To think teachers should be able to spell

[Brieandcamembert]

I have increasingly noticed recently teachers (often of primary age) who make very basic spelling and grammar errors. Surely having excellent basic skills in this area is an essential criteria for teaching it?

I'm really concerned that we are raising a generation who will have appalling literacy skills.

I have seen the classic "of / have" confusion
I have seen "been" used instead of "being"
I have also seen phonetically similar words interchanged with one another.

Yeah it's really not great when half the kids know better than the person who's supposed to be teaching them. My yr9 dc has had this in secondary school lessons (not SPaG related) - where teachers have just taught things or given information which is blatantly wrong!

I'm a primary teacher, and it drives me a bit scatty when teachers release things to the parents with spelling and grammar errors!

What happened to proof reading?!

Spelling errors jump out at me everywhere though. I think that's partly my ADHD coming into play as well.

Who exactly was it who suddenly decided to dump SPaG and declare it unimportant? More to the point, why did other people go along with it and not simply laugh in their face?

Neither do the caretaker or the dinner ladies or the woodwork teachers.

Nice to see how you have dated yourself and how you have no clue about the current curriculum.

Does the current curriculum no longer allow for maintenance and cleaning staff, the children to be able to eat at school or for design and practical skills to be taught, then?

Maybe that's why nobody cares about SPaG now, if their minds are preoccupied with being hungry and working in dirty, broken buildings.

Spelling errors jump out at me everywhere though. I think that's partly my ADHD coming into play as well.

I don't have ADHD, so can't comment on that element; but I think it's largely a sign of intelligence and education. They always say, when it comes to people whose jobs are to spot forgeries and fakes, that, rather than just focusing on all the many possible tricks and imperfections that might mark out the counterfeits, if you study and learn perfectly what the real thing looks like, all deviations from that will be instantly obvious to you.

Spelling errors jump out at me and I have ADHD (diagnosed). I don't think it's a sign of intelligence.

In my case, in sea of being put down and dismissed as a lazy underachiever and still not knowing my times tables, it was something to cling on to that I could do.
I was ridiculed for not knowing my times tables, not being able to do simple arithmetic in my head (still can't) and being crap at sports, so I had to find solace in something I could do reasonably well (SPaG).

Spelling errors jump out at me too. With me, it's something to do with pattern recognition. I don't actually read the page, I just kinda scan it for patterns I've never seen before.

We can stop for seconds at a sign - like, the terms and conditions at a car park - and as we drive away, I'll say, "You'd think they'd be able to spell 'lorries'. They had 'lorrys'."

And my kids'll say, "How do you do that?"

It's not necessarily a sign of intelligence. I mean, I can do that, but it takes me a few seconds to work out my left from my right. And even then I often get it wrong.

This is a real bug bear for me. DD's teacher taught them similes and metaphors the opposite way around, so that's a whole class of 30 kids not knowing what a metaphor or simile is, obviously I corrected DD but the teacher marked her work as wrong 🙄.

That's something I picked up on, are there other things I haven't picked up on that are now a gap in my daughter's education?

@MoniJitchell

This is a real bug bear for me. DD's teacher taught them similes and metaphors the opposite way around, so that's a whole class of 30 kids not knowing what a metaphor or simile is, obviously I corrected DD but the teacher marked her work as wrong 🙄.

That's something I picked up on, are there other things I haven't picked up on that are now a gap in my daughter's education?

I don't understand how this happens. All the teachers I know teach from some kind of plan and scheme. Even if they make their own plans, it doesn't all just come from their heads. There's some kind of basic framework that they build on, look for examples etc and then tailor that to the needs of their class.

Even if it does happen ,how does it get past book scrutinies , the English lead,the key stage lead,the head etc. ? That's a whole school failure,not one teacher.

Oh and if it does happen,and you notice you have every right to point it out. It's like teaching division wrong or the continents.

I think that should be a very basic requirement!

@annabell22

Some teachers have dyslexia- it doesn't mean that they shouldn't become a teacher.

Some of us (not a teacher btw) have dylsexia but we don't use it as an excuse for poor grammar or spelling.

Additionally, teaching is a privilege. In Finland, teachers must have an advanced degree (unsure if PhD or MSc but a bog standard bachelor's isn't going to cut it). Their standard of education is extremely high (also because they see childrens minds as fires to be lit, not vessels to be filled, the NUT could take a fecking leaf from that).

If your skills are lacking you cannot explain them properly and you've no place educating young minds. Not sorry, part of the problem in society we have is inadequate little boys and girls with no life experience, running amok in classrooms using them as pulpits for their own private captive audience to spout their own agendas.

On, and inb4 people get offended, not all teachers, blahblahblah, but the good ones aren't the ones causing the issues. The bad ones are.

@WhenSheWasBad

No, it doesn't. But it does mean that they should check, double check, and get someone else to check things like wall displays, letters home to parents, etc

All of this takes time. And who exactly is going to check your displays for you?

Education is on the bones of its arse. There aren’t spare staff knocking around with nothing to do other than triple check letters.

That is what the Access to Work scheme is for. It's funding for those with disabilities to get into work, and can cover things like PAs for very dyslexic people. No burden on the school's budget at all.

@hiredandsqueak

Dd's year 6 teacher called her the grammar police used to ask dd to spell check and grammar check worksheets before she handed them out and check what she had written on the board. She was perfectly competent but dd could find a misplaced semi colon in a wall of text and was known to never make a spelling mistake. She corrected many spelling mistakes made by teachers through the years but only the y6 teacher decided to harness her ability.

What a sensible teacher.

DSis is dyspraxic and has trouble with telling right from left. She tells her class about it at the beginning of the school year and asks them to let her know if she gets it wrong. Win-win - they enjoy looking out for this and helping the teacher, they become whizzkids at the difference between right and left, and they learn a valuable lesson that having a learning disability isn't abnormal and doesn't have to be a barrier.

I applied for a PGCE course 20 years ago. I spent days prepping for the "interview", really swotting up.

It was all a complete waste of time. If you turned up, you were on the course. I think I got asked 1 or 2 pedestrian questions and that was all, to be accepted into the course. They were taking anybody.

In a later position, I needed to review teachers CV's. The spelling and grammar on 95% of those CV's was appalling!

@Peepo80

I applied for a PGCE course 20 years ago. I spent days prepping for the "interview", really swotting up.

It was all a complete waste of time. If you turned up, you were on the course. I think I got asked 1 or 2 pedestrian questions and that was all, to be accepted into the course. They were taking anybody.

In a later position, I needed to review teachers CV's. The spelling and grammar on 95% of those CV's was appalling!

Conversely, I applied for my PGCE 28 years ago and it was one in twenty who got in (English teaching in Scotland). It's still competitive (Scotland).

I'm not a teacher. My grammar is fine, I know the basics well and with the right resources could probably teach it well.

But I make mistakes all the time in my texts and often in emails. Because I'm busy and don't always have the time to spell check. It's not the end of the world surely?

@PineappleWilson

The first piece of homework my son had at school was to learn a song. Ten little monkey's sitting on the bed [sic]. Friends advised that I still had a long way to go with the school so not to die on this hill, but who the hell uses an apostrophy for a plural?

Lol, I was so agreeing with this until you misspelt "apostrophe"!

I blame the lack of teaching Latin and Greek for poor spelling and grammar. I learned more grammar when I started Latin at 12 than I did in all my earlier years at school added together.

I'm not a teacher. My grammar is fine, I know the basics well and with the right resources could probably teach it well.

But I make mistakes all the time in my texts and often in emails. Because I'm busy and don't always have the time to spell check. It's not the end of the world surely?

It depends what you are busy doing. If a large part of your job requires you to teach good spelling and/or grammar - or to demonstrate it on behalf of your company - then it is important. It's a large part of what you should be busy WITH.

If I were looking for somebody to build a wall for me and I found a website showing a gallery of their very good work, accompanied by lots of excellent independent reviews, which said "No job two smal - whatever you're requirments, get in touch with ourselfs and we garantee too build the best wall u could of dreamed have - at supprisingly low prizes", I would cringe slightly, but it wouldn't put me off using them. I would get the wall I wanted, at a good price; and if the builder is teaching anybody else, he will be teaching them to build good walls and not how to write well.

If an office-based company had a website like that - especially where they might have online/written influence on others and perceivably represent me - I wouldn't consider using them for a moment.

Also, what kind of software are you using in your emails? These days, separately running spell-check is largely a thing of the past, as it does it automatically as you type. Even MN does it - as with the 'sample' I wrote above, which is littered with red underlines. It's not just a case of forgetting to run spell-check; you have to deliberately ignore all of the red lines that you see before sending it anyway.

I would expect somebody who really struggled with SPaG to maybe just find it overwhelming and ignore all the red lines, but not somebody who does understand SPaG, but makes a few typos or has the odd brain fart, like we all do, and yet still chooses to ignore the red lines.