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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:
GiserableMitt · 27/11/2011 04:46

It annoys the hell out of me to.

DD got a report card a few years ago where she scored 7 out of 6.

GiserableMitt · 27/11/2011 04:47

And I said "Fuck!" just at the moment I pressed Post and realised I'd written 'to' instead of 'too'. Blush

MmeBucket · 27/11/2011 05:09

Drives me batty, too. DD's teacher put that she was good at puzzels on her report card. She also doesn't appear to know how to use your vs. you're, and has sent several newsletters home talking about what they do on Monday's and Friday's. (That one particularly made my teeth hurt.) I do think that skwirel beats all those, though.

Solo2 · 27/11/2011 05:38

This also irritates me intensely. DTs are at a v academic school and DT1 is struggling with English. I recently went through his exercise book and found about 9 missed spelling mistakes, several grammar mistakes not corrected and the teacher's feedback - where he HAD marked DT1's book - used slang words. No wonder DT1 is struggling if he's not given feedback about where he's going wrong! According to the teacher (who I then saw at a Parents' Evening), he hadn't wanted to reduce DT1's confidence by picking him up on every single mistake - or rather, when I suggested this might be the reason to the teacher, so he could 'save face', he agreed.

I remember at age 4, 44 yrs ago now! - being very upset that a teacher told me I'd incorrectly spelled the word, "entomologist" (my career aspiration back then). She insisted it was spelled "entymologist" and even then I knew she was wrong. As this has stuck in my mind for 44 years now, it clearly affects children to be told they're wrong when in fact they're right. However, standards in spelling and grammar just seem to have nose-dived in the last 10 to 20 years.

SwedeHeart · 27/11/2011 05:42

YANBU and it is shocking. You need to let the head teacher know about the poor standard of "teacher" your child has.

mockingjay · 27/11/2011 05:55

Poor spelling is annoying. But I would certainly have told your DS off too HuntyCat, if he really worded it like that!! Disrespect is a far greater problem than poor spelling.

flyingspaghettimonster · 27/11/2011 05:59

Biscuit for huntycat; sorry, but no five year old speaks like that and most will happily believe the teacher over a parent... I find it irritating with spelling errors and wrongly marked maths, but have a hard time persuading my kids that Mommy and Daddy are right and teacher isn't.

DownbytheRiverside · 27/11/2011 06:40

YANBU I am a teacher, spelling errors by the teacher in the classroom are not acceptable for any reason.
Either you spell correctly, or you use a dictionary or spellcheck to support you and use it as a teaching point. My class all know that you never grow out of using a dictionary, they just get fatter.
If they spot a mistake that I haven't, the child gets a merit mark, if another adult points out any errors, I am grateful and change it. Everything I send home is proofread by two sets of eyes. I'm a very good speller and rarely make mistakes, but it matters.

DownbytheRiverside · 27/11/2011 06:46

'for huntycat; sorry, but no five year old speaks like that'

FSM, my daughter did and does talk like that. It used to get her into trouble in school until she learned how to phrase things more sensitively to protect the ego of the adult in question.
She still thinks like that, but fortunately the filters work unless she's tired or drunk. Smile

SwedeHeart · 27/11/2011 07:20

Oh dear,just read about Huntycat's precocious child. That REALLY needs to be hit on the head. (Behaviour, not child)...

DownbytheRiverside · 27/11/2011 07:25

Have you ever met a child on the spectrum?
They tend to find it very challenging to lie, or to recognise other people's emotions or not to say what they see. Truthful, often inappropriate in the eyes of the mundane world.
It takes a while to train them into social conventions, and for some it never becomes more than a thin veneer. But yes, most of us parents do try and 'hit it on the head' even if the child is correct, we can't have feelings hurt now can we?

DownbytheRiverside · 27/11/2011 07:26

Oh, and that is about my children, not Huntycat's. At 5 he hasn't learned to lie to please grownups. He will.

StealthPolarBear · 27/11/2011 07:27

PMSL at 7 out of 6, you must have been so proud.
One of the many reasons I am pleased with DS's primary school is that everything seems well writ Wink, including the newsletter put together unedited (as far as I can tell) by the older children

downbutnotout · 27/11/2011 07:32

YANBU. DD once brought home a picture of a "Camillian" (lizard) to colour in - give me strength.

Crabapple99 · 27/11/2011 07:53

Obviously teachers need to spell corrctly, even if they are dyslexic, whatever they show choldren needs to have been double checked and spell checked. Children with poor spelling can be very encouraged to see that teachers need to corrct their own spelling s too.

However, it has been well recognised that teachers' spelling can deteriorate over time .... we learn speeling largely by reading, and a teacher who has spent twently years reading incorrectly spelt words will have lost a lot of the spelling ability he/she had twenty years earlier.

runningwilde · 27/11/2011 07:53

That is so worrying. I would be spitting feathers - teachers should know how to spell. How on earth did that teacher get through teacher training? Or isn't spelling important in their training? A teacher who makes spelling mistakes like that has no place teaching children.

The head needs to do more than have a word!

runningwilde · 27/11/2011 07:56

I totally disagree with that statement crabapple - teachers do not lose the ability to spell correctly just because they see spelling mistakes. I edit a lot of writing in my line of work and if that were true I would not be able to do my job. If anything, I can spot poor spelling very easily.

DownbytheRiverside · 27/11/2011 07:57

That's very true, Crabapple99, and the reason I have my dictionary close at hand.

purplewednesday · 27/11/2011 07:59

I once had a letter sent home from the literacy team saying that DD needed extra help, but the letter they sent had multiple spelling and grammar mistakes.

They couldn't undertand why i was pissed off!

YANBU

DownbytheRiverside · 27/11/2011 08:00

Oh, how interesting!
Two very different opinions almost simultaneously. I can spot errors easily if proof reading adult work, but after a few hundred 'sed ' s and 'wos' s, my grip on reality can slip a little!
That's before we even get polysyllabic.

inmysparetime · 27/11/2011 08:08

I once had a running battle with a colleague at my day nursery, about a display board for children's "writting". I took the laminated word from the display, she put it back when I left the room. When she left the room, I took the word, cut it in half, and returned it so the offending "t" was covered by the overlap. When I left again, she restored it!
In the end I cut out the "t" and put it in my daughter's pocket as she went home.
My colleague complained to our bossAngry. Luckily, my boss can spell, and backed me up, laughing said colleague out of the office.
What really got me riled was her argument that "they're only little kids, it doesn't matter how it's spelt!" Angry
I just couldn't let it go after a comment like that.

Esta3GG · 27/11/2011 08:14

Why has spelling gone to pot?
When I was a kid (70s & 80s) spelling and grammar played a significant role in exams. We always knew that it would be ridiculous to lose marks over something as basic as spelling.
Is crap spelling no longer an issue in exams? Is this the curse of "spellcheck"?

Collision · 27/11/2011 08:19

The young teacher I worked with constantly asked me to scribe for her in class.

She had to ask if there were 2 p's in shopping, why there were not 2 p's in camping!! Her spelling was shocking!!

I cannot believe they can get a qualification in teaching when they cannot spell simple words!

DownbytheRiverside · 27/11/2011 08:22

I was teaching in the 80s, the focus on writing was very much on good grammar, spelling and punctuation. That has changed.
We used to communicate through speaking with our friends, text and internet didn't exist. If you wrote something, it was usually an essay or a letter if it wasn't a quick note. You did it by hand and not on a keyboard.
The informality of that written communication seems to be spilling into all other areas of writing; textspeak and indifference to correct spelling, and not reading what has been written to check for errors are usual.
It's all about speed now.

DownbytheRiverside · 27/11/2011 08:25

'I cannot believe they can get a qualification in teaching when they cannot spell simple words!'

Word processing hides poor spellers if they use the spell check facility.
All essays and coursework has to be typed. My DS is a weak speller, reading his coursework you would not know.