Saturday, August 9, 2014

Weekly Whine: Note

After my daughter's birthday party, I was trying to follow the tradition of handing thank you cards to the kids who came and gave her presents. Unfortunately, I discovered the school policy is that this is not allowed. (Actually, it's not so much the school as apparently the district. I got an administrator to readily admit that it was silly.) Anyway, the first time I sent my daughter to school with the cards, I received this note back from her teacher:



I debated if I should post this, because I really did like her teacher. But the use of "thier" just killed me. She used the wrong version of the homonym and then she spelled it wrong on top of that. This is a woman who is teaching my child to read and spell. Actually, I think that this was one of their spelling words.

If she had typed it, I wouldn't have made a big deal because anyone can make a typo. Or if she just used the wrong version of their, I could have lived with that because anyone can make that mistake if they are busy. But the misspelling on top of it was what put it over the edge.

13 comments:

  1. I spotted that mistake right away and it grated on me, too. On one hand I want to defend the error, because I know there have been times when I was in a rush and very tired and made a silly mistake like using "too" instead of "to," and there have been times when I couldn't remember the spelling of a word when writing by hand and had to Google it just to make sure I had it right. Autocorrect has allowed us to become lazy.

    But as you say, this isn't a complicated word, and she used the wrong grammatical form on top of it.

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  2. Seriously, it looks like a child composed and wrote it. I weep for the future of education.

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  3. A recent teacher test in my country resulted in 63% of teachers making grammar and orthographic mistakes. Sixty-three percent. I just... there are no words.

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  4. My job is editing stories that are posted on websites of "true tales." One is dedicated just to school-related stories. There are days I want to cry at the number of stories that come in which start with, "I am a teacher" and contain such horrific grammar you have to wonder how they graduated high school, let alone college.

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  5. 2 words: private school.

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  6. all of you commenters and blog host sound like pompous jerks.

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    1. You should start your sentences with a capital letter.

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  7. She probably wrote it while in a room with 20 5 and 6 year olds trying to get her attention. I'm a stickler for proper grammar but I've been in kindergarten classes enough to look past things like this. If it was a formal paper of some sort or if she taught a higher grade then I'd be just as harsh but a quick note on a Post It isn't something to judge someone by.

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  8. Once I had a pottery party for my daughter - it was at a small school with a small class and I invited the entire class to the pottery shop. After the kid's pieces were fired and kilned and glazed and whatever else you do I picked them up and tried to send them to school with my daughter. Got a similar response - but verbal. I felt "schooled." And frustrated. I waited until the end of the year celebration and ran around in the audience passing all the kid's pottery out to their parents. Like I freaking had time to deliver them all to their residences or mail them. So crazy.

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  9. Oh and typos bug the crap out of me too, even though I am guilty on occasion especially with darn autocorrect. When the offense comes with an idiotic rule it makes it all the more offensive, even if written with a million 6 year olds throwing water balloons at your head.

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  10. Maybe I'm confused because I'm from a different country, but why are you sending thank you cards at all? I could understand your child sending the cards (although why can't they say thank you in person?), but why as a parent?

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  11. A-ah, this is what I told Fizzy a few months ago and she/others ridiculed me. Average kid gets 70 toys a year according to statistics. I don't want to overload my house with these unneccesary toys, and request birthday guests NOT bring any presents. Some people ask for donation to charity instead of birthday gift, but I feel its pushy. Thank you cards are part of the whole birthday celebration, and kids have no interest in wiritng them. I received thank you cards from kids clearly dictated by their parent. "I will use your gift money wisely" and some thank you cards were re-written over by a parent, when kid failed to produce neat hand-writing (which still showed in the backgrounf). Many people save on a card by writing it on plain piece of paper. the paper then gets wriknled and stained with food by the time it makes it to my child's backpack. I find the whole hip about cards pathetic. Saying thank you is good enough for me, I have no interest in getting and having to read thank you cards.

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    Replies
    1. Hey, I completely agree. I think it's stupid and that's why I wrote a post about it. But if every other person does it and you don't, people think you're rude.

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