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???

This does need to be tackled. I think I would use a white lie. Do you have parent contact at pick up? If so, you could say something like "one of the parents mentioned to me at pick up that her child kept misspelling [word]. I went back and checked and I've realised it was incorrect on the board the other day. I checked the rest and there were a couple of other mistakes too. Should we correct them with the children?"

I did work experience at a GP surgery. There was a list of 10 or so words spelled correctly so they were written correctly in patients' notes. 3 of them were spelled incorrectly ...

There’s a misspelled word on a display at my toddler’s nursery but I don’t want to be that parent 😫.

Personally, I think it is absolutely fine to correct the spelling and to mention to the head if things don’t get changed. What hope is there if spelling isn’t taught correctly at this level? (You can look on practically any thread on this site to see how poor so many people’s spelling is).

No, that's not a teacher standard.
That was a tongue-in-cheek response. Of course it isn't a standard, because it should be fucking obvious that the ability to spell is a basic requirement for a teacher.
If the teacher is so insecure that s/he will 'fall out' with the OP, then s/he is unprofessional, another reason why they should not be teaching. And the reason I suggested trying the head of department or head teacher to deal with issue

It's a worry that you are so seemingly unconcerned with standards of literacy and teaching.

How? Give the teacher a crash course in spellings?!

Try reading my earlier post. There are strategies that can be used and this teacher may not know there are problems.

I'm dyslexic and I use various methods to spell check. One that this teacher could use is dictation software to produce the lists of words for the spelling tests.

Make it a game.

Photo's really annoys me. MOT's as well.

The standard you walk past....

The thing is there are so many resources out there that if you are a dyspraxic teacher like me are a necessity. Twinkl has vocab lists for virtually every topic and subject area. Mrs Wordsmith has word of the day books and activities. Literacyshed has amazing resources. There is just so much out there and it is our responsibility to make sure we are as accurate as possible.

From what I have been reading it is not the mistakes themselves that are the main issue it is the response or attitude of the teacher when they have been corrected that is the real problem. When children realise that their teacher is not perfect but that is ok as long as we learn from that and improve that is the main lesson we can teach them. It is ok to make mistakes as long as we learn from them.

I once saw an email from the school that said they recently 'brought' something, rather than 'bought'. I cringed!

I would def say something, it's clearly not a one off typo. It's unfair to children learning to read and write to be taught by someone who hasn't got a decent grasp of the English language.

'Do's and don'ts' is the one that gets me riled up. I have been known to take a pen to a poster and scrub out the unnecessary apostrophe!

Some of the most prolific SPAG offenders I have ever met have been primary school teachers. It’s a massive issue IMO that people like this are allowed to teach when they have clearly not mastered the basics themselves. I would absolutely raise it with the head if she is unwilling to correct her own errors, especially if she is actively TEACHING the incorrect information.

That attitude is so wrong, yes we all make mistakes but if we are teaching children spelling words then please at least double check that the spelling is correct before you teach the children incorrectly.

@Alina3 I took a Sharpie to a pub's menu once who randomly inserted apostrophes into words like chip's ...

Felt to good!!

My child's primary had a poster, produced and sold by education supplies companies, on the wall of a clock with words next to the numbers saying -
Five passed
Ten passed
Quarter passed
etc
I pointed it out to the teacher, in fairness, she'd probably never had a proper look at it, so we both had a bit of an open mouthed laugh. The number of educated eyes this poster would have been checked by, and nobody spotted it.
Do I win?

Felt SO good!

I am in my 60's. When I was in primary school I spelt 'autumn' in a spelling test, and was marked wrong as it should have been 'Autumn'. I can still remember how unfair I felt it was, particularly as I would have got full marks otherwise. I am now probably the only person in the world who spells the seasons with a capital letter!

There really should be.

We used to proof read other teachers reports and spelling was not the strong point of a lot of them. It always shocked me tbh.

Hope you have now disowned them ;-)

There is a difference between making spelling mistakes and a basic misunderstanding if English spelling and grammar. The latter does need mentioning.

It's a worry that you are so ill informed about the declining number of teachers in schools and are so seemingly unconcerned about the lack of even "ok" (to quote @Dany0909 ) teachers that you're wanting one to leave the profession over this.

Unlike you, I'm able to look at this picture as a whole and offer support to @Dany0909 without pressing the nuclear button.

Yes I agree, it's how the teacher responds to being corrected. I could even see it being beneficial to the children seeing teachers (rarely) make spelling mistakes such as this as long as they were corrected quickly and with good grace. Everyone makes mistakes and it's a good lesson for children to see that and to see how to respond when corrected.

I used to work with an LSA who actually LEFT THE JOB because she couldn’t cope with my successor’s terrible spelling and grammar.

Tell her, op. She might be angry with you, but at least 30 children will know the correct spelling.