to correct the teacher.

[qazxc]

DD is three and in nursery.
Every month they learn about a different topic. This month it's "Antartica" .
I dropped off DD last week and the teacher was talking about how Antartica had : igloos and eskimos, polar bears, walruses, penguins, the north pole and santa.
As far as I know, antartica only has the penguins and is the continent where the South pole is? Should I say something (there are now pictures put up to depict the above, so I didn't misshear) or let it go (because DD is hardly likely to remember it / is more excited by christmas).

Sorry OP, haven't read FT, but it's not Antartica, it's Antarctica, isn't it?
Couldn' t read the thread since I got stuck there.
So, you are practically teaching your child a wrong thing too.

I think I would quietly point it out. Some children will be taking this in and others will already know it’s wrong. The latter might not be very subtle in pointing it out.

Changing the title to polar explorers or polar regions or something similar is probably the easiest way to sort it.

No. It's nursery. The children won't remember those facts

That's not really the point though, is it?

Insancerre, primary teacher and nursery teacher are two different job roles. Not everyone working in a nursery has qualified teacher status for a start and cannot work in primary school settings.

Not proper teachers?How rude! I suppose as long as we keep telling ourselves that then we won't have to recognise the important work that these ' not proper teachers' actually co Because if we did recognise it, then we would have to start paying them a teacher's wage

But they aren't proper teachers. In that they are not teachers at all. They don't need degrees and teaching postgrads. It is important work, yes, but that doesnt mean you can just call them something they are not.
And if they make such poor teaching mistakes as in the OP.....

So, tell me the difference then
In which way are the nursery staff not teaching?

The difference is that teachers are teachers and nursery staff are not. One has a teaching degree and one doesn't.

Insancerre, the clue is in age of the children they are working with.

I think you should say something. It's not acceptable that the staff planned a topic without consulting a single reference book or even having a quick google. I think they need to know that standards should be higher. Surely It's not acceptable that the average untrained 16 year old could put together a better topic than people with qualifications and training?

So then only difference is that nursery staff teach younger children?
Still teaching though, so that does make them teachers

No, the difference is they are not teachers.

I teach my children every day, I am still not a teacher.

If the clue is in the age of the children their working with, does working with nursery children wipe out the value of your teaching degree? Even if your degree is the qualification that entitles you to work as a nursery teacher?

A nursery TEACHER is a TEACHER. They won’t be calling themselves that if they’re not. Staff might not be teachers and might be early years practitioners, teaching assistants, nursery nurses and so on, but if they call themselves teachers they will have QTS.

Nursery staff have qualifications called Early Years Educator and Early Years Teacher
They assess and plan for children, they write reports and identify when additional support is needed
They plan lessons and set targets to move children on from their starting points following a curriculum
How is that not teaching?

Another one who is more bothered by AntArtica...

Before the nursery teachers/practitioners/staff get any more of a bashing I have seen primary teachers make this mistake before.

It’s a surprisingly common misconception that polar bears and penguins live in the same areas.

Who cares what a persons job title is. Presumably the person is human & has feelings!
Speak with them if you think it is helpful but if it is to make yourself feel superior I would not bother.
Clearly teacher or not you are happy for them to care for your children in your absence

I'm not sure what qualifications the lady in question has, but we 're in Ireland so it wouldn't be the same as the uk.
I call her teacher as this is how she refers to herself, gets the kids to call her... So it wouldn't occur to me to describe her job title as anything else iyswim.

Some nursery teachers have an Early Years Teaching Degree and are qualified to teach 3-7 year olds (so could teach KS1). Some are actually nursery assistants and will have far more basic qualifications and have studied childcare rather than have a teaching qualification.

Its only relevant to the OP because some people working in nurseries are child care professionals - held to account for how well they provide care and trained to do so, but not trained for as long or in the same depth or covering all the same subjects as teachers. Also paid even less of course.

Teachers would be expected to have a higher level of subject knowledge and take more responsibility when actually teaching the children factual knowledge, on top of doing the work nursery assistants do too of providing physical and emotional care and guiding the children as they learn self care skills, become aware of social norms and developing their emerging sense of self etc.

Nursery Assistant and Early Years teacher are two important, overlapping but ultimately distinctly different jobs with different levels of responsibility. Arguably a nursery assistant shouldn't be judged for subject knowledge about polar bears and indigenous communities in Antarctica, whereas if a teacher chose to teach that topic they should be.

Plenty of parents call all nursery workers "teachers" (or equally don't call any of them teachers even if some are qualified teachers) and don't know who has what qualification. It certainly used to be possible for a nursery not to employ any qualified teachers as long as the ratios were right (nursery assistants couldn't be responsible for as many children).

Many languages do have a word for the important educational role that nursery staff and main care giver/ parents carry out, which is distinct both from "teacher" and from "nursery nurse"/ assistant/ carer. Usually when done as a paid job rather than for ones own children its a role requiring substantial training but doesn't need a teaching degree, and the person doing the job might be assisted by less well qualified helpers.

Its something along the lines of educator but reflects the fact that the work is about bringing up the child with the ideal aim of becoming a self reliant, healthy, contented and useful human and member of society (guiding them to develop self care skills, self awareness, awareness of others as individuals and of the community, awareness of social norms and expectations of behaviour etc. etc) more than teaching them to read, write, add up, or develop and apply academic subject knowledge etc.

Its a pity the word doesn't really exist in English. It would be useful.

The nursery my eldest child attended was lovely. Homely, friendly, and the ladies in his room loved him and he thrived. But they couldn't spell 5 letter words and they also would have thought that penguins and polar bears and santa all lived in the same place.
They were not by any stretch of the imagination teachers. That does not mean we did not value highly what they did. Same for my youngest child, though they can at least spell.

CheapSausagesAndSpam

No. It's nursery. The children won't remember those facts.

Firstly, they are not facts.
Secondly, the teacher is wrong and children deserve correct information.