Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: My Colleague Speaks Broken English In my school we practice team teaching. One of my colleagues and I share the same students. She teaches Science and Social Studies, while I teach Math and Language Arts including Reading. Because we teach lower elementary students—2nd grade—I pay special attention to modeling correct use of English in both writing and speaking in my lessons. This is where my problem begins. My team teacher is an immigrant from Korea. She speaks English well, but she makes mistakes regularly. I can see some of my students making mistakes in their speech and writing that mimic the mistakes I hear from my team teacher. What should I do about this? I do not want her to get in trouble because she is a very good teacher. If I inform her about what I have observed in her speech, would I be culturally insensitive? How should I tell her about this? I am at a total loss. Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) Schools have for a long time employed teachers to teach subjects such you mentioned in your case. They are often very proficient with the content but the use of standard English is often absent. My preference is that these teachers not teach English. I would have the teacher be comfortable enough to let the students know that because she speaks a different language, English may not be perfect. That is where you come in to model great team teaching. The cultural difference is a great lesson your students can learn that we can all get along despite our differences.