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???

I'm afraid that would have annoyed me so much that I would have had steam coming out of my ears!! Note my use of "would have" here, in both instances. "Would/could/should OF" should carry a jail sentence in my opinion!

Teachers should not be butchering the language and teaching young children to do likewise. Of course everyone makes mistakes. There are words that most of us have to check now and then. One of mine used to be the difference between "stationery" and "stationary." I never could remember which one meant parked/not moving (stationary) and which one meant paper/writing pads/letter heads (stationery).

Teachers are human, but they do need to double down on their own checking before teaching children basic spelling and grammar incorrectly. Some also need to realise that there is no shame in admitting to and correcting/checking a mistake made during a lesson. No need to huff and puff about it.

Please tell me they were joking?!!

And a mistake in my suggestion🤦🏻‍♀️
”What would you like me to do when I notice a spelling mistake…”

Nurses have to calculate drug dosages for children and adults. Some drugs are potent enough that if they are delivered too quickly/slowly or the wrong dose for weight/age etc, they will seriously harm patients.
Sometimes errors in calculations are made; that's why a second person checks; is it OK for the 'odd mistake' in such cases, or should the checking nurse say something?
Granted, in primary school, spelling may not be top of the list, but it will make a difference later

I’ve been a primary head. I would see this as an important issue. I certainly wouldn't have wanted a teacher to be frequently teaching children things that were factually incorrect.

We all make mistakes and the odd word spelled wrongly probably doesn’t matter much (though I would encourage the teacher to talk to the children in her class about her problem with spelling and ask them to help her by pointing out incorrect ones. This would be good modelling.) However, giving children incorrectly spelled words to learn as spellings is ridiculous and unacceptable, just as teaching them factually incorrect "knowledge" in any other subject would be.

I would have made it one of the teacher's appraisal/performance management targets. It could be checked and evidenced by looking at children’s books. I would probably do a book scrutiny in several classes and then pretend I had noticed the issue myself in children's books, to protect the TA from possible resentment. I certainly wouldn’t just let it go and allow those children to be disadvantaged.

No!

Go to the HT and just point out your concerns, There's no excuse.

Correct misspelled words. All the time.

A comment written in the homework copybook of my child (years ago) by the teacher and they had misspelled a word and I corrected it (as they were correcting my child's homework and not spelling words correctly) so they too got their homework corrected 😄
I really didn't care that I might have been 'that parent' but the teacher took it in good humour and didn't appear to be ticked off or peeved by it.

It doesn't work out in the end!

The children go out into the workplace still not knowing correct spelling and grammar.

I even hear it with newsreaders now, let alone the illiterate emails you get from various companies.

It needs to be properly taught

And no, you don't correct every mistake every time, but you give guidance in writing first and focus on different aspects when you mark.

I understand your annoyance and this thread has brought back a very sore memory from my primary school days.

My first name has the less usual spelling of a fairly common name. But my teacher insisted on using the mainstream version. When my mother raised the issue the teacher said that was the way SHE spelled it so that's how it would be spelt in school. The Head backed her up on the grounds that teacher is always right.

So for the whole of my primary years I was made to spell my own name wrongly and if I accidentally wrote it correctly it would get teacher's red pen.

Decades later & this still irritates.

No, because it will get worse and more ingrained in the children's heads.

Errm, the OP is a TA - as outlined in original post
Perhaps reading comprehension needs to be revisited in schools, even at the end of a long day

My old Head Teacher read every report and letter that went out to parents and checked for spelling and punctuation. I had a comma corrected once, I didn't agree with her but changed it anyway. We have both been retired for over 10 years now. Goodness know what is happening in schools now if spelling is no longer considered important. There were some real shockers on letters home from my grandchildren's primary school.

Pointing out spelling mistakes does not always make you popular, but it needs to be done. (I once infuriated my head teacher by pointing out the distinction between "effect" and "affect") but a sensible person should be grateful.
I despaired when a colleague confused "looses concentration" for "loses concentration" on a report, stoutly asserting that the two were interchangeable. The whole report, with contributions from all the other teachers who taught that pupil, had to be re-done.
When preparing reports, I was grateful for the critical eye of a friend spotting slips of the finger when typing, or over-opinionated auto-correct, before sending reports out to parents.
At my last school, I was eventually appointed "Unofficial Nit-picker in Chief"; I would be asked to walk around the building before Open Days and the like, to spot any solecisms before a sharp-eyed parent did!

Just correct her. Or say you're not sure but I think you should spell check XXX.
Apologise if she is embarrassed but explain that you are a top speller and then ask if she would like you to let her know in future about spelling that should be checked.

Remind her that not all teachers are great spellers and it's best not to wait until the parents write to point out poor spelling.

I remember once at an open morning looking at some work displayed on the wall of the English department in a secondary school.

A child (not mine, who was still at primary school) was writing about their horse and had spelled it hoarse!! It hadn't been corrected at all and that made me wonder whether the teacher themselves was unaware that horse and hoarse have entirely different meanings. I wanted to rip the sheet from the wall, but as we were only visiting for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning and it was very busy I had to be on best behaviour. 😉

The head is a manager. They should address unprofessional behaviour between staff members. If a teacher cannot graciously accept and own their mistakes when pointed out to them, this is absolutely an issue a manager should address.

Of course we all make mistakes at work, but in my profession, we are expected to politely thank colleagues who catch those mistakes before they go out and embarrass the firm. SpaG is absolutely an essential skill in many professions. I've been roundly criticised by senior partners for grammatical mistakes, and I realised my education in that respect was severely lacking compared with those now in their 60s. It is a shame. A young secretary I knew nearly lost her job for her appalling inability to spell - she would just choose whatever came up first in spellchecker or Google and hope for the best, and her comprehension was so poor she couldn't then proof-read her work. This in turn increased the workload of the fee earners, who then stopped using her. Teachers need to be able to be able to teach children correctly, as it will negatively impact those children later in their lives. "Teacher knows best" characters are dangerous, because they have no desire to improve themselves, own their mistakes or work as part of a team. Same as any other professional.

Schools are so hierarchical, it’s hard to understand if you haven’t worked in them. I would have a quiet word with a trust teacher on SLT. Someone who won’t go and say @Dany0909 told me… but who might instead drop in and “notice” themselves.

😱
Teachers with poor SPAG seem to be getting more common.

IMO they should be given a fairly rigorous test* at the start of their training and given remedial work, if needed. It’s particularly important at the primary stage.

*I’d be happy to produce one. 🙂. An A4 sheet of prose with all the common mistakes, including punctuation, which they’d have to write out correctly.

''Should have'' is so jarringly wrong. No teacher should be writing ''should of'' , least of all incorrectly 'correcting' a pupil who writes correctly!

My daughter's Y 3 teacher had written 'book words' on the board for their project on writing and making a book. Among others were copywrite and auther.

What made it worse was that she was Literacy Co-ordinator. I stood transfixed for a minute, trying to decide what to do, but obviously I couldn't say anything with the children present. I mulled over what to do and decided against action - this teacher didn't like my dyslexic daughter and was known to be touchy, so I left it. I didn't want her taking it out on my child, which I think she would have done on past performance.

Fortunately it was near the end of the school year, and she left to become a Deputy Head.

I found SPAG easy as a child, but I get it that some people don't. But she could have asked someone to check the words or used a dictionary!

There'd be even fewer teachers then.

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My son's class teacher hand wrote his report with three spelling mistakes. I had to sign it and send the bottom section back to her. I was furious. Instead I photocopied the report and corrected the spellings in a red pen and returned to the Headteacher. I got an apology from the Headteacher. Future reports used correct spelling and I suspect the class teacher had to get them checked before sending out to parents.

It shouldn't be necessary to do that because you don't forget how to spell. Teachers need A levels and GCSEs to get on a degree course so perhaps it's the teaching and marking of those that is the problem. Since Gove primary schools have spent an inordinate amount of time on Spelling and Grammar yet it seems to have got worse. Why is that?

It was an awful concept. It was introduced when I was at school. It was so confusing.