. It's been good to see the improvements in your essay structure since the start of the course - I'm hoping that you'll be able to solidify those improvements over the next 8 weeks.

Kind regards,

p.s. Just a friendly piece of advice - whilst I'm not generally too fussy about people addressing me formally, I think I should probably steer you away from things like "my dear lass", not least because some people if addressed that way might take it the wrong way and get offended. I'm fine with people calling me by my first name (if the OP actually is), but I think that's stretching things too far.