To correct the teacher's spelling?

[Dany0909]

I'm a year 4 TA in a primary school. This year I have a new class and a new teacher.
She's an ok teacher in general, I've definitely worked with better.

Yesterday, she handed out the spelling list and had spelt one of the words wrong. I pointed it out to her privately as I didn't want parents to notice and she got in a huff. She didn't believe me and checked the spelling online before changing it.

Just today, she misspelt three subject-specific words that I'm sure she has been teaching for years so I was surprised she didn't know them. The kids copied them off the board incorrectly but I felt too uncomfortable to say anything.
I'm not going to specify the words so this post doesn't give me away just in case.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what to do. It's annoying because obviously the kids are learning incorrect spellings from her, but at the same time I don't really want to annoy the teacher. I'm not sure if she's dyslexic but surely if you knew you were then you would double check the information you're asking children to copy down. She's not overly nice or welcoming towards me so not sure how to approach it. Should I just leave it???

Personally, I’d complain to the head. Incorrect spelling in eg a letter home to parents is one thing (and bad enough), but actively teaching the children incorrect spellings and testing them on them, presumably marking it wrong if they get it right, is totally unacceptable.

Yes, they’d probably think I was a bit of a dick, but that wouldn’t bother me!

Definitely don't leave it. Your own difficult position - what to do? - mirrors the kids' - what to think?

I think you need to let the headteacher know. Hopefully you have a good and supportive one.

You should correct her.

I once corrected a teacher who had marked my DD3 down for her spelling of coronation.

DD had spelled it correctly but the teacher corrected it to coranation.😠🙄 I just had to say something as I think it is very important that teachers are spelling words correctly, and not miscorrecting the children

I think it's important that you correct the teacher, or tell the head.

Towards the end of Year 2, my daughter came home from school and was very upset that her teacher had corrected a piece of her work. She had told the teacher that what she had done was incorrect, but was told off for being disrespectful. I looked at her book, and the teacher had crossed out where my daughter had written 'I should have ...' and had changed it to 'I should have ...'. It was the final straw after two dreadful years with an incompetent teacher, and I spent the next day finding another school for my daughter, and then went to see the head to explain why she would be leaving. Children only get one chance with their education, and having a teacher who has a poor command of spelling and grammar isn't acceptable. .

Oops - autocorrect knows better than my daughter's teacher. That should have said the teacher corrected 'I should have' to 'I should OF'.

Haha that's rough, I'm not surprised! I must say I'm a bit pedantic about spelling but I think it's so important, particularly when teaching children. In any other job I wouldn't be as bothered.
When I was in year 2, I had a spelling test where I spelt 'jewellery' correctly. The teacher marked it as incorrect and put the American spelling of 'jewelry' instead. It was a private school.
My mum pulled me out and saved her money.

😯

That would have infuriated me and had me hammering on the headteacher's door.

A teacher really should know better than to think should of, would of, could of are correct. They can do a lot of damage to children's education that way.

I saw this with a friend of my son 30 years ago. In a poem he had written 'army barmy', and the teacher corrected it to 'balmy' which is a completely different word. All the children complained but she wouldn't have it.

It's astonishing that a qualified teacher can be so moronic.

Not really astonishing. These days anything goes.

My ds was in reception 15 years ago and the teacher made similarly atrocious mistakes. I’m glad he’s left school! He was shouted at for pointing out spelling mistakes in primary school. He’s autistic with a spectacular memory and all he got was a bollocking for being rude. He didn’t understand why he was in trouble.

The obvious choice is to tell her but I wouldn't because it'll just cause friction

As frustrating as it is just leave it

@JohnSt1 Are you certain the teacher was qualified? Unqualified teachers and support staff are frequently used to "teach" these days. Technically they don't need any formal qualifications.
That is not for one second saying all unqualified staff are poor, btw; some of them are absolutely exceptional and being asked to do far too much on near to minimum wage.

In p5 I wrote about my favourite toy and I spelled his entirely made up name how I, who was entirely responsible for making it up, chose to spell it. I still feel the rage that I felt nearly 30 years ago that she corrected me on my own made up word!

Should probably let it go now, eh?

My DS's teacher used the word "brang" in an all class email once.

I had a student teacher working in my Yr4 classroom for 10 weeks who was clearly dyslexic and also struggled with things like grid multiplication. Every week she spelt Tuesday incorrectly on the board. She taught the class possessive apostrophes incorrectly and confused my bottom group by getting the key hod for grid multiplication wrong, despite having had a session with her on it after school. I pointed this out to her uni tutor who said she effectively had an IEP and she was supposed to be checking spellings, but wasn't (and hadn't shared anything with me). I dared to suggest that she wasn't fit to pass her TP and got heavily frowned at for it. In the end, they said she could only teach up to Year 3, but I thought that was worse. At least my Year 4s knew when she
was making mistakes!

Yes she is a qualified teacher and has been teaching for over 10 years

@Growlybear83

just when you think you've seen it all...

🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

NOOOOO

This thread is astonishing.

Go to the head of department.
This isn’t ok.

I had the misfortune to read the prospectus of a truly awful school near me. There were multiple errors in spelling and grammar on every page. I felt like marking it and giving it an F with the comment “must try harder”. 🤦‍♀️

I once had to learn for a test that kiwifruit is from Australia, not New Zealand 🙄
My mum suggested I bring in a little kiwifruit sticker to show the teacher. The sticker that says Zespri - New Zealand. Showed the teacher. He said we still had to learn it was Australia.

(Or course, kiwifruit/Chinese gooseberries/macaque peaches are originally from China, but don't tell the kiwi people that...)

When my dd was at primary school, she miss-spelled certain words, but this wasn't corrected, until she entered p4, when the words were corrected. I brought this up with her teacher (who was also the deputy head) and was told that they didn’t want to correct spelling in the first 3 years as it (and I kid you not) “spoiled the flow of the pupils work”! I pointed out to the teacher that by allowing her to spell the words wrongly for 3 years without correcting, how on earth did they now expect her to spell the word differently, as the incorrect spelling was cemented in her head. It didn’t go down well and I was probably labelled as being “that mother.”

Another issue my dd had in secondary school, was when a teacher corrected her spelling, with an incorrect spelling. After it happened several times, I did send her jotter back to school marked “incorrect spelling by teacher, word should be spelled @@@@.” He wasn’t happy, but as I told him at parent’s evening, don’t correct a wrongly spelled word, with another wrongly spelled word!

I saw a big poster on the news tonight about the 'fuel allowence'. Says it all really.