To be so angry about this stupid English teacher!

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My daughter's just told me how her English teacher has corrected her on her spelling of apostrophe. Not a huge thing to get angry about except that my daughter's spelling it correctly and the teacher keeps telling her to spell it apostrophie! This is her English teacher, how on Earth is she supposed to respect and be inspired by this teacher.

I know it's quite a small this to get annoyed about but it's just really wound me up.

Ah, cardi said twat, I'm telling.

cardi That was a truly wonderful post.

I have a friend who is an authority on most things. He is working on all things atm.
It is simple, if somebody asks him something he'll do his best to come up with the answer, some how.

I know LaQueen. THe more you think about it the worse it gets. I'm thinking of having a page permanently open on my phone to confirm the spelling of embarrass and harass. I did it right then, I think...

morethan -Ta very much
I truly believe it, though. Nobody knows everything, and only one person is the most intelligent in the world! (Anyone know who it is? I could do with her help).

Do you want it again?

The way I remember it is to imagine somebody saying in a stage whisper, "Shhhh, be discreeeet". And the version without the long 'e' spelling, 'discrete', is a single 'e' because things which are discrete are separate, set apart from other things, squashed up in a corner on their own.

I can remember correcting my geography teacher about where the name for Milton Keynes came from - we were studying it for O-level (that dates me!). She said it was named after John Milton and Maynard Keynes.

She was not too happy when I asked if it was just co-incidence that a village called milton keynes was mentioned in the doomsday book and it just happened to be in the middle(ish!) of the new town (I lived nearby and a neighbour was involved with the planning so knew more about it and had certainly been to it more than she ever had).

She wasn't a very effective teacher - often taught us the wrong stuff or misread the syllabus so taught us all 3 of the 'learn one of these' options but missed out other compulsory bits. it was a boarding school - my housemistress was also the head of geography and one day I was having problems working something out so asked her for help, started chatting about what we were doing (I wasn't in her class) and she realised just a couple of months before the exams that our class was screwed as we hadn't been taught enough of the syllabus - she then organised make up sessions but it wasn't the same.

We also used to have a latin teacher that was very old and doddery - so when we had a vocab test we'd just write all the words and meanings down the side of the board, in a message box that started something like 'anybody want a kitten?' - she would write the test on the board and never noticed and would then wonder why we did so well on tests but never in exams.

LaQueen you should have introduced the teacher who said that dinosaurs lived alongside humans to your MIL

I'm like that with 'publicly'. I always feel it might be 'publically' .

When I was taking GCSE my lovely old gentleman of a history teacher spent two terms on the Napoleonic Wars. Not in the syllabus - he just liked them

DS1 had homework last year in Y3 that he had to 'think of great inventors like Einstein...'

I did go and ask the teacher exactly what Einstein had invented as according to most accounts he was a theoretical physicist who had made amazing advances in knowledge but hadn't actually invented anything per se.

She said she hadn't set the homework (it was one for the year, several classes in the year) but that they thought that Einstein was the best person to illustrate a mad inventor . So I then asked if she could clarify the homework and did she want ds to come up with his own invention as if he was an inventor albeit not Einstein. Or did she want him to come up with some theoretical physics like Einstein but not to come up with an invention - because if he did what the homework asked him to do (come up with an invention like Einstein) he wouldn't have to do anything because Einstein hadn't come up with any inventions...

Yup, I'm that mother

She gave in eventually and said that they would get it fixed for next year and to come up with an invention...

I also pointed out to DS1's Y2 teacher that the curriculum note that they sent out had a spelling mistake - in the line asking parents to practise spellings daily with their kids. Duly noted by the teacher who said she would tell the head of year who had written the leaflet - but then the next term another curriculum note was sent out - same line in it with the same spelling mistake in it. Pointed it out. And then yet again it came out in the summer term with the same mistake. At least his teacher appreciated the irony of the spelling mistake being in the line about practising spellings.

I suspect that when DS2 gets to Y2 next year they will still be issuing the same curriculum notes. With the same mistakes...

Zipzap

but hadn't actually invented anything per se.

Oh, you're lucky the teacher wasn't in the mood to be really awkward. Einstein-Szilard Refrigerator.

I know that I'm 54 and more than a tad intolerant at times, but some of these stories make me want to weep! Someone said that TAs are often young and less well educated than teachers. If they are not well enough educated to understand basic grammar what on earth are they doing in a classroom???

The cover supervisor who writes, "we was / we done" will be teaching my son until July 2014.

Oh, Anais

I guess it depends, moggiek. For me and my daughter with severe LDs, I thank the universe for the TAs she has, who may not be formally educated, but are deeply compassionate and kind, supportive people willing to take direction from a suitably qualified teacher, and who somehow manage to deal with challenging behaviour ranging from violence to toileting problems, while maintaining dignity and, yes, love, for the children they help.

I know this isn't the same as for everyone with children in mainstream, and I'm not trying to pull some kind of top trumps (I hate that), but I think it's important to bear in mind the priorities for different groups of children.

Well said, BOF. Perhaps wrong of me to generalise.

friday16 I just knew there was going to be some tiny thing that he invented

At least on wikipedia it says that they reckon he didn't do much of the inventing himself, it was more his partner and he did the theoretical and paperwork side of things...

And anyhow - it's not like he's really famous for that in comparison to his physics stuff... (that's my argument and I'm sticking to it ) They could have chosen so many people and yet they chose someone who is not really an inventor invented something really obscure with somebody else.

Thanks, Moggie- I wasn't trying to be holier-than-thou, just offering my own perspective.

This has just reminded me of the 6th form. We were all expected to give assemblies on a regular basis, which was a bit of a pain. Somebody in the year above had the bright idea of inventing a saint from the 10th Century who happened to provide quotes for exactly what you needed him to say without having to bother looking up for a real quote

He became quite the fixture and regularly featured in lots of assemblies, all the students knew who he was and he survived and was still being quoted a pretty long time after we left (according to a friend's younger brother at the school).

The teachers were all really perplexed that lots of the students were able to quote this one obscure saint but had no clue about any others. They never did find out - although somebody from the year above did end up going back to the school as a teacher so I guess she must have told them. or just carried on quoting him when she needed a convenient quote and smiling if any of the pupils quoted him!