To expect good grammar from a year three teacher?

[MrsFC]

I live in zone four of East London, and while I am originally not from that area and have a different accent, DC, DP, CM, exDH and all DC's friends do, and have a fairly pronounced East London accent.

Now: I have NOTHING against an accent from anywhere in the country, I really don't. But I DO have issues with the bad grammar that can sometimes come with it, for example:

'we done this at school today Mummy'
'Where is the book we was reading Mummy'
'I didn't eat nuffink for lunch today'

I have spent the past five years patiently correcting DC and explaining basic correct grammar to him. I also explain that while lots of the grown ups he knows speak incorrectly, he must not correct them, but must listen to how his teacher and I speak. I am lucky in that he is a competent and avid reader and so I have been encouraging him to read Harry Potter books to try and instill it in him further (top tip - if you want your son to read Harry Potter, buy the Lego DS Game - it worked for me!)

Anyway - I digress. I went to pick up DS from school yesterday and they came out of a different gate.When we found them his new teacher said to me:

'I'm sorry you wasn't told'

I was taken aback and mentioned it to another Mum friend of mine with a child in the same year(I could only mention it to this one friend as the other Mums probably wouldn't have noticed TBH). She smiled and said I was being a bit snobby.

What do you think? And what would you do, if anything?

I do find that appalling. I wonder whether she even has an awareness of what she is saying wrong, and if so, does she care about it? It could be that she has carefully trained herself out of such grammatical errors and this one occasion was a lapse that she noticed and regretted immediately. Remember that thread recently about 'stupid things you or someone else has said' - I can imagine her fessing up on a teachers' website about how she accidentally splurged out with 'sorry you wasn't told' in front of a parent and all the other teachers laughing and joining in with similar stories...

I've just remembered that sketch (was it Smack the Pony?) where the headmaster comes into the primary classroom and the teacher is singing the ABC song to the class, but then he realises she's singing ABCDEFG over and over again, and it turns out she doesn't know the rest of the alphabet. It's a lot funnier that it sounds.

My DS's teacher marked a correct spelling as incorrect. He told her he did not think she should be teaching.

She said he thought that out of him and her he was the cleverest.

He said no the cleverer because you cannot use the superlative unless there are more than two.

He can learn anything except tact.

I think encouraging a child to correct a teacher's speech is potentially problematic so would steer clear of doing that. As it is something that upsets you I think the fairest course of action is to raise your concern with the Headteacher.

The issue of display lettering and letters home may be slightly different; both appear on the list of 24 tasks that teachers are not meant to do. This often means that admin staff or support staff (who won't necessarily have been appointed for their spelling/grammar skills) will produce display labels and letters home. Personally, I do my own displays because it matters to me that the spellings etc. are correct and I have clear ideas about how I want work to be displayed. In my previous school I rewrote all the standard trip/new year/school journey/sports day letters and gave them to the admin staff to use so that I knew they weren't going to embarrass us.

Actually I think "I have done it"' would be a perfectly valid response to a question. It is not a complete sentence but who talks in complete sentences all of the time?

WE send kids off to become primary teachers who barely scrape any A levels (who often barely scrape at C at GCSE to be honest).

We also have generations of students who have been taught in primary school that 'a lot' is one word.

Can't wait until DS goes to school!

Although will not be telling him to correct an adult. My mum told me that that was rude.

Would have irritated me beyond measure and I would probably have corrected her there and then. With a comment that I would hope her grammar was better in the classroom!

Am a grumpy cow though :)

I think it´s very sad that OPs friend thinks it´s snobby of OP to have noticed.

When is talking correctly being a snob?

This would really annoy me. I don't know how I'd tackle it though. I'm not sure what can be done to help, apart from the Head keeping her behind after school for remedial lessons! I think perhaps I'd just try and turn it into a conversational topic with your son on the way home... like you say, at least he's spotting the errors!

It absolutely should not be this way, though.

Thing is, though, estuary English is a regional dialect. Would you tell a liverpudlian teacher that she must speak the queens English at all times when in the classroom.

Written spellings and grammar are another kettle of fish- these should of course be faultless standard English and teacher should be guiding your kids towards this.

I don't know- I think if you live in an area with a strong accent/dialect, you have to accept that your kids might end up speaking like that. If you speak "well" at home that will be an influence too.

although Primary school is aprofessional environment it is much less formal than university, secondary school or workplace, and the teacher will be talking for most of the day- it is unrealistic to ask her to abstain from using her regional dialect.

sallyseton, "I have done it" is not only a valid response but also a complete sentence

"I´m sorry you wasn´t told"

Is there a dialect that says that then?

I'm sure you're right quiddity! I have multiple academic qualifications in English and have completed many modules on the English Language, some of them really quite compex. still forget the basic grammatical terminology and rules though. can you tell I'm part of the Thatcher generation- she did away with grammar lessons in schools.

You could write to the head to ask if the children are taught to differentiate between standard English, (I did it) and regional dialects/slang (I done it).
Is part of the National Curriculum to be able to do so.

Estuary English. South-East dialect. Unfortunately has a bad rep but is as much of a dialect as Liverpudlian. Tis very new and exciting for linguists.

I get your point sallyseton, but it is important that, regardless of regional dialect, children learn to recognise that there is a time and a place for using different registers. For example, more formal (and grammatically correct) English should be used in a job interview than might be used at home.

I'm Scottish and I use my regional dialect when talking to my friends, but wouldn't use it in the classroom or when talking to a parent. Regional dialect does not equal grammatically incorrect. My accent is also much stronger outwith the classroom, but the important thing is I know when each type of speech is appropriate.

Not excusing the Y3 teacher at the gate but SE13 is right about the majority (should be all but I too produce all my display labels, this is to avoid religious terms not being typed correctly) of display work and newsletters are not produced by teachers. The 24 tasks came into effect a few years ago now so are often the work of the admin team at the school.

Hmm, Sally - much as I come from a descriptive linguistics background, I agreee with rotb and think that Standard English (or, say, Standard Scottish English in Scotland) is the appropriate register for the classroom, as it teaches children which register to use in a formal setting. Accent is a different matter, naturally.

DS's teacher last year in Y1 had a strong Kentish Estuary dialect. eg "You was right about that, Mrs Taffeta!"

Bovvered? Nope. She was a great teacher and DS not only adored her but did extremely well.

DS knows how he is expected to speak at home though.

roomonthebroom - growing up in Liverpool, we briefly had a Scottish nun teach us in primary school. Cue much mutual confusion when doing homophones.

:o @ habbibu

I love the Liverpool accent and spend a whole term teaching Blood Brothers where I spoke with a Liverpudlain accent most of the time, as did all the kids who read parts in the play.

is speaking to a mum at the school gate really that posh an occasion for you to get your knickers in a twist about a regional dialect? so long as the kids aren't writing it as well, what does it matter?

she was using good grammar btw, it had its own rules, just wasn't standard English

don't get me started on split infinitives and the whole 'english is based on latin' load of crap basis for inventing rules like that grrr

Ironically, I moved to Scotland aged 20, and love so many accents here - esp DH's which is particularly nice, and dd's nascent Fife accent.

I would get much more exercised about non-standard grammar used by a teacher in writing than in speech, but I think I'm with Habbibu, surely it would be very difficult to teach children to write "You were right", if you are saying "You was right" - a consistent set of "School English" has got to be desirable.

I have been known to go through letters sent home from school, correct the spelling and grammar (in red ink), and send it back the next day with a note asking for the corrections to be made before sending me another copy.

YADNBU.

makes you think about languages where the written and spoken forms are really different. Can't think of any off the top of my head - Norwegian, maybe?