Is it me???

@durhamjen Whilst I am very open to discussion and don't mind admitting if I'm wrong, I am also aware I come across as 'forceful' in my opinion.... it's something I get from my mother!

With regards to spelling mistakes, everyone makes mistakes on occasion, I get that and on somewhere like Gransnet, really, who cares. But when teachers can't spell simple words like 'piece' or do not know the difference between stationary and stationery, then it truly worries me. It's great they are mentoring and inspiring young minds but surely they should also have even a basic education before they begin to teach others.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

There's always a dictionary. No excuse

You dont suppose she just hit the wrong keys on the computer, and didnt proof read after?

I had a student who'd graduated in Art from an English university and was on placement with me while undertaking the PGCE. She 'corrected' some of my pupils' work by changing shining and dining to shinning and dinning.
She also admitted she'd no idea about apostrophes and couldn't tell a verb from an adjective.
I helped while she was with me but back at university she had to go into some 'remedial' classes.

MTDancer How can someone (especially a teacher) use 'your' and 'You're' to imply exactly the same idea in consecutive sentences...???
My DS is a teacher, and not only does he have dyslexia, but he was educated in the 'creativity is the important thing' era. He freely admits that his spelling, punctuation etc is not wonderful, due to this unfortunate combination - but he uses technology to weed out spelling mistakes, and always gets handouts and reports proofread, to avoid exactly this type of error.

We all make mistakes now and then, to varying degrees. Teachers however, must be held to a higher standard!

Farmers plant only their very best seeds year after year. It's done to avoid crop degradation and to improve the quality of subsequent harvests. So, what does this have to do with education?

Teachers are not unlike those select 'seeds' except they have a greater impact. They educate the next generation of learners and from there comes the next generation of teachers!

That is why it behooves all of us to start raising the bar and demand more from our teachers. If not, education will continue to spiral downward along a path of inevitable degradation.

Could it have been a teaching assistant who wrote the captions on the pictures? The teacher should have checked them even so.

I tend to think about what could have caused spelling mistskes if it's one like aroma spelled aromer. If one had only ever heard the word aroma spoken, never seen it written, didn't know its derivation from Greek, it would be easy to misspell it. If one was like my best friend at school and capable of spelling the same word two different ways, both wrong, and never a clue that they were, it'd be easy too, even if one's English teacher always corrected spelling mistakes and usually added a way to remember the correct one. My friend still got ordinary everyday spellings wrong.

I think nowadays it'd be recognised that she was probably dyslexic.

She got a good degree in English Lit though.

I think headteacher, head of year or head of depatmental checking of reports before they go out is a good idea.

I agree with most of you about the teachers, my daughter has a problem with my grandchildren's teacher's spelling, apparently the teacher is dyslexic. Predictive text can be amusing though, my daughter and I used to text each other using only predictive text then we would try and work out what it actually meant!

My job took me into classrooms throughout my borough and I had many a quiet word with young teachers when words were misspelt on the whiteboard. I found maths could also be a problem. I sat in on one class where the children were invited to divide 25 by 4. The teacher seemed momentarily stunned when a child told her that 4 into 25 won't go. 6 x 4 is 24. She recovered herself and said the answer is 6 with 1 remaining and you write it like this: '6.1', saying it out loud, 'Six point one'. When the children went out to play I gave her a quick lesson on the use of the decimal point.

On the whole I found teachers grateful to have their spelling errors pointed out to them.

My DGS goes to a private school and the teachers there make terrible spelling/punctuation/grammar errors.
So you can't even get good teachers when you're paying for it!

I'd have thought the headteacher, head of year or head of depatment would have enough to do without having to check the spelling of reports!

department

Private school teachers often have no teaching qualifications.

People who can't spell can still be inspiring teachers. Spelling isn't the only important thing in a child's education. Compared with learning an attitude of willingness to learn, and how to do it, I'd put spelling quite low on my list of piorities, and I'm fussy about spelling.

MDT: You've outed the school and the teacher.
This 'is' I'd for you!

SueD: I think etc., as an abbreviation, deserves the full stop.

Soself: In your second paragraph I think the second sentence would be happier with a question mark.

Nit picking? Yes, but only because we're on a nit picking thread. We all make mistakes and the content of any communication is more important than the style.

I work in a school office and the Head and I have to go through end of year reports and letters etc before they are sent out. The children also have an online learning journal, which sounds very like what you are describing OP, and the Head has to have all the entries approved by her before they go live. The spelling and grammar mistakes are shocking. The teachers are not allowed to post on the school website or Facebook page as the Head and I would probably have an apoplectic fit or a nervous breakdown! How did these teachers manage to get through a degree course is what I say!

Another mistake, I'll go and write out 50 times :
'I must not put 'I'd' when I mean 'is'!

As I say to the pupil who tells me they've finished: 'Check, check and check again!'

If people read a lot their spelling is often good. Constantly seeing the written word and punctuation must help.

Kids who read a lot also tend to have a wider vocabulary than those who don't read much. It shows in their creative writing.

Oh dear. I used to clean in a school and often noticed these silly mistakes. I know I'm pedantic and I anonymously used their Tippex to wipe out unneeded apostrophes.
In one of the buildings there was the agenda of a meeting hanging up on a notice board which mentioned the need for a 'canape' above the door instead of 'canopy' and I was surprised that in a department of at least ten people not one of them realised this mistake.
What does a parent do? It makes the teacher look silly if a mistake is pointed out - after all, they are supposed to know, aren't they?

Spelling is obviously not the most important thing learnt at school, but it does have a useful function in that correct spelling along with correct punctuation does help to avoid misunderstandings.
However, spelling like grammar does change from generation to generation.
I was for instance taught that the present participle when used as a noun should always be preceded by a possessive pronoun, not by a pronoun i.e. the sentence " My parents object to me staying out late in the evening" is incorrect, it should be "to my staying out"
I doubt that any youngster would dream of saying or writing "to our swearing" they would quite naturally say and write "to us swearing".

Likewise I expect the apostrophe will disappear from written English in a generation or two, as we seem to be the last people to know the rules governing its use.

The spelling checker and grammar checker are useful, but not infallible - however much I insist that I want British English, mine reverts to American English, and I constantly have to insert "u" in colour, favour, etc. or a second "l" into travelling! Even if you can get it to respect the form of English you use, it does not necessarily know every word that you know.

This said, I agree, school teachers should be able to spell, use punctuation correctly and know the multiplication tables, plus a vast lot of other things like when to use which past tense in French ( I once invigilated a written A level exam where there was a sentence that not even native French speakers were confident about translating) or explain the difference between strong and weak German verbs, but we are none of us perfect, after all.

Secretaries are just as guilty as teachers. I once received a letter addressed to Mr. followed by my Christian name Elisabeth and my surname. As it was for a gynaelogical appointment, I was considerably miffed!

Soself, how do you pronounce your name?

A friend's son brought home a list of ten spellings, eight of which were wrongly spelt. She ticked him off and corrected them, and the next day her son came home and said that the words were written on the board as he had copied them originally. Friend went in after school to discreetly tell the teacher and was met with a great deal of hostility. Absolutely amazed at this she asked what the point was in giving children incorrectly spelled words to learn, and the response was 'We are not all perfectionists in this world, Mrs. B'. That must have been about twenty five years ago at least, so what hope is there now?