I need some advice from other parents who might be undergoing the same situation as I am. This is in regards to the way our public school system has deteriorated to the point where they seem to be hiring ESL teachers, foreigners who somehow qualified to become teachers in our public system, who are allowed to teach our children English. Why these non-native English speakers were hired to teach English in America is something that will always bother me and baffle my mind.
We all know that our kids are taught to spell as a part of their reading development exercises. This how they learn word meaning and increase their vocabulary. So teachers often quiz them about word spelling alongside word meaning. My child is one of those advanced English readers since I signed the kid up for Kumon classes. It helps him stay advanced of his basic class teachings and gives him a leg up when it comes to reading comprehension for his grade level. So, you can imagine my surprise when his teacher marked him down for spelling the word "abbreviation" wrong, causing him to fail the test by one word.
As a concerned parent, I made sure that I got to the bottom of this since I knew the child had spelled the word correctly based, not only on his writing, but also on several online and offline dictionaries that I have access to. I will admit, my child had never come across the word before, had never used it in a sentence before, and only spelled the word using hearing and syllabication methods. The point is, he got the trick word right when all his classmates got it wrong.
I spoke to the Asian teacher about this and showed evidence that the spelling was correct based on several sources. He still insisted that the word was incorrectly spelled based on his knowledge and the way the word would have been spelled in his own country. WTF? Since when did English words get spelled based on a foreigners spelling method? That really sounded like a cop out to me. Long story short, he refuses to change the grade of my kid and is daring me to take it up with the principal if I really think I will get anywhere with such a "trivial" complaint. He also reminded me that he has the power to make my child miserable in his class if he so wishes.
What should I do? I know that I should take this case to a higher authority but I am afraid that my child might suffer the consequences. I also do not have any evidence of these threats since I neglected to record the conversation we had at the PTA meeting. Should I just let this go for the sake of my kid? Maybe I should just pull him out of school and home school him? What would be the best course of action in this situation if you were the one involved in it? |