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!) I would also agree that telling her would be a great idea. I can appreciate how this could be uncomfortable to approach for many people but there are ways that would be appropriate. I definitely wouldn't go to administration or other teachers, I would go directly to her with the situation. If the mistakes were dramatic and something that would be detrimental to the students' overall educational achievement I would go to her pretty soon and be very honest with the patterns you are seeing and have a plan as to how you both together could work on it. Having a pre-set plan to help the problem is always great to have when approaching these situations.