I’ve been feeling a little disillusioned by the teaching community of late. Not only have I been personally attacked and had my credibility defamed in social media, I have noticed others being ridiculed by fellow teachers too, for simple spelling and grammatical mistakes.
I am getting a thicker skin when being ridiculed for errors. I have put myself in that position when I published my books and started a business from it so I'm learning to cop the criticism. I am always so thankful when people kindly bring to my attention an error I have made in a blog post, my website or one of my books. I don’t, however, appreciate receiving a demeaning essay about an error nor do I appreciate being slandered on social media and having my credibility as a teacher and author questioned. I especially don’t tolerate people accusing my customers and fellow teachers as “spelling-illiterate” because they didn’t alert me to the mistake.
It was simply that. A mistake!
Yes, I did pay an editor to edit my book. But guess what, they are human. I then sent through the changes to my designer who, you’ll never believe, is human too! No matter how many steps you take, when you are writing books with thousands of words in them, there will still be mistakes. Does it mean the book is any less beneficial? Myself and hundreds of customers don’t seem to think so, but if a spelling mistake is enough to deter you, that is fine, I get it. I’m a teacher which means I have to be an expert in every area of education, right???
To be honest, I’m not as phased by the online trolls as I once was, especially when I have some amazing people having my back. But it was reading other teachers getting torn down and discredited as a professional in their teaching role over a simple spelling or grammatical error that has spurred me to speak out. These negative comments can be more damaging than you would think and can especially knock the confidence of new teachers.
This may be a generalisation but we as teachers are supposed to be caring, kind and supportive in our profession. If some of these people treated their students the way they put down other teachers online, I would be appalled. There is ALWAYS a nice way to point out errors. EVERYBODY makes mistakes. Even these keyboard warriors aren’t immune to the common error.
"The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything." Theodore Roosevelt.
Spelling a word wrong DOES NOT make you an incompetent teacher. I doubt that ALL teachers out there are experts and aware of EVERY single grammatical rule. Does that make them unworthy to teach? I don’t believe so as there are many other strengths that teachers need to possess rather than perfect spelling and grammar skills.
Teachers have a million things going on in their head at any given time, a mistake on social media of all places does not warrant a public crucifixion. Why are people so quick to pick out the negatives rather than helping out or appreciating the positives? I am urging everyone to think before you criticise. You don’t know their story or what is going on in their life. Perhaps they are dyslexic and have battled to become a teacher. Perhaps it was just their “smart” phone acting not so smart. Let’s just remember to always take the kinder approach in these situations.
You may also like to know that even best-selling authors have mistakes in their work.
I’ll leave you with these…
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/5-famous-novels-huge-mistakes/
https://academicalism.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/on-the-writing-o-the-hunger-games/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/14-worst-typos-ever
KELLY
P.S. I’m sure some of you will take pleasure in finding grammatical errors here. Have fun! ;)
