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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to be fed up with correcting teacher's spelling mistakes

321 replies

dealer · 26/11/2011 23:13

No doubt I will now write a post riddled with spelling mistakes, but I'm not teaching small children in my defence.

I accept, no-one can spell everything, and I would not be surprised if a teacher had to look up stationary/stationery for instance. But I'm really fed up with ones that I would expect children to be able to spell turning up in homework/letters/displays. And I feel compelled to correct them.

Recently we've had Antartica, in huge coloured letters on a display. Got me a very grumpy response since he then felt he had to change it. We've had a work sheet home with Autum on. My son asked for barbecue/barbeque in his spelling book (not sure how to spell it myself) but I think the teacher writing bar-b-q is a bit out of order. And the latest one is the teacher correcting squirl to skwirel on homework. I wrote on it in red 'teacher please correct correctly', possibly a bit snotty of me but I'm getting fed up of it.

Do other people get this? And do they get annoyed? Or AIBU?

OP posts:
echt · 28/11/2011 18:02

StopRainingPlease I'd copy that the HT. Very unprofessional.

Popbiscuit · 28/11/2011 18:16

"OK, Smartypants". Shock

I posted on this thread when it started on Saturday and very coincidentally opened my kindergarten son's corrected letter "N" homework yesterday where the teacher had written "Nifety!"

I have corrected it and sent it back.

I feel horrible but "nifty" really is not a difficult word to spell, is it?

aldiwhore · 28/11/2011 18:20

I'm not a pedant at all and haven't the best spelling or grammar, but if I have to send one reply slip back to school, not only with a bloody cheque for the correct amount but with one more correction of FARTHER CHRISTMAS I think I may come over all perculiar! (I feel I have made a few mistakes here in my rage).

breadandbutterfly · 28/11/2011 19:20

DownByTheRiverside - I agree with you that getting students to spell hard words could be a good strategy for teaching and/or testing them - but in this case, it was always just my dd who was asked (she was top at English in the class). Same dd, aged 6 or 7 Shock in year 2 was used as stand-in teacher by the class teacher (a different teacher I should add), who was apparently busy marking books or something and told the pupils to get on with their work, but if they had any questions, to ask my dd! Whilst obviously I am pleased dd was recognised as being good at English, I don't think she was quite ready to stand in for the class teacher at that age!! Shock

Some really appalling stories coming out here...

breadandbutterfly · 28/11/2011 19:24

Oh, and on my teaching course, the teacher trainer wrote 'catagories' on the board in large letters in front of a classful of students, with a classful of trainee teachers observing at the back. We all debated amongst ourselves whether to correct her in front of the class of 'real' students and bottled out. Blush

jandymaccomesback · 28/11/2011 20:01

Sorry CT = Class Teacher

winterreise · 28/11/2011 20:27

Disagree. One of my children's teachers made lots of spelling mistakes but was a wonderful, enthusiastic, caring teacher who enriched the lives of all his pupils. Does a teacher (or anybody else) need to be 100% perfect at everything?

BabyGiraffes · 28/11/2011 20:35

winterreise Near 100% perfect at spelling, yes. I expect my dd's teacher to be all those things and also be able to spell. Thankfully she is. My own primary teacher was very very nice but refused to correct spelling mistakes because she did not want to upset her little darlings.... Hmm Truth was she had no clue herself.

bemybebe · 28/11/2011 20:43

eh, near 100% perfect at spelling? yes, actually...

Popbiscuit · 28/11/2011 22:28

Was going to say exactly that, Giraffes and Bemybebe. Absolutely YES to perfect spelling in a teacher. Non-negotiable.

echt · 29/11/2011 06:06

I hate to see the bar lowered to "great person but shit at an essential part of their job". No, they're not great, they should be good at it all.

You wouldn't accept this from a surgeon.

High standard of academic qualifications, good at relating to people, good at teaching their subject, excellent grammar, punctuation and spelling. Not too much to ask, is it?

LindyHemming · 29/11/2011 07:06

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

exoticfruits · 29/11/2011 07:23

I would agree that a teacher has to be 100% perfect with spelling-otherwise DCs would be putting him/her right. I can't really believe the 'skwirel' one because DCs would be laughing at it.

clam · 29/11/2011 08:38

I'm in the situation at the moment where I'm teaching alongside a lovely, lovely NQT, who admits to being rubbish at spelling. She makes every effort to overcome this, but frequently produces homework sheets for both classes which have errors on. Being a bit of a pedant, I simply cannot bear for them to go out in my name, but I'm also a bit of a wuss and I've therefore often had to correct them, sneak off to the photocopier and reprint 60 copies without her noticing as I don't want to hurt her feelings. The nearest I've got is to suggest we go through the draft copy together first and make any changes we want, before copying them.

moonbells · 29/11/2011 08:45

Some things never change. I remember having a spelling notebook at junior school, and the teacher correcting my usually to usally.

Mother steamed into school...

WowOoo · 29/11/2011 08:52

Clam, tell her you are going to spell check stuff for her. Suggest that you give her a copy of things you've corrected so she can learn them. In a nice way, of course?!

echt · 29/11/2011 09:11

clam, my point entirely. How can someone be lovely in a job but shite at one of its basic requirements?

Can anyone tell me of another job where this is acceptable?

lottiegb · 29/11/2011 09:18

It's fine for a teacher to be naturally bad at spelling, so long as they have a strategy for overcoming this and don't present wrongly spelt words to their pupils, or worse, pretend to be all-knowing and overrule corrections.

Clam, your counterpart clearly is not making every effort to overcome her problem. If she was, she'd check the worksheets properly, perhaps keep a notebook of commonly used words she finds difficult and would be coming to you herself for final proof-reading before printing. You need to tell her, gently, or she won't improve - and what a waste of paper, printing 60 worksheets twice.

I've realised from DP's poor spelling and punctuation that reading a lot (he always has), good spelling and sense of language are not necessarily related. His mother, a former primary teacher, explained it - something to do with how you see words and relate letter combinations to sounds. My Dad is dyslexic and always checks everything, he won't send an e-mail he hasn't checked and is very disparaging about people who are careless.

ZZZenAgain · 29/11/2011 09:21

I agree with echt. It is an essential part of the job. It seems this is a fairly widespread problem. How do we go about addressing it effectively? If it is just left to individual parents (and children) to tell teachers about mistakes they make, I think the whole problem will just continue to grow. The next generation of teachers won't be spelling better than the people who taught them presumably unless something happens to change things.

cory · 29/11/2011 09:25

"Disagree. One of my children's teachers made lots of spelling mistakes but was a wonderful, enthusiastic, caring teacher who enriched the lives of all his pupils. Does a teacher (or anybody else) need to be 100% perfect at everything?"

If the teacher is in charge of teaching spelling and setting spelling tests- as primary school teachers are- then that would seem desirable. What would you think of a maths teacher who is lovely and enthusiastic and caring but can't count? Or a French teacher who is absolutely charming, her only weak point being her French?

The problem with a primary teacher who is poor at spelling is that the children in her class will be devoting week after week to memorising incorrect spellings.

echt · 29/11/2011 09:48

Part of the problem has been successive government attitudes towards teaching. In a crisis, the "Mum's Army' and "bring in the real Army" have been seriously proposed to solve the country's educational problems.

I'm not saying all mums and squaddies are thick as shite, but really, they're never proposed to, say, solve the waiting lists in the NHS, are they?

Of course not.

In the end, teaching is not esteemed as a job, witness its tragically low entrance qualifications. That's why it attracts the "Ooh, I like children, me" brigade. Liking children is a start but it's not enough.

Raise the level of qualification, and the pay, and you'd be beating away the well-qualified entrants with a shitty stick, as my dad used to say.

FantasticVoyage · 29/11/2011 10:00

If OFSTED was any use at all, then parents could shop illiterate teachers to them.

Instead, we have a bunch of box-ticking wankers who come up with bizarre decisions. My DD's nursery has been marked down from 'Outstanding' to 'Good' because there were allegedly not enough activity items in the playground - truth is that they were in storage because it was tipping down with rain on the day of the inspection. Angry

Dawndonna · 29/11/2011 10:08

I would expect a teacher to be near 100% with regard to spelling, it's a fairly basic requirement and he/she is purported to be educating my child. Having said that, in the dds school (high school) there is a teacher with dyslexia. She is an extremely good teacher and has informed the class that they are welcome to challenge any spellings. It's a high school, kids have been informed, fair enough.

echt · 29/11/2011 10:10

I feel for you Fantastic.

I had a lesson graded unsatisfactory because a child was off-task, i.e.chatting. I dealt with the matter, they got on-task. I was failed because my lesson should have engaged the child in the first place.

The other engaged 29 children were as nothing in the eyes of OFSTED.

echt · 29/11/2011 10:12

dawndonna what subject does the teacher teach? With my literacy across the curriculum hat on, I'm not too impressed with I'm shit at that, me, no matter the reason.