When the Teacher Can't Write

Juniorette has a history teacher this year who is just not up to snuff. Juniorette, who has highly developed writing skills, gets all wiggy, as do I, over the handouts and tests that this teacher produces.  Tomorrow, the 8th graders will be taking their state-mandated government test.  I looked at the practice test, both online and in print, and it's full of wrong spellings, badly formed questions and incorrect or non-existent punctuation.  I'm particularly cranky about this because Juniorette took a quiz earlier this week in which she answered all the questions correctly, but wrote out full answers, rather than used the matching letters.  Despite getting all the answers right, she still failed the test. 

How does one go about grading a teacher?  Any ideas on how I would register a complaint?  If I thought she were an excellent teacher with dyslexia or some other LD, I'd not mind so much, but I've gotten no indication that she does much besides have the kids copy notes from overheads.  I also know that she has a second job at some sort of chicken wings  restaurant--that's the most notable thing to come out of her lectures this year.  Most of the teachers have been really terrific and seem very engaged and competent.  How does one getting a teaching position with sub-jr. high writing skills? 

I'm sore tempted to link to the page where her disastrous online test is, but I won't.  Here, however is a sampling of what's on the test:

• She repeatedly refers to the "US House of Representative."  Like there's just one rep.
• "What is the citizenship requirements of the US Senate?"
• Most of the questions are without questions marks.
• "What is the fraction needed in either house necessary to require voting in that house to be made public knowledge" (translation, please!)
• "What is the required number to expel a member of the House of Representative"  (answer choices are fractions)
• "What is the minimum age of a US House of Representative"

Those are the most choice samples, with plenty more to give.  This is reflective of the level of material I've seen all year.  For most of the year, she had a link to her "sylabus" on her website.  I've also found factual errors in her notes.  Am I expecting too much?

UPDATE:  Thanks to everyone for the input and encouragement. I just sent an email to the proper authority to ask how I can express concern about the qualifications of a particular instructor.  My guess is that this woman has tenure, and is there for life, but I decided I needed to say something.

Comments

[nanette]

When I was Juniorette's age, I used to correct my teachers all the time. I don't know if it was my natural born smartassery, or if the errors just really ticked me off, but whenever I saw mistakes on handouts I would correct them. Naturally, this annoyed the teachers and got me in trouble more than a few times. No adult likes to think that they've been bested by an 8th grader, unless they're playing video games or something.

My mom ended up going to the school to complain. Did it help? I'm not sure that it did, but I'm glad that she said something. I think it's important to make the administration aware that something is amiss. Fortunately, Juniorette is getting correct information from other sources (i.e., home, books, etc.), but there are likely other students in the class who AREN'T, and it's bothersome that there are going to be all these middle school students out there talking about the "U.S. House of Representative."

As a graduate of an undergraduate and a graduate education program, I have to say that I'm appalled at some of the people who become teachers. Some of the most closed-minded, ignorant people from my undergraduate institution (a smallish midwestern liberal arts school) were in the education program. I think education loses a lot of really talented, intelligent people because the pay is so awful. I had a friend who was a phenomenal math teacher with an advanced degree who really enjoyed teaching, but he chose to work for a government contractor instead because the pay was so much higher. And that's not uncommon!

[Robin]

I concur with Mock Turtle, you are not expecting too much. As a Middle School librarian, I have the opportunity to work with everyone in my school. Some teachers are simply better educated than others. There are many reasons why, but I won't go into that rant here. It is one thing for a teacher to misspell words (depending on her age, she may have gone through the 'creative spelling' revolution.) It is quite another for a teacher to use incorrect punctuation and tense agreement, or write simply unreadable questions. I'm not sure what I would do in your shoes. I'm assuming that you are close to the end of the school year. I suppose I would wait until after my child were out of the class and bring it to the attention of the administration.

[Mock Turtle]

No, you're not expecting too much, but I'm afraid this sort of thing is not all that uncommon. My son had an English (oops - I mean "Language Arts") teacher in middle school two years in a row who was just abysmal. She insisted that "stupefy" was not a word (when my son used it in class conversation), told the kids that Hitler was a communist, and many other examples of ignorance and incompetence that I have mostly suppressed by now, two years later. What did I do about it? Nothing, unfortunately. I kinda wish I had, though. Part of why I didn't was that I was afraid that the only result would be that she would be even more biased against my knowledgeable and outspoken child than she already was. I recommend you follow your instincts on this one.