. . .that’s how mad I am. The inability to think and communicate those thoughts on paper plagues our students in the inner city. I imagine it is a problem everywhere. . .but I know it’s a problem here. In fact, stating it’s a problem here really is an understatement–it’s an epidemic. Students are loosing the ability to communicate effectively and it’s no wonder.
I was at a school this past week. The teacher had a bulletin board displaying the students’ work. The bulletin board featured the objective they were trying to accomplish and the students had to write mini-essays. The teacher then wrote a comment for each one and posted it on the bulletin board. She was obviously following a format: praise the student, note one thing that he did well, and make one suggestion for next time. So far. . .this is nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I started reading her comments. They were riddled with grammatical mistakes and instant messaging slang. Can I scream now? I thought maybe it was just her and perhaps no one had told her to remove it yet. I then went to another bulletin board where I found numerous grammatical errors in the students’ work as well as some spelling errors in the teacher’s writing. Yet another bulletin board misquoted a poem by Emily Dickenson as Emily Dickson. If you’re not shaking your head in dismay yet, you can do so now.
I am sure the teacher’s union would have us believe that it’s because the teachers are over worked. I don’t doubt this to be true as each bulletin board displaying work had at least 30 pieces on it. I know how time consuming it is to write comments on each child’s paper. And believe me, I am not bashing teachers. . .it is a hard job.
To be frank, I don’t care. I don’t care how underpaid she is, how hard her students are or how difficult the administration is being. I don’t care how long it might take her to leave out the instant messaging jargon and simply write words. It is a big deal to ’publish’ something that has grammatical and spelling errors in it.
It is a big deal for this simple reason: kids model their behavior after their role models. By making public work that has errors in it they learn that ‘close enough’ is as good as perfect. Some of them even learn the ‘close enough’ is correct.
My Plea to Parents
My point in this blog is not to bash teachers or even to bash these couple of teachers who seem to be grammatically challenged. It is to issue a simple plea to parents, who are the ‘first’ teachers of their children as well as teachers.
If we want our kids to speak properly, write properly, and communicate well–we must show them how to do it. We must model it at every turn. We must be the ones to teach them that ‘close enough’ is not in fact acceptable when ‘without error’ is called for. It will not hurt their self esteem to correct them now. Some will say that we want to be careful not to frustrate the child and while I understand that there is a place for simply writing without care for spelling or grammar–I also understand that those pieces are for personal viewing and not for the world to see. I am sure it will be frustrating to write and re-write drafts until the work is perfect. I think it would be more frustrating to be unable to get a good job because you never learned how to communicate properly. So parents, teachers, please–let’s model what we say and write for our children and students.
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