justplainbil

Just Plain Bill

"I can use there help."

I'm now starting my second month of substitute teaching, totaling 21 school days. In addition to gathering a wealth of up-close and personal experiences from a small sample of today's youth, I've also run across a few things that cause me to shake my head in wonder.

This week, I was subbing in an 8th grade language arts class. After two students had completed their assignments, they asked if they could help another teacher with her preparation, as they said they had done so in the past. I wrote a note to this teacher, inquiring if these two students could be of assistance with her class preparation.

I received the following message in return: "I can use there help."

At first, I doubted the teacher had actually received my note and responded to the note, but upon further research, found the teacher had in fact signed the response. Honestly? I was really tempted to brandish my red pen and edit the incorrect word in her reply.

Over the decades I've worked in the learning and development arena, I’ve taught higher education to adults for more than 35 of those years. I've been continuously amazed at the great number of adults seeming to be on the borderline between literate and marginally illiterate - as reflected by their lack of spelling competency. (I require my college learners to create a "spelling bucket" consisting of the words they've spelled incorrectly.) But now I’ve seen what might be the roots of their spelling evils. I'm now amazed (more like appalled) at the spelling competency that seems to be ignored in many of the hundreds of papers I've now read during my short time as a substitute. Do you think Spellcheck contributes to this lack of competency? Is it something else?

I admit that spelling is not my strongest suit, as I went through elementary school during an era with more emphasis on reading speed and not necessarily reading fluency. This must be related in some way to my own spelling challenges, as I rarely read complete words and depend on context clues to read and comprehend the text. As I did my masters work in elementary education with an emphasis on reading, I addressed that lack of competency by learning how to spell the words I liked to use and learning the few spelling rules I had missed. I've now come to appreciate the aforementioned Spellcheck and the clues my cell phone provides as I write a text message.

Not sure what next steps I will take as I continue to encounter the literacy/spelling challenge, but I know for sure I'm not going to ignore it.

Any suggestions?