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Can't take their own advice?


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[mention]Julie3Girls[/mention] - I've worked with 2 teachers (that I know of) with dyslexia. In both cases, it worked out well once they were open about their learning difficulties as we were able to support them. Beforehand, I do admit that there was some judgement as a certain level of written literacy is expected.

One was in a small team with me, and I offered to proof read emails to students and parents. Took me literally seconds to do, but its an example of how we can support teachers with learning difficulties.

We are in a high school so generally we have a standardised curriculum with common assignments etc. so the in classroom it wouldn't be as evident.

I'm not sure about early years, though? I cringe at the errors in my sons childcare report- I can deal with mistakes, but cringe at misinformation, so I'm trying not to be that parent...

I haven't met a primary teacher with a learning difficulty (again- that i know of) but I think it would depend on the person as to what it would look like in the classroom, not the label.

Oh, and the colleague mentioned is not a vice principal.

Sprry for the tangent, but I thought it must be hard to read some of these comments so wanted to try to add a positive example.

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My mother saw a professional man that was handling some of her financial affairs in a gaming room at a pub once. She took all her business elsewhere.


I have a friend who once said that he wouldn’t hire a tradesman that drove a not nice car.


I think a lot of these judgements are subconscious too.


My son’s hairdresser has terrible hair herself. (Think overgrown roots, poor cut) and I don’t think I would go to her for that reason. However she does a great job on him and is very sensitive to his ASD sensory needs. So I am a hypocrite.

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Susan StoHelit

I hate when I see health care workers smoking outside the workplace.


Teachers who can't spell or use correct grammar are also hard to respect.

 

I once misspelled my name on a handout. My students ragged me about it for the rest of the year, lol.

Maths and science teachers a notorious for being unable to spell for nuts.


I do giggle about my mum being an accountant and having someone else do her tax returns.

 

It’s a running joke in my senior classes (physics / math) that I would never be a primary teacher because my handwriting is atrocious. No way I could teach kids to write when my own resembles “the scratchings of a spider” (in the words of my old maths teacher).


I work around, usually these days having most materials typed / preprepared electronically. My students seem to forgive me.


It’s weird to me all this focus on spelling / grammar in teachers from parents. Even if teachers do know it, we write / communicate so much in a day that the odd error is bound to creep through. It’s not some “gotcha” moment, or proof of general in competence,


More concerning to me was the brand new first-year teacher my DD had for grade 1. She laughingly told me that she couldn’t teach the upper years in primary because she couldn’t do the maths. It’s a common theme I’ve noted in the primary years, that they seem to be more confident with English / humanities, and are nit expected to teach at the same level with other subjects. No wonder our STEM results and retention is declining.

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One was in a small team with me, and I offered to proof read emails to students and parents. Took me literally seconds to do, but its an example of how we can support teachers with learning difficulties.

 

Just pondering here.... How many roles actually have the "coal face' staff regularly corresponding with the clients by writing. There would be more now with the advent of email. Things used to go through a secretary who probably prided herself on her spelling - in the age of dictating machines, shorthand and messy hand written drafts, who knew how good the bosses spelling was.


In IT only a subset of people actually write stuff that goes straight to the client. And that is often reviewed by other staff before being sent out (thinking manuals, specs etc here). The odd typo is forgiven as, well, we are IT people, not teachers after all. (Tongue in cheek there!)


Lawyers? Lots of boilerplate used there.


Accountants? Who cares about their spelling as long as they add the numbers correctly.


So, really, having someone routinely proofread your work is not so strange.


Heck, look at the term. "proof read". Professional staff creating text for printing (proofs) expect them to read to look for errors.


I do get why teachers are held to a higher standard, but I do wonder sometimes if we aren't asking a bit much.

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One was in a small team with me, and I offered to proof read emails to students and parents. Took me literally seconds to do, but its an example of how we can support teachers with learning difficulties.

 

Just pondering here.... How many roles actually have the "coal face' staff regularly corresponding with the clients by writing. There would be more now with the advent of email. Things used to go through a secretary who probably prided herself on her spelling - in the age of dictating machines, shorthand and messy hand written drafts, who knew how good the bosses spelling was.


In IT only a subset of people actually write stuff that goes straight to the client. And that is often reviewed by other staff before being sent out (thinking manuals, specs etc here). The odd typo is forgiven as, well, we are IT people, not teachers after all. (Tongue in cheek there!)


Lawyers? Lots of boilerplate used there.


Accountants? Who cares about their spelling as long as they add the numbers correctly.


So, really, having someone routinely proofread your work is not so strange.


Heck, look at the term. "proof read". Professional staff creating text for printing (proofs) expect them to read to look for errors.


I do get why teachers are held to a higher standard, but I do wonder sometimes if we aren't asking a bit much.

 

Yeah it's a crying shame that editors and proof readers aren't a thing anymore. We never used to know how many mistakes journalists were making, but now we do. I try not to be a snob but I really lose faith in the whole thing when I see obvious mistakes, even if the article itself is otherwise good.

And you're right; so many professional men would have had lower paid women fixing all their mistakes in correspondence in the past. Some legal letters are actually quite incomprehensible now that the men are writing them themselves.

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DaLittleEd

Teachers who can't spell or use correct grammar are also hard to respect.

 

Would your opinion change if the teacher had dyslexia or dysgraphia, both of which can impact on spelling ability?

 

I always thought my brother would make the best teacher. He has dyslexia. What a strength for all the kids who similarly have dyslexia at school.

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Julie3Girls

Currently, as an early childhood educator, dd does a lot of writing - you’d be amazed at the amount of paperwork. Writing up children’s goal, observations, incident reports, daily stories. When dd started, the room leader was talking about the day story, and saying she’d probably get dd to read through to check it, as she (the room leader) has horrible spelling. Dd laughed, said she was dyslexic so probably not a lot of help. Easy fix, someone else does a quick proof read before it gets posted on their parent site. Mistakes still slip through, not usually made by dd.


There are lots of way to help deal with it. Spell check is something that makes the world a lot easier. Asking people to help. One of the advantages I guess, when you have a diagnosis, you tend to be a lot more aware and work out ways to compensate and deal with it,

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Would you get many teachers with dyslexia though? How can they teach spelling etc if they can't do it themselves? Or more like, if they struggle with spelling will they be able to correct a student's own work or recognise it's wrong in the first place?

I'm not that knowledgeable about either condition but yeah, I'd expect my kids' teachers to be able to spell and read and write easily.

 

Puts hand up, I’m a teacher with dyslexia, mainly making my spelling atrocious. However I am a science teacher, so teaching spelling is not my main focus. I tend to use it as a way of connecting with kids with learning challenges. You might be surprised the number of kids who hear I have dyslexia and respond with ‘but you’re smart’ because they have been made to feel stupid all their lives. I have strategies to address it which I am able to teach kids. Things like reading my work out loud or getting others to proof read things. The biggest issue tends to be when writing on the board because I’ll mix letters up without realising it. But generally kids will pick up my errors, I thank them acknowledge the error, fix it and we move on. Kids see that making a mistake is ok and I model how to accept correction in a healthy way. Tbh I think some of my best teaching has happened because of dyslexia.

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Catching up on lego masters... did this topic come about because of the financial advisor on the show who has thousands of dollars of lego, a Lamborghini and no house? Cause there's no way I'd be trusting someone like that with my finances. I don't care how good their theoretical understanding is, if they don't apply the basic logic to their own lives I can't take them seriously...


If not, then don't mind me. It was just a coincidence :)

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Accountants? Who cares about their spelling as long as they add the numbers correctly.

 

Accountants don't just add numbers!

We do lots of written & spoken advice too, communication is a key skill.

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Accountants? Who cares about their spelling as long as they add the numbers correctly.

 

Accountants don't just add numbers!

We do lots of written & spoken advice too, communication is a key skill.

 

Sorry [mention]qak[/mention] I was being flippant there to make my point. Yes there can be a lot of communication involved and given how many end up in management yes writing is integral. I guess I was trying to say that in my experience people don't jump on accountants for bad spelling or poor grammar.


Effective communication is easier with good spelling and grammar, but they are neither prerequisite nor soley sufficient in the quest for communication.


Clearly I failed in mine.

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Givingitanothergo

My partners is a builder with his own business. We have a stack of niggling repairs that need attention but never get done

I’m a qualified accountant that was 4 years behind in tax returns. I only lodged them because they cut off our CSS. I’ve caught up now. Perhaps it matters more in some professions and not others

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Tradies that take time out to repair their own houses are often missing out on a paying job to do it. That's the reason our new build hasn't been wired yet.


Medical and allied health professionals are as human as their clients, they arent robots. If you think your health professional is experiencing an issue that is detrimental to them being able to do their job there are avenues for letting registering bodies know.

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