(Bolding mine)
This explains why teachers are overwhelmingly in support of competency testing of teachers. It should be a lifelong learning process; unfortunately, many people in the profession seem opposed to that.
Indeed. No one has argued otherwise. Even OP herself admits as much.
Cite that it must have been a kid?
I think the issue here is that since we don’t know a person’s motivation, it’s hard to judge the act. Since the act isn’t illegal, it’s hard to punish someone for it other than to hold up the act as some kind of moral indictment of them. As I’ve said earlier, there might have been a good reason in the actor’s estimation for taking the action. We don’t know though.
Sounds about right.
It isn’t an argument. No one has said that x teacher misspelled on a web-based forum and thus is a shitty douche of a teacher. It’s highly relevant though to differentiate between a typo (of which we’re all guilty) and a lack of knowledge about how to spell properly and generally write well. That the person in question has made much of the fact s/he’s an educator makes a review of his/her inability to properly spell or write highly relevant. After all, his/her profession requires him/her to grade for these things. How can one effectively grade if one doesn’t know how to do it proper in the first instance?
Consider for a moment that it’s well-known among teachers that “alot” is a common mistake. Yet, here you are, full thrust about you, making it. One hopes that your writing in class is superior.
This is what Frank wrote on page 1: " You’re a teacher? How were you able to get through teacher college without doing simple stuff like putting question marks where they belong, and so on? What do you teach?" I just thought that was a little low. I guess it’s not spelling. My bad. But off work hours should we be held accountable to the same rules? I proofread my posts and try to make them look the best possible, but you know I have lots going on. Proofreading my posts impeccably on a message board is a low priority. Should a nutritionist avoid chips and pop for the rest of his life? We’re only human.
For me I was just casually grouping kids as anyone in school. True it could have been an adult, but i’ll base my hypothetical argument on that it’s a student. I only have experience as an elementary teacher so maybe the rules aren’t the same in high school, but generally ridiculous behaviour gets addressed even if it’s not illegal. I can’t think of what possible justifiable motivation a student would have to post someone’s private life all over the school. Maybe the parent should be contacted and then they can decide if reprocusions are neccesary.
If he’s standing in front of a group of people proclaiming, “I’m a nutritionist!” and then starts eating chips and having a coke, perhaps. The issue isn’t just that there’s poor grammar; it’s that there’s poor grammar in tandem with the announcement “as a teacher” kind of shit. So, essentially, the post can be read as, “As a teacher, I have shitty grammar. But I teach so don’t look at that because I’m only writing online!”
Yeah, that quest fell flat before the proverbial ink was dry.
Perhaps some parents should do a better job of teaching their children manners. Indeed, I think most parents should. At any rate, I can think of some good reasons to post something like that. But to assign my reasons to this unknown person doesn’t seem worthwhile. I just find it peculiar that people are saying that it is hands down a mistake and wrong to do. There are circumstances which can come up which would make exposing such information not-quite-out-of-line.
Meh, I think that’s a low blow. Obviously anyone without punctuation skills would not be able to write papers through university and resumes to at least get the job. Maybe the OP was in a rush and just wrote it down quick. I just think people like to nitpick. Perhaps Frank could have used a better tone then loudly proclaiming “You’re a teacher?” as if to imply the OP has no skill.
I still can’t think of any reasons. Feel free to fill in the blank as to why someone should post publicly information about someone’s divorce, and according to the OP in pamphlets no less.
I intentionally decided against posing situations which would justify it. Largely because they’d require a negative outlook on the personage of OP. I don’t want to do that.
When I was a math professor, I somehow had the displeasure of being on the hiring committee for the English Department. You’d be surprised how many people with graduate degrees in literature and English would send in cirricula vitae with misspellings, horrid punctuation and other unsightly infirmities. Of course, this is the internet and it’s not as important as a cv. But it’s still the written word which is recorded for all to see. Also note that I allowed for the excusal of outright typos “adn” and “teh” and what not.
The rules aren’t as stringent, but I think it’s relevant to say “gee, person is educating our youth and is bitching about her poor decisions, with bad grammar to boot.” We should expect better from our educators. Consider that OP could have left out the teacher bit altogether and the issue would have been moot. Indeed, recent experience should probably counsel OP to posit as little data as is necessary to get the point across. Some people take longer on the upstroke though.
Feel free to privately message me about it, I won’t post it. I really can’t think of a reason to send out pamphlets about a person’s divorce. I can think of scandals, but I think there must be better channels to inform the appropriate people effected by it.
So then my question about the hiring dept would be, did they dismiss all candidates with misspellings in their CV, or did they realize that such mistakes can happen and arrange an interview regardless? If so, who can you really blame for having an english teacher with bad grammar? You can only hire the best out of the applicants available, and if none of them can spell, well I guess there will be a teacher with poor spelling teaching kids and hopefully PD sessions and a desire to get better will bring the teacher up to speed, or else when someone more capable comes along they will get the position (assuming the teacher wasn’t given tenure). I hope the OP has excellent grammar for school, but again I think it’s ridiculous to evaluate her teaching abilities based on a single post on the straight dope.
I agree, if I were the op I would have posted less information, but that’s only knowing people’s natures to try to tear / pick people apart. I don’t blame her for being honest. And you will never find a teacher who has only made good decisions (whatever that means). The teachers who are the best admit to their mistakes and learn from them, which is exactly what we want our kids to do. The op sounds apologetic. Hopefully the OP’s students will be able to learn from her mistake and she will become a better teacher because of it.
Ok, check your PM in about 2 minutes after this post.
Any cv which came across my desk with a grammatical error went straight to the trash. We don’t hire incompetent people at my school; it’s a private college with far too expensive tuition. The least we can do is not install idiots* into a professorship.
I’m not sure she sounded apologetic so much as the post was merely an empty threat to the offending parties. All that not-quite-so subtle talk of consequences, and going to the cops and what not. But it seems to have worked, most people here are convinced that she was wronged. Unfortunately, reality isn’t a majority vote.
Anyone applying for a job to teach English at a university and has misspellings in their application/cv is an idiot.
I think this bears repeating. Yes, someone was a jackass to you, and it may indeed rise to the level of harassment. Take your example, plus some of the other issues that have popped up over the last few years, and let your students learn from them.
If I wasn’t sure it was harassment as well, I’d recommend finding their pages on their social networking site of choice and showing how easy it was for you to find out what party they went to last weekend.
That, naturally, requires we know who the offending person was. We do not. So, she’d just be randomly pointing out some happenstance student. Or coworker as the case might be.
Um, why, um, yes, why do you* ask? It’s very obviously that and I commend you on your supreme skills of discernment. Actually, it’s a typo, for which I, thankfully, allowed. =P
All of you referring to the OP as “she”, “her”, “herself” etc, the OP is a man. The title of the embarrassing post is “My Wife Wants a Divorce.” Reading comprehension is a much more valuable skill than spelling and grammar IMO.
Eek. I think its things like that you might want to avoid saying… just imagine if a student erred and spun that which ever way and took that out of context.
And I did read your post from 2007 that someone linked…I could understand it hurting cuz its a breach of your privacy… but I think you’re overreacting. From what I read… was it really that bad?
From what I can remember… I recall a lot of teachers sharing things with the class. Mrs. Jone’s daughter just got married. Mr. Donnahue’s wife is having surgery. etc…
You are getting a divorce… You are worried for your children… You were sleeping in a different room… So? I bet a handful of your student’s parents have been through a divorce. From what I can tell, the way you handle this is greatly going to effect how the students react to your personal info.
I think I would have handled it by being open to the students about it… I’m assuming that you sharing it with us was a grieving mechanism… you would be suprised at what kids are able to say if you share and listen to them. So yeah… If it were me… my response to this would be more or less… “I’m getting a divorce. …So?”
In his defense, that’s an easy error to make when editing a post. Let’s say I decided “easy” was the wrong adjective to use in my previous sentence, and changed it to “simple.” If I didn’t reread the sentence, I could easily (:)) be left with “an simple.”
