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 worked in a college where one of the tutors was constantly making mistakes (and was inconsistent) when teaching a finance unit. Time and time again I had to correct her. I suggested that if is showed me her resources beforehand, then anything that needed doing so, mistakes could be corrected before learners were seeing them. She didn’t agree but instead spent weeks of learners questioning why the previous lesson she had said one thing and now she was saying something else! Think, using a red font on a spreadsheet when there wasn’t a negative number!

OP, Maybe suggest this to the teacher, by pointing out that parents are likely to raise it.

Unfortunately teaching can now only attract the dregs. Most competent, intelligent people go for different careers. A lot of my school cohort who went on to teach were not bright at school and cannot write properly if their social media is anything to go by.

Who knows. As previously mentioned I work in an infant school and my daughter goes to a primary school: poor grammar and spelling from staff is commonplace in both. Spoken as well as written. For example: "What was we learning about yesterday?" That's a common one from one of our infant school teachers. She's a great teacher though in every other way, better than I ever was, so to get rid of her based on that alone would be a huge waste. 🤷‍♀️ Grates on me though.

I knew this would descend into tales of woe about uneducated, illiterate teachers (and I know there are plenty out there!) DC1 has just gone into Year 7 and is outraged that his Geography teacher was confusing Eras and Epochs! I think, it was too highbrow for me!

@Dany0909 I think you need to raise it, as uncomfortable as it is for you please don't just let it slide. I'd go to the teacher in the first instance.

FWIW I am not a teacher so if I have got misspelled anything then so be it 😂 Eras looks wrong? Should it be Era's? Eras it too Taylor Swift!

She's not overly nice or welcoming towards me

I’m sorry that she’s not very nice or welcoming towards you.
You are supposed to be partners.

I used to be a teacher and spellings is definitely one of my weak points (potential dyslexia). I also get my words the wrong way around sometimes too.

I was always very open about this and appreciated people correcting my mistakes. I would double check my spellings and grammar. I would also ask my TA (or one of the students) whether I had spelt it correctly.
It didn’t happen very often as you learn to adapt but it was good for the learners to see that everyone makes mistakes and it’s ok for them to be corrected.

You’ve not done anything wrong.
They cannot be taught the wrong spellings!
I would ask if she’d like you to double check the spellings list in future.

I would mention it to her again and if she gets shitty or it happens again, then I would speak to the head.

My spelling was terrible until I reached university and something clicked. It didn’t hold me back, but it was embarrassing.

I wouldn’t want my ds being taught incorrect spellings. You are right to be concerned and to flag this up.

Speaking as a primary school teacher myself - who is always SO CAREFUL with spellings, it really gets my goat when I see other teachers spell things wrong.

One time, returning from the summer break, one teacher had labelled all her drawers for pens/pencils etc with "Stationary". It's "Stationery" hun. E for envelope, A for absence of movement. I had to tell her, but her response was, "It's Year 2, they'll never know." NOT THE POINT!

You've now taught me how to remember the difference between stationery & stationary, thank you!

In the library I once picked up a leaflet about a taught MA in English Lit., issued by our local university.*
There were very basic SPAG mistakes in the blurb.
Enough to put me off applying, anyway.

*It does not rate very highly in any league tables!

She did, and apparently teacher got stroppy.
If spelling "isn't her strength" she shouldn't be teaching kids spelling then.

Ooh no, I'd go nuts!

I've heard it's much harder to spell a word correctly when you've seen it spelled incorrectly first.

My daughter’s Y3 teacher set the children homework to list words where the diphthong ‘ou’ could sound different from each other. She was absolutely insistent that ‘ou’ could sound like ‘a’ when used in the word ‘favourite.’ She even sounded it out by syllable for me - ‘fav-a-rit.’ After I’d picked my jaw up off the floor, I went and complained to the head. He said I should not have embarrassed the teacher by telling her she was wrong, it undermines their authority.

I did supply teaching fir a couple of months a few years ago. Here are some of the errors I remember:
Electrixity on a primary science display board in the main corridor.
Tuder instead of Tudor on a history timeline that was didplayed in each classroom, created, printed and distributed by a member of SLT.
Slides, plans and worksheets to use for an English lesson where the children had to produce a 'charcter' study of the main character in a book.
Questions on a pastoral display board such as 'Do use ever feel sad in school? Talk to xxxx. My door is always open. Are use stressed about your SATs?, etc...'
Pacifically (should've been specifically) corrected by the teacher in a child's writing to spasifically. She was also the English lead and away on a course when I was covering her class. She also wrote Febuary on the board.

Oof. So many forgotten commas.

Oh this reminds me of end of year posts by all class teachers that a friend showed me: 'Year 5 be like' and then a silly photo. 'Year 3 be like' and a photo. For all classes! Couldn't believe it when I saw it.

You understand that the elite universities such as Cambridge and Durham offer a primary ed degree

I think it's likely that she doesn't notice and doesn't make the connection, and this is more worrying than making the error in the first place. Many teachers I worked with seemed not to register this sort of thing unless it was pointed out to them and even then, a few chose to ignore it.

Had an A level history teacher who wrote "facist" every single time. He got fired in the end, became an air steward.

Research and stuff? What is stuff then?
Nothing to do with actual peer reviewed research, I take it?

I am proud to be a mother who cares deeply about my child’s education. 🤷🏻‍♀️

When my son was 5 he had to write about his weekend. We'd been out for lunch and for pudding he had ice cream that was made to look like a mouse with chocolate chips for ears and something for a tail. He wrote that he'd had an ice cream mouse for pudding and the teacher corrected it to mousse. He told her it was wrong but she wouldn't listen.

25 years later he still remembers that!

You might want to research what actual best practice is, then. Your view is not widely supported in education research.

I’m sure many good universities do, hence why I said “most” not “all”.

My children’s school has several brilliant teachers and I’ve been fortunate to not experience many of the issues PPs have mentioned. They’ve still recently issued guidelines to ban drinking alcohol, smoking and brawling (ffs) on school property.

There are many route to access, particularly primary, teaching qualifications that don’t require a degree from a top university. People scraping C grades in maths and English as GCSE level shouldn’t be teaching the next generation.

In my opinion teaching needs to be better paid and more respected so we get better candidates.

I’m asking you what relevance the word ‘stuff’ has in your sentence.

There’s lots of research and stuff on how children learn.

I’ve read thousands of research theses in my time and opinions on best practice change as frequently as Government Ministers…!

Interesting that you are arguing for more respect for teachers, but utterly disrespecting them at the same time.

Thinking that spelling is some sort of gold standard by which to judge someone's ability to write or teach effectively is just stupid. There are many well known bastions of the English cannon who were known to be awful spellers. I'd rather have my child taught to write by an Austen or Fitzgerald than one of the utterly dull human spell correctors I've known.

Awful. Just awful.