Primary school teachers who are unable to keep up with a 9 year old

[activate]

Makes me want to scream.

DS3 now has to go for maths lessons with a different teacher because his techer is not good at maths - what the hell are we doing allowing people who can be beaten by a 9 year old qualify as teachers?

And don't get me started on the state of grammar and spelling

15 years of crap education policy leads to a generation of bloody idiots teaching the next generation

I have a sticky keyboard but can spell teacher really

Ds teacher spelt 'tried' incorrectly recently, 'tryed'
I mean, honestly!
I'm generally in support of the school, and the teacher has been grt in other areas.
But really, there is no excuse for that.
So, YANBU

Frustrating isn't it. My DSDs were at a junior school where they were taught the following 'fact' about subtraction:

If you have, eg
. 34
.-18

You can swap the units round and do
. 38
. -14

Apparently that gives the same answer FFS!!!

I'm halfway through a maths degree now, hoping to be a primary teacher but eventually specialising in maths, so I'd be in charge of raising maths standards in a whole school - so this kind of travesty mistake wouldn't happen.

what?!

holy f*!k

screams hollowly

the maths example is seriously bad

heck

All of these examples are atrocious and should be challenged; however, they are far from usual.

Thread title should be "A primary school teacher who is unable to keep up with a 9 year old", since the majority of teachers should, and of course do, without any problems whatsoever.

Absolutely feenie. Nothing like that happened at my schools. The worst part was, only very few of the kids at DSDs school had parents who would or could challenge the mistake.

It is the few schools/teachers like that who are giving the education system a bad name :(

Puts on pedantic hat

Actually the title is equally valid to your version - as it is referring to those primary school teachers who are unable to keep up and not implying that all primary teachers are not capable. So it is an acceptable grammatical construct

Removes pedantic hat

Thankfully I agree that many teachers are capable - but every school has teachers making the grammatical and spelling errors and many have number blind teachers. Which is shameful.

At the dc's first primary I noticed a huge difference between the older teachers, good general knowledge, sound first principles, and the young new ones. These were women (sadly always) of 21 or 22 who had been through the robot teacher training college so they all came out the same (clap clap, click click)and simply didn't KNOW anything beyond the narrow remit of the curriculum.

Was astonishing.

Oh well I hope it doesn't make you think all young teachers are awful - I'm 23 now and admittedly I won't be qualified until near 30 (taking slow route as I have kids) I am sure I would still be very careful at this age about mistakes like that. Maths in particular is my passion, I'm desperate to improve standards and help prevent the fear that some teachers and pupils seem to have of numbers.

PS activate please can I have a pedantic hat too? :o

No, not all. But I don't think the highest calibre are being selected as said (or that might be on another school thread).

And bear in mind that if I had a pound for every time a child of mine said "But my TEACHER said that's how we're supposed to do it - she did SHE DID!!!!!!!!!" and I said "But, sweetheart, you can't possibly get the right answer like that" and they said "I've GOT to do thet I've GOT TO!!!!!!!"

And when I asked the teacher about it, my child has it completely arse about face.

I suspect the reversing numbers in subtractions example is one of these!

"but every school has teachers making the grammatical and spelling errors"

We don't. Really. We are a small school and a staff full of pedants - except the Head, who often has to be corrected.

Sadly not - it was what the teacher had written down :(

Hully - what do you mean about the best teachers not being selected?

"arse about face"

"people who can be beaten by a 9 year old" meaning what ?

At my - private, pretentious - primary school, we were taught the "rule" that multiplying always makes numbers bigger and dividing makes them smaller. A problem once you start thinking about fractions!

We have entire year groups in high school who spell 'a lot' as 'alot'.

"That's incorrect."
"No it's not, Mrs...... told us that."

However, this could actually just be an example of language change in action. Still bloody annoying though.

My DS's aged 9 asked his teacher some questions regarding mathematics and she said it goes completely over her head.

I think the problem is that a teacher is qualified to teach junior school children and not qualified to teach a child that is gifted.

I considered HE but thought it would be too difficult as he is academically gifted.

I have since found that the teachers are considerably less well educated than I am, which is a bit disappointing.

I'm sure this debate has been done before but I hear part of the problem is the qualification you need to be a primary teacher - you can have a brilliant degree in say English, but only a c in gcse maths. Or vice versa obviously.

Well, DD's teacher is very partial to a row of !!!s, but he is a brilliant and inspiring teacher, and I can forgive him his little punctuation foible. In fact, it's almost appropriate. If he were a sentence, he would finish that way himself.

I do think a C in too low. But still - Grade C, roughly equivalent to level 5, so should enable most 9 year olds to be taught reasonably well.

For the record, !!!!!!!!!! set my teeth on edge and 'alot' drives me crazy (never heard anyone say it's correct though - truly bizarre).