language quality of teacher emails/speech ?

[Anonymous]

Greetings fellow DCPS parents.
I've been satisfied with the polish and professionalism of my kids' K-5 teachers.
One of my kid's 6th grade teachers though just sent an email to students & parents painfully full of grammar and word usage errors even most 6th grade kids would not make.
Happy to give the teacher a break that it's a busy first week, but remain uncomfortable that this teacher will be modelling poor language for my child for the next year.
If the poor language persists, is there any acceptable intervention or feedback mechanism?
I'm hesitant of course to approach the Principal saying 'this teacher doesn't write or speak properly...'
What do you think?

[Anonymous]

Ugh, that sucks.

The thing is, you won't be able to fix it by talking to the Principal or anything like that. You will have to assess whether you want to advocate to have your child switched to a different teacher. I think the class subject is probably a factor. An English teacher who models poor writing is a non-starter. A dynamic, wonderful Science teacher with bad grammar? Maybe okay.

[Anonymous]

It would royally piss me off. I'd forward it to the principal and ask if this is the quality of education we can expect all year from the teacher. It's really unacceptable and a failing of a principal to hire a teacher without asking for a writing sample to screen for things like poor grammar.

[Anonymous]

Bad writing is endemic in the US and in DCPS. I saw this slide from Anacostia HS and almost commented to correct it ("Teachers" instead of "teacher's", the second place it says "Clever" should read "Canvas", etc.) and then thought there was no point.

I agree that you can be a good teacher without great writing skills in certain classes--not ELA, though. No matter what you teach, you do have to be able to get your point across. I would wait a little while longer. If your child enjoys the class and is learning writing skills elsewhere, let it go. If this is a class that is supposed to teach writing, or if it's at the point of interfering with your child's ability to learn the subject matter, then tell the principal and ask for the teacher either to proofread better/seek out supports for editing, or for your child to be moved to a different teacher.

[Anonymous]

Are the errors in writing vs. speaking? If speaking, is it AAVE or an ESL issue? I would be more forgiving of non-standard spoken English as long as your child can still learn what's being taught. Hearing different types of English is a valuable skill, and it's not something the principal can change as easily as telling a teacher to proofread or get help editing written work.

[Anonymous]

Is she an English teacher? If she teaches math or science I wouldn't worry. Your children will be in the workforce one day with people who speak and write all forms on nonstandard American English, and will have to learn from and communicate with these colleagues.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if she is dyslexic or something similar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bad writing is endemic in the US and in DCPS. I saw this slide from Anacostia HS and almost commented to correct it ("Teachers" instead of "teacher's", the second place it says "Clever" should read "Canvas", etc.) and then thought there was no point.

I agree that you can be a good teacher without great writing skills in certain classes--not ELA, though. No matter what you teach, you do have to be able to get your point across. I would wait a little while longer. If your child enjoys the class and is learning writing skills elsewhere, let it go. If this is a class that is supposed to teach writing, or if it's at the point of interfering with your child's ability to learn the subject matter, then tell the principal and ask for the teacher either to proofread better/seek out supports for editing, or for your child to be moved to a different teacher.

The slide was at https://twitter.com/AnacostiaHigh/status/1300846739927322631

See, we can all make mistakes! I'd give a lot of grace to the teacher. Maybe even offer to proofread if I had any spare capacity. Definitely raise it with the teacher before reporting to the principal. But at a certain point, if your kid isn't learning because of it (and I'd guess that's a pretty rare situation--the writing would have to be really really bad) and it's not getting fixed, you do need to say something.

[Anonymous]

Is the teacher using AAVE?

[Anonymous]

Is the teacher new? This year they are really having to lower the bar for hiring teachers just to have enough staff to operate. Too bad but what can you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bad writing is endemic in the US and in DCPS. I saw this slide from Anacostia HS and almost commented to correct it ("Teachers" instead of "teacher's", the second place it says "Clever" should read "Canvas", etc.) and then thought there was no point.

I agree that you can be a good teacher without great writing skills in certain classes--not ELA, though. No matter what you teach, you do have to be able to get your point across. I would wait a little while longer. If your child enjoys the class and is learning writing skills elsewhere, let it go. If this is a class that is supposed to teach writing, or if it's at the point of interfering with your child's ability to learn the subject matter, then tell the principal and ask for the teacher either to proofread better/seek out supports for editing, or for your child to be moved to a different teacher.

The slide was at https://twitter.com/AnacostiaHigh/status/1300846739927322631

See, we can all make mistakes! I'd give a lot of grace to the teacher. Maybe even offer to proofread if I had any spare capacity. Definitely raise it with the teacher before reporting to the principal. But at a certain point, if your kid isn't learning because of it (and I'd guess that's a pretty rare situation--the writing would have to be really really bad) and it's not getting fixed, you do need to say something.

Exactly. You can learn from people who talk and write differently than the accepted standard. Unless it's an English class. Otherwise no big deal!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Greetings fellow DCPS parents.
I've been satisfied with the polish and professionalism of my kids' K-5 teachers.
One of my kid's 6th grade teachers though just sent an email to students & parents painfully full of grammar and word usage errors even most 6th grade kids would not make.
Happy to give the teacher a break that it's a busy first week, but remain uncomfortable that this teacher will be modelling poor language for my child for the next year.
If the poor language persists, is there any acceptable intervention or feedback mechanism?
I'm hesitant of course to approach the Principal saying 'this teacher doesn't write or speak properly...'
What do you think?

I wouldn’t be hesitant to approach the principal since the principal is presumably the one who hired this person.

With that said, it’s hard to see what helpful can come from mentioning it to the teacher or principal — at least from this year. The teacher is not going to be able to acquire better language skills at this point, even if he/she was attentive to it.

[Anonymous]

OP here- Thanks for all the suggestions and commiseration.
The subject is not ELA(big sigh of relief) and heartily agree that many subjects can be taught effectively regardless of teacher's style of speaking or writing.
Not a new teacher, ESL case or AAVE in the writing.
I'm counting on the teacher's enthusiasm and dedication to win the day.
To her credit, she is reaching out. I've not seen emails from any of the other teachers yet.
Staying positive

[Anonymous]

Op, you scare me. I have studied 7 languages, but I still make grammar mistakes in English, and probably in my mother tongue. Never mind the languages, I'm very good at making math concepts easy for elementary kids.
I just entered MA program in ECE and at times I think about parent like you. Is you child's teacher a good teacher?
My English teacher was an historian and a linguist who spoke 8 languages. I see his writing on Facebook sometimes and wonder if there is something wrong with him based on the way he writes. He was just voted the best teacher in the country (back in the old country). When I heard it, I wondered, what took them so long!

[Anonymous]

OP -- the impact on your child is likely minimal: snort, sneer and move on.