Teacher marked correct work as incorrect

[MillionToOneChances]

This has been happening a lot lately, but today feels worse as the school's maths coordinator was taking the lesson. My DC had written that 36 was the square root of 1296. Maths coordinator marked it incorrect and said the correct answer was 936.

AIBU to be really frustrated? These incidents are really knocking his faith in school. I know he's a kid and the teacher is just a human being, but my DC does have form for being unfeasibly good at multiplication so a little faith wouldn't have gone amiss if it wasn't an easy sum for the teacher.

[sashh]

Merci

I though you were going to say sex change

[Thumbwitch]

Those teachers who cannot think outside of the answer in the book are problematic. Those teachers who cannot accept that the answer in the book is wrong are also problematic. And the inability to understand incorrect phrasing in a question is VERY problematic but seems to be increasingly common.

Merly - you should definitely send the HT Funky's suggested message!

Marci - that teacher as well - problematic.

[Thumbwitch]

Oops, meant to add:
Marci - false logic from that statement - better logic (but still inaccurate) would be "100% of men were once boys" but then that takes the probability aspect out of it as well as ignoring any transgender men around. Your DS should go far.

[teacherwith2kids]

Laughing over the probability one. I was doing an activity around very basic probability - certain, impossible, likely, unlikely. An example given as 'certain' was 'the sun will rise tomorrow'. Cue a HUGE diversion into how we could prove this (e.g. if it was very cloudy), eclipses, astronomy, and star death.

I do feel that a lot of a teacher's attitude in terms of teaching the very able, and their approach to 'not knowing things' comes out of a basic confidence / lack of confidence. An established teacher, who has generally good subject knowledge, will often have the confidence to say 'I don't know' or 'you show us' or 'let's learn together'. However a new teacher, or one who lacks confidence due to being very aware of their own limitations in subject knowledge, may well try to maintain 'control' through 'shutting down' discussion or trying to pose as 'always expert' - because they find challenge threatening and want to 'maintain their authority'.

[MillionToOneChances]

A sub AIBU aimed at teachers on the thread - AIBU to differentiate this homework for my DS as the teacher hasn't? too late - I already told him he could work out the area too, as long as he showed his workings properly

[Thumbwitch]

Which, I guess, could be counterproductive as it will show the more able children that the teacher is inflexible and unable to acknowledge that they are wrong - and the more able children will be less likely to listen to them after that?

[MillionToOneChances]

Marci, your son rocks

[teacherwith2kids]

Thumbwitch, I absolutely agree that it is counterproductive ... but it is very hard to tell a nervous young teacher that they WILL keep their authority if they admit their mistakes and acknowledge it when they find things hard....

The image of a teacher as 'fount of all knowledge' is quite hard to overcome - how we model for our children our response to e.g. a typo, a teacher's honest mistake (e.g. the multiplication mat linked to on this thread) is important here, as IMO a genuine mistake humbly acknowledged and learned from is FINE, a mistake tenaciously clung to and attempts at correction ridiculed is NOT.

[cornflakegirl]

Million have you seen the Alex Bellos book "Alex's Adventures in Numberland"? I'm reading it at the moment and really enjoying some of the origami maths. I'm hoping that my DS will find it similarly interesting.

[writtenguarantee]

To me, it would depend on why the teacher marked it wrong because little errors like that are fairly common in marking.

The nice thing about maths is that you can quite easily question the teacher about it and have a reasoned debate about the answer. If the teacher responds well to that, then that is a good start.

[FunkyBoldRibena]

The nice thing about maths is that you can quite easily question the teacher about it and have a reasoned debate about the answer.

The teacher marked the same answer right once and wrong once. Twins, you see. Twins. Two same answers - one marked wrong and one marked right.

[raltheraffe]

I had this when I was about 9 in primary school. We were doing fractions and multiplication and the teacher informed me that 1/2 x 1/2 was 1. I went home and told my mum the teacher is a wally. My mum said perhaps she misheard and thought I said 1/2 + 1/2 and I should go back the next day and ask her what 1/4 x 1/4 was. Teacher answered 1/2. My mum then thundered into school and removed me from the school and moved me to another one.
I think my mum did the right thing to be honest. It was not the first time there had been serious issues with the standard of teaching. The only thing that saddened me is I had some good friends at the first school who I lost touch with due to the move.