To expect a secondary school teacher to be able to spell? Warning; Long post!

[AddictedToRadley]

Please be gentle with me. If you disagree please say so (that's why I posted here after all) but please don't be rude or nasty as I'm a sensitive soul and take it to heart! Thank you for any/all opinions, they're really appreciated.

I'm genuinely interested in whether my fellow MNetters think I'm being a bit precious or if I'm right in thinking all teachers, especially secondary school teachers, should be able to spell and use good grammar?

My DNiece, 13, showed me her school planner last week as she was proud of the great comments she'd received from her teachers. To cut a long story short she is a troubled child after witnessing some dreadful DV in her younger years (thankfully nothing in past couple of years as her mum left her dad) and has had severe behavioural issues. She is now trying hard and knuckling down but has an educational age far below her real age and needs extra help.

Anyway one of her comments read 'X has been done some Amasing work today'. This is exactly as it read in her planner (X = her name). When I mentioned it to her she didn't think there was anything wrong with the sentence. Her mum wasn't too bothered, well I suppose it's the least of her problems considering the horrors she's recovering from and still occasionally faces, but still...

If a teacher's spelling, grammar and punctuation is that bad and he can't even spell well used, straight forward words then what hope is there for the pupils? Thankfully he is a Science teacher as opposed to an English Language teacher, but I would still have assumed an A Level in English was needed to teach in schools. This is a school with an excellent reputation and pupils travel a long distance, past many other good schools to attend.

So am I being a bit anal about the fact that a science teacher has bad grammar, punctuation and cannot spell words like amazing? Or should all teachers be expected to have good if not excellent English Language skills to be able to teach?

Sorry it's turned into a long post, it was meant to be short but I tend to ramble on!! Maybe I've had too many s for my birthday!

Crikey, I've got A-levels in Maths, Further Maths and Physics but you don't think I should be allowed to teach maths because I don't have A-level English? There is a difference between being able to spell (a reasonable expectation) and having A-level English.

Teachers have to pass literacy and numeracy tests before they qualify, part of which tests spelling.

My DDs' school sent out an e-mail about the "PTA Qiuz" to 2000 parents yesterday. I know it is just a typo but this was in the subject heading. Grrrrr.

Politely disagreeing with BettyDouglas.

The reports of baby-boomer generation Science and Maths teachers in the 80's and 90's were often riddled with errors, hence the sort of staff-room deals I mentioned. A particularly effective classroom teacher of Science in my school was notorious for writing nonsensical reports and it was a trial for him every term.

These reports also went through several filters before reaching parents. They were read by Heads of Year/House, a Deputy Head and the HT who each made a comment/summary. Even then it wasn't a foolproof system!

My salary, annoyingly, didn't rise on attaining a Masters degree and teachers who had been to a TT college were every bit as able as others in all aspects of the job.

My brother is a fantastic Science teacher - and he's Dyslexic.

Maybe we could all just be a bit tolerant? I'm sure it won't damage children to know that adults, even teachers, make mistakes sometimes.

Balia- and I'm sure he, like other dyslexics needs stuff to be spelled and written correctly to understand it, no?

I specifically asked a dyslexic poster on here, last time the "what about dyslexics?" argument came up, and she said that in her opinion (as a dyslexic teacher herself and mother of 2 dyslexic children) that they are the most pedantic of all, and with good reason, because they need written words to be correct.

I agree with Betty Douglas. I'm older than most of you I imagine, but was never taught English grammar until I became a TEFL teacher. In my secondary school we used to do 6 weeks of woodwork and metalwork followed by 6 weeks of English (lit). The letters my mother wrote to the press and the headmaster were the stuff of legend.

I think at secondary it's important not to discount someone who may be an excellent maths/science teacher purely because their English isn't up to scratch.

However, at primary, I don't want to teach alongside or have my children taught by teachers with minimum qualifications many of whom cannot cope with Y6 literacy and maths.

Instead of doing my PGCE I could have done a law conversion or gone into accountancy or management consultancy like many on my course did. I wanted to teach so I did a PGCE. I think it's important that teachers are there becaus ethey love it, not because it's the best they can do.

betty Yes indeed. The Science teacher who was so bad at writing a coherent report was also a brilliant Biologist who could get the subject across to pupils and his pastoral care was second to none.

Maybe it was many years spent with secondary teachers that made my exposure to primary teaching such a shock to me when my DC was young. I was frankly appalled by the poor standards of Maths and English shown by some staff. (Sorry, I can't quite bring myself yet to call it Literacy or even litrasee!) Mistakes I would make allowances for in a Biology teacher are not acceptable when a teacher is responsible for teaching primary pupils how to write.

And you're right that the love of teaching is essential. My nephew is an example of a graduate who found his degree led nowhere and did a PGCE as a fall back. It doesn't matter where one trains if you just don't 'get' teaching.

To expect a teacher to spell everything correctly 100% of the time is unreasonable.

But the garbage written in your niece's book is ridiculous. It's surely more than a typo, or a silly error when writing in a rush.

My most intelligent, engaging teacher at college had dyslexia - and he taught English! He couldn't spell some things and you know what? It didn't matter.

I disagree with 'poor spelling doesn't matter'. Even as a maths teacher I have to teach new words, such as 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' when looking at different types of data. If I knew I was poor at spelling, I would take measures to ensure that what was presented to the students was still spelled correctly, preparing lesson slides using a spell-checker and so on.

I can't draw, so when I know I've got a topic coming up which requires accurate diagrams, I pre-prepare far more than I do when teaching algebra.

I can't say 'I'm a maths teacher, I don't need to worry about spelling'. Literacy is a requirement across the curriculum from the kids, so why not the teachers?

A teacher on here on a thread I now forget writing about dropping standards wrote "grammer" the other day which made me laugh.

My children's teachers do not get spellings wrong. I don't know if that's because they are in the private system or not but we've been very lucky.

It should not be an effort or take time to get spellings and grammar right if you are well educated. It just comes naturally.

Are you sure it was the teacher and not the TA? I have often been refered to by kids as a "teacher" although I am not one! A few of my colleagues (TAs) have dreadful spelling, but they are brilliant at supporting kids in class, especially those with behavioural difficulties.

Certainly it would be great if all staff in schools had good ortography, but actually in a lot of subjects spelling etc isn't really all that important to pass GCSE. English and MFL are the only subjects where it is marked at GCSE, all other subjects to my knowledge focus the knowledge of the subject area, as long at something is legible phonically it's fine.

Perhaps YAB a little bit U. I mean, it was just a hurried comment in the planner, after all. If it was in an official letter from an actual English teacher maybe YANBU.

" English and MFL are the only subjects where it is marked at GCSE"

I think that 'spelling only matters if you're in an English lesson' is an appalling message to be sending the kids.

Yes, they won't be marked down for poor spelling in a maths test, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be corrected on it in lessons. And it certainly shouldn't mean that the teacher doesn't need to make the effort to spell correctly.

Only very recently Hissymissy - until last year I had three marks I could give for spelling, punctuation and grammar as a GCSE examiner and they could be the difference between pass or fail, an A or the A*.

Spelling does matter, as if one has to write letters when employed it looks unprofessional if the words are misspelled. If anyone is touting for my business, then they don't get it if words are misspelled either on a website or in a letter. It shows lack of attention to detail. If they can't get the basics right, why should I buy goods or services from them?

I'm hopelessly and irritatingly pedantic but I accept that mistakes are made, particularly in haste.

It is every teacher's responsibility to ensure pupils write accurately and correctly yet I accept that expertise in a subject is not necessarily an assurance that a teacher is a particularly good speller.

Where a word is specific to a subject then it is essential that the teacher knows how to spell that word. A History teacher should be able to spell 'monastery' and 'Parliament', for example, and should correct if pupils spell such words wrongly.

Not everyone can spell well. And not everyone can teach well. I'd say that being a good, inspiring teacher is so much more important than spelling.

However, I'd expect anyone to be able to use a dictionary if they knew their spelling wasn't up to much.

YANBU. This is why teaching needs to be returned to a better-paid and better-respected job, so that schools can have higher expectations of who is employed.

Am i ever going to recover from my their/there mistake made at 11.30 last night.... I fear not....

repeatedly reads over post of mistakes... :-(

FOR MISTAKES GRRRRR

second that olive

YANBU, I think they need to set a very good example. On the other hand I know some people who just can't spell. They are not in any way stupid or ill-educated, it is just that somehow spelling doesn't stick. I wouldn't hold it against them. Grammar is trickier - I think it matters, because you can't use language effectively without some sort of grammatical structure to underpin it, so that's what you teach when you model good grammar to your pupils, empowerment through language.

Perhaps I'm being precious and snobbish?

If you spell words wrongly, they may mean different things in some cases. And the meaning becomes nonsense. Like accept or except or plane and plain. Not good for science surely? And if you were a scientist and spelt precise scientific terms wrongly, surely that would be a disaster?

With a sentence that bad, I would assume a friend had written it and forged the signature. I used to forge parent signatures in other people's HM planners all the time. (But not my own because my mother was conscientious and signed it every damn week :o)

Personally I think the (written) English language could do with a complete overhaul. We should start from scratch and learn to spell words phonetically from one set of rules. Then we wouldn't have half the problems we have!

Ataturk did it with Turkish, why can't we?

I remember my homework being corrected for spelling (and grammar) in every subject. I was in a class of 36 girls.

Why do teachers no longer seem to do this? To not correct spellings (and grammar) suggests they are some sort of optional extra - nice if you can get it right, but not so very important.

Try telling that to employers.