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No, this isn't our attempt to write a letter on behalf of a city school, it's an actual letter, rife with misspellings and mistakes, sent by a Staten Island teacher to students. A Health Academy dean at Markham Intermediate, Michael Levy, sent off a furious letter after a few eighth graders engaged in a food fight. Of course, little did he know that the letter would make him a laughingstock. From the Staten Island Advance:
"When we first received the letter, we started reading it. Then I'm, like, 'Wait! This doesn't sound right,'" said one eighth-grade student, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. "You're supposed to be a dean helping us out with our stuff? That doesn't make any sense!"You can see the whole letter here and we suspect that we have Levy's wack spellcheck program. Levy was supposed to get Principal Emma Della Rocca's approval before sending the letter, but she never saw it. The school is currently investigating Levy's conduct; in the letter, he also threatens to hold the entire class responsible for food fights, but Della Rocca now says the few involved will be disciplined.She added that "even some of the teachers were laughing."
... A Staten Island educator who was asked to grade the letter found eight spelling errors among the many mistakes -- and said she would give a student an "F" for submitting similar work.
"Is this the work of someone who has two degrees -- a bachelor's and a master's?" she asked. "I mean, let's be real."
Parents are split on Levy: One father tells the Daily News that he's worried about the rowdiness of students as a mother says "We all make mistakes." But another father wants Levy fired, "We are for zero tolerance when kids make a mistake. What is good for the goose is good for the gander."
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Being as though I have seen countless typos in Jen's post, I feel there is hardly room to talk.
Since when are eighth graders "seniors" who have a prom and trip?
There are also several grammatical errors in the letter.
Look, no one can spell or write perfectly any more, it seems, and it's a waste of time depending on non-editors or writers to know how to do it. Sorry to say it, but it's true. Complaining about it at this stage of the game is pointless.
The solution is to go back to drilling by rote in the schools, and I don't think that will come back any time soon.
www.forgotten-ny.com
kettle? meet pot.
It's so painful to see Gothamist commenting on misspellings.
Pedestrian the kids must be in middle school. I had an 8th grade trip and prom.
#2, I was wondering the same thing. 8th graders have proms now?
Hmmm I'm thinking that perhaps the school secretary typed this letter for the dean and that he didn't read it carefully before signing it and sending it out.
This happens a lot in the corporate world. I remember the time an admin. asst. was supposed to type "this attests to the incumbency of the above." Unfortunately "incumbency" was not a word that she knew. However, she was familiar with the similar-sounding word "incompetency."
Ultimately the letter went out under the signature of a top corporate executive stating that "this attests to the incompetency of the above."
@Kevin,
I think English grammar and spelling has always been pretty poor in the US. However, it has only become more visible with the advent of word processing software. Now, instead of having the literate secretary type up memos for you, they fire the secretary and have you do it.
Oh well. I've quit being a Grammar Nazi these days. If I can understand the point your making, despite spelling and grammatical errors, I'm happy...
This brings me back to the time when all the kids in my elementary school were sent home with memos (mimeographed!) that referred to the "childroon". From them on my parents kept saying "You childroon..."
This Levy character is eminently qualified for a prestigious and highly paid position with the Gothamist staff of super brains. You may even get to be on the TV like Jen ! YAY JEN !
you missed "senior activates"
10:24 - I thought the same exact thing. Of course, in an ideal world one has the time/resources to double-check an admin's work. Not always the case, I imagine, in a school.
10:11 - I completely agree. I don't care if you're a genius, most people will think you're an absolute idiot if you can't spell or write a grammatically proper sentence.
Love the father who wants the guy fired. It was probably his child who started the frigging food fight.
The "activates" instead of "activities" and failure to capitalize "Health Academy" is pretty bad, though.
this is a BLOG, not an essay-writing class. jeez, get off your high horses or stop reading it. if you spent your whole life being so annoyingly self-righteous, what kind of life is that? anyway, this guy is the works at a school, not a blog; he should know to be careful about letting something like this go out before checking it.
i know its been said, but damn chung, where do you get off calling attention to anyone's spelling??
sure its fucked that the school can't spell, but at least have jake post this one..
"during out 6th period"...
leave jen alone. she is hot. hotness counts more in life than grammar and spelling.
Happy not-quite-Festivus, everyone! I thought, if you're going to rag on me, why not in one place? (Although I was tempted to fill the post with enough misspellings and grammatical mistakes to make you look for your pitchforks and torches and hunt me down.)
xoxoxo, Jen
you know, if you spent more time worrying about spelling, and less time acting like your inability to spell/make sense was cute and funny, you could probably eradicate the problems.
But nevermind, go post another graffitti story and think about how awesome it is that you get people riled up.
But another father wants Levy fired, "We are for zero tolerance when kids make a mistake. What is good for the goose is good for the gander."
You mean they expell (sp) kids these days for spelling mistakes and gramatical errors?!? Perhaps that quote was taken out of context, but the parent seriously can't be calling for Levy's head due to spelling mistakes, can he?
And who is for zero tolerance when kids make a mistake?
The grammar and spelling in most Gothamist articles are usually much worse! In fact, that is why I seldom come here anymore; reading them is nearly intolerable sometimes.
gothamist is a blog- it's not the contributors full-time profession. criticize gothamist's spelling all you want, but apparently none of you have any reading comprehension skills or you would notice this post is quick to joke about gothamist's own grammar problems.
Yeah, I hate to beat a dead horse but Jen and Gothamist should be the last to call someone else's poor grammar and spelling.
Jen, use Microsoft Word when writing - red underline means it's spelled wrong and the green underline means the grammar is wrong.
Or, just stop hoarding all the money you get from your advertisers and hire someone to proofread. What the hell, I'll do it from my desk at work since I clearly am not working anyhow.
just because they joke about it doesn't make it o.k.
It actually makes it a little insulting, given their constant disregard for any level of professionalism.
u may comment and laugh about jens spelling errors, but jen is laughing all the way to the bank........
Never fear, dismayed Gothamist readers. Help is on the way!
Try this (click on the links): www.grammarbook.com
To the first commenter, Julia: "Being as though I have seen..." What the heck does that mean? Are you communicating in Esperanto, perchance?
"It's so painful to see Gothamist commenting on misspellings."
Oh how I love the shared sentiment.
The 8th graders throw food, so the seniors don't get prom. That sounds reasonable (NOT!)
Educators should be educated. Educators should also be intelligent. The letter indicates the author is not educated enough to write a sentence, nor intelligent enough to use spelling and grammar checkers. When did Bush start writing letters for schools? Is this a template he created for "No Child Left Behind"?
I love those who are ragging on others here and don't use "you're" and "it's" correctly.
And yes, Jen's hot.
this, an entry on david byrne's bike being stolen... a slow day for news, eh?
a disturbing trend at gothamist -- shit's just not going down in the city that never sleeps, i suppose.
ahh take it easy on Jen. I used to be a grammar and spelling type dude but i realized that resistance is futile.
It's like the old saying:
Those who can't do, teach.
(and those who can't teach, teach gym...)
it's easy to criticize from the sidelines, but jen puts in countless hours on this site in addition to working a full-time job. unfortunately, some spelling and grammatical errors get through, but we don't always have the luxury of having someone proof everything we're posting due to time constraints and the volume of the posts on the site. and when you read your own work, you don't always catch your mistakes.
And those who can't teach gym, create blogs.
How charmingly meta of you, Gothamist. But that does not excuse you.
If you think I take some perverse pleasure in getting hateful, rude comments about how stupid I am and that must be why I make so many errors, I actually don't. I am not asking to be excused. The site only gets better (I hope!) with people calling us out on mistakes and errors. And I take responsibility for not doing a better job.
Would I love to have more time checking posts? Yes. Would I love for people who offer their copy editing skills on the site to extend more of their time to us, even in the early AM? Yes. Would I love for readers to be helpful with their criticisms? Yes - and many are.
And that's all I have to say about it right now - anyone who wants to get into it more, email me at jen(at)gothamist(dot)com.
a few typos here and there on this site is one thing, but it it SCARY that an educator would write something like that and send it home to parents! it's hard to believe that someone who doesn't know how to spell "unacceptable" is teaching children.
I THINK RANDI WEINGARTNER SHOULD SPEAK OUT AGAINST THIS DUMB TEACHER SHE IS A HYPOCRATE JUST LIKE SHARPTON AND I HATE EVERYBODY ON MY TV
Are we even sure that the letter was written by a school employee at all? Couldn't it be a prank?
Jen, I admire your tenacity and taking the high road. I think you would be the first to admit that errors do happen, and you do take responsibility for them. Seeing an endless spew of hateful insults in comment garb would demoralize me too much to bother keeping the site going, but you forge ahead. Sorry if this sounds too brown-nosy, but I just want to add my voice of support. And to express my disappointment to those commenters who have nothing better to do than write nasty, bitchy little comments. I'm sure they want some recognition, so here it is: FUCK YOU!
This isn't surprising to me. At least since I reviewed a stack of scholarship applications and the letters of recommendation were just as badly written as the essays (which were pretty atrocious as a whole). And some of those were from assistant principals and other administrators.
I also believe that the standards should be considerably higher for a classroom teacher when it comes to writing and grammar, than for a blogger.
DBR, I want to punch you in the jaw.
i thienk Jen Chung's splelling is awesoeme. Leave her aloene!
Just to be clear, I did not call anyone stupid and I certainly don't think you are, Jen. You're pretty savvy if you can throw in a couple of anticipatory, self-referencing asides.
It's unfortunate that my posting was so terse, and that it was preceded by genuinely inflammatory remarks. There are those of us who don't just lie in wait for these errors to happen. There are those of us want Gothamist to be an even better end product.
Also, being upset with this letter and the general state of American education and THEN deciding that we should apply different standards of written English to teaching and blogging is . . . well, you decide what to call it.
" I think you would be the first to admit that errors do happen, and you do take responsibility for them."
Errors don't "happen" - people make them. I don't think criticisms of Gothamist's consistently egregious spelling/grammar mistakes are nit-picky. To make those mistakes even pre-editing is testament to the writers' carelessness.
i used to be a good speller, until spellcheck came into my life. i was always terrible at grammar until i learned a foreign language. kids need to learn how to read and write the old fashioned way (initially), and we should be teaching languages at younger ages.
In other news this week Gothamist hired a new writer who previously taught at a Staten Island school. Jen Chung commented, "he be everythgin we look for in writer. He is one hot potatoe. You could say that."
I think the point needs to be made - and I have said this before - that this is not just some vanity blog. Advertisers, I am guessing, are paying some coin; I would find it difficult to believe that the 'ist-averse' is being run on a shoestring out of the graciousness of Jen & Co's heart.
I honestly consider it a slap in the face when the writing is so gawd-awful and worse, when the comments engine is broken (which is frequently the case). I would think that, as a business venture, the owners have a dual interest in keeping advertisers happy with returning sets of eyeballs and on the flip side, with putting out a quality product to lure those eyeballs to keep returning.
I do visit this site regularly but have reached the "if my comment fails once more I am never returning" stage several times in the past several months. I haven't yet reached that stage due to the writing, but if others are turned away because of this I would think it should be of some concern to advertisers and thus the owners.
The fact that this thread has generated 50 posts shows that poor spelling and grammar is a concern for quite a few readers.
No Anonymass, the fact that the thread has generated 50 posts shows that there are a lot of trolls out there waiting to pounce on something as easy of a target as 'spelling mistakes on gothamist'
I've pointed more than my share of errors to Jen & Company, but I try not to be a self-righteous pompous ass about it, unlike most of those posting comments now.
wow, who knew jen's spelling and grammar was such a hot topic......get a life.
Anonymass beat me to it. What's Jen need with a separate full-time job anyway? Gothamist LLC must be making money hand over fist what with all the worldwide blogs they have now.
And the comments system is utterly ridiculous now. There is absolutely no excuse why virtually every attempt I make to comment results in a cryptic error message. (And usually wrong at that, since the comment does go through.) How lazy is it for Gothamist's admin to not even change the error message so we're not told to report to "localhost@root"? It's no wonder that the newbies double, triple and even quadruple post.
I don't think we're "trolls" because we read Gothamist posts expecting facts and information to be presented in a clear and concise manner. In cases in which there are glaring grammar and spelling errors, I oftentimes find myself having to read a sentence two or three times to make sure I'm getting the information correctly. It can be like Sodoku.
And I oftentimes find myself working two jobs, as I'm sure many of you do. So please don't use that as an excuse. If I made as many errors as Jen consistently does on this site I would be looking for new employment. I'm also hot, so don't use that as an excuse either. Next it'll be, "Well, she's a girl..." Zzzzzz. Check your work. It's not that time consuming.
pot, meet kettle
Wow, I mean I do it on purpose from time to time but a teacher is not suppose to be making those types of typo's .(It's quite difficult texting on a mobile on a crowded train with someone breathing over your shoulder) Well I guess the teacher had other thoughts to ponder .
Basically what everybody here should be trying to say is......................." Regardless if "your" the best speller or the one of the countless jrubbies trying to get by . We all make mistakes, It's up to the person for whom made the mistake to Identify, Correct,& Either Ensure the mistakes decrease in regularity or they don't occur again" ! It has to do with PRIDE in ones craft .
You must be kidding!!!! Jen Chung commenting on typo's and english?
The only reason I read Gothamist is to see the embarrising engrish
Dude, that's out of line.
I stand by what I and some people have said, but that's just stupid.
Also, I don't think any of my comments or sentiments are hateful. Just as this site has, I took a humorous spin on critiquing it.
What does it say about Gothamist readers if we let by missing commas and storings on David Byrne's bike?
We only want the best for this little family. That being said, EDIT!
Typos, not typo's. Seriously people - half of the comments from these self-styled sticklers (who take so much PRIDE in their literacy) are written like shit.
Jen Chung is simply picking up on a story that other media outlets, including the Daily News, have discussed. In other words, this story has nothing to do with her supposed inability to handle the English language.
"Typo's" "Typo's" !!!!! Shit is , As shit does !!!
Thank you for the correction "Bklynd" Maybe you should read my post once more . I think you missed something I typed . #[62] Excuses, If you were the editor here wouldn't you either make sure things of that nature were taken care of or had someone back track your work to make sure it was correct ?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. The "Bright" one has a very good point ! Sloppy, Sloppy Gothamist !
This is my last post. I'm not reading Gothamist anymore. It's still got the (poor) quality of a shoestring Mom and Pop blog but there's Jen Chung collecting her rewards, creating a mini-empire of -ists and accepting all kinds of advertising. The poor quality was acceptable but no longer. Not to mention that the site seems to be adopting the political leanings of the moderators to a much greater extent and the socialist America-hating comments are out of control.
I've got better things to do with my surfing time. I'm sure there's a startup NYC blog that hasn't sold out and hopped on its soapbox yet.
So Long.
My posts are insightful, & full of intrigue . I don't have to put anyone down about grammatical shortcomings . Although, I like the sarcastic response "The Editor Lady" employs . Nice to see she has a sensible side .
It's always nice when you can not only be informed, but also entertained! I'm sure you had fun writing this article. Excellent entry! I'm been looking for topics as interesting as this. Looking forward to your next post.