to be fed up with correcting teacher's spelling mistakes

[dealer]

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?

Look at the frequent poor spelling and grammar on this site, despite the fact that spelling mistakes are usually underlined with red. Why don't people go back and correct the mistake before pressing post?

YANBU!

Some teachers and TAs cant spell at all and dont get me started on punctuation!!!

Take it to the HT.

Goodness, i was worrying about ds' teacher. But this one. Shocking!

Ds gets so many mistakes in his reading book and the grammar is poor. Well, for a teacher it's really poor.

Glad you complained. Still not sure what I'm going to do. I'm hoping that they are just careless mistakes when she's tired. We'll see.

Agree with downbyriver -informality and laziness is spilling over in other writing.

Dob them in. Really. I can't be doing with sub-literate teachers. " Oooh they're so good with the little ones". Pah. Children deserve literate staff who are good with the little ones.

You see? That should be "judgey".:o

I agree and simply don't believe the 'skwirel' incident. That deserves a

I also think Becaroooo should have spent more time making sure the punctuation in that last post was spot on perfect before slagging off teachers and TAs. There's irony for you

I haven't noticed it in 27 years as a mother. Is that because I pay school fees? I hope not or perhaps we've just been lucky.

Those who can't spell should look things up. My older daughter is slightly dylexic so makes sure everything is very carefully checked. If she can't look a word up in a dictionary because she cannot spell something she asks someone. However at a school you want to maintain people's good will so I suppose the difficult issue would be how to draw it to their attention (do not let it pass) without upsetting them?

Apostrophes, tricky little blighters.

I point out errors politely and constructively, just as I would with a child.
If they get upset and offended, they are on shaky ground.
Why should I let a mistake go past at work just because the individual is over 18?

Well I haven't noticed it in more than 27yrs as a mother with state education Xenia. I don't see how she could qualify so I have a huge problem believing the squirrel one-if it is true complain to the Head.

(Just on a separate note I hate to be addressed as 'teacher', it is like sending home the reading diary with 'mother, please......)

We are living with the "spell check" generation!

Except for forums like this which don't have one and highlight all our errors!

People make mistakes but I would have thought that it was commonsense (seeing as I do it!) to always have a dictionary tab open and shove a word in if you are unsure - it ususally auto corrects.

I am the worlds worst typist anyway - quite frequently produce mis-spelt warblings that woudnt happen if I were using a pen - because I cannot read large volumes of text on a screen.

Like most of us, I've seen some pretty dire missives from teachers. The A Level science teacher who is so dysexic I can't make head nor tail of his emails. The A Level English teacher who writes banal pieces, switching tense and leaping from third to first person that it becomes the whitterings of a fool!

The office ladies have to proof read every school report before its sent out - thats what I call bad!

OP could you take a picture of the skwirel and put it on your profile so the debate can be put to rest?

I hate spelling mistakes too and I agree with whoever said it's down to spellchecker. It's obviously easy to spell correctly when using a computer, although phones are a bit funny with their autocorrect feature on them.

Flyingspaghettimonster - I absolutely would've done what huntycat's DS did! Some DCs really are that annoying precocious :o

YANBU OP. Not everyone is good at spelling, that's fine with me (although presumably if education had been better in the first place this wouldn't happen so much) - my DH is terrible at it (not dyslexic AFAWK, he is a highly skilled reader as well. But he always asks or uses the dictionary if he's unsure, and accepts with grace when I point out an error.

Poor spelling doth not a crap teacher make - they could be perfect in every other way. I wouldn't want a wonderful inspirational teacher to be sacked because they found one area difficult. Same with maths (and I'm a total maths geek so it takes a lot for me to say that). And in response to somebody's Facebook comment earlier, I don't really care how teachers write or spell elsewhere - most people can switch between formal/informal language when needed.

BUT. Don't they have literacy and numeracy tests during PGCE year to flag up any difficulties? I've seen many books in the library about cramming for passing them. I don't think an otherwise brilliant PGCE student should be told to fuck off if they find it difficult, but surely they can be shown how to check things when they're not sure!

I'm with Huntycat on the correction though. Similar happened when my son was Y3 - a child corrected the teacher and was known and addressed as cleverclogs or smartypants for the rest of the year by the teacher never by his name

We work as a team in my school, they all help me out with my areas of weakness and I'm grateful for the support.
No room for lots of posturing egos in our staffroom.

I train teachers (amongst other things).
I also make it clear to them that their spelling must be impeccable if they are to have any credibility at all.
In this case, I would bring it to the attention of the head.

The errors mentioned in the OP are awful. If a teacher is not good at spelling, they should keep a dictionary/smart phone with them at all times so that they can be sure they don't teach their mistakes to small children!

If they can't spell they should use dictionaries and spell-check - and parents should insist (in Britain) that the spell-check is set to British English, not US English.

Troisgarcons I expect you mean dyslexic but who's counting?

That wouldn't be tolerated in my school, Triosgarcons.
Teacher would be pulled up on it if it ever happened.

Amazing and terrifying! What strikes me as most worrying is an apparent sense of infallibility, or a perceived need to maintain an impression of this, on the part of the teachers mentioned. Yet they are not doing the work necessary to underpin this, by recognising their weakness and putting tactics in place to deal with it e.g. a dictionary and a bit of checking in advance.

All professionals have strengths and weaknesses and the smart ones recognise and accommodate this. Working in an office we got to know who was good at grammar, punctuation and knowing the right terms for things, just as we knew who was good at spreadsheets and IT stuff. We asked each other for help - not so hard - because we all recognised it was important to communicate clearly and reflected on the organisation. Isn't the staff room a good place to do the same?

I'm quite skwepticall about the squirl myself...

Our teachers are fine at spelling. I do object to management speak in letters home to parents, though. 'Moving forward this year, we are rolling out our reception initiative to all year groups'....