The Darwin Awards: Spelling Edition

I teach English. I spent nearly four years studying the ins and outs of language and literature and then turned right around to teach it to 'the future of America'. I do not profess to be perfect or know everything about English, in fact, I am well aware that there is still a mountain of things I don't know. But compared to the ninth graders I teach, I may as well be Shakespeare. Mainly because ninth graders still don't know who he is, bless their hearts.

The preciously oblivious 13-15 year olds I teach are great, don't get me wrong, but there is one thing that continuously kills small pieces of my soul without fail; their crappy pseudo-phonetic spelling. Thus, the Darwin Awards for my soul.

First off, a gold star for my kid who unintentionally combined both literary device and chemical element to make a new and improved version of sarcasm.

These guys have creativity on lock.

This cute little ditty is not to be construed as a slur, but rather just a terrible sounding out of the word 'figure'.

Now, this was in a book report. No joke. A giant thumbs up for the kid who thinks 'worth it' is one word. 

I literally had to read this out loud before I could figger, eh hmm, I mean figure out what this student was trying to say. Mad lib anyone? When it finally hit me, I laughed out right.

This gem isn't exactly a spelling error. When writing an argument essay, his supporting reason for a character being a 'bad guy' is that 'he is a bad mamma jamb'. I don't know what that means. I told him that doesn't count. During the next essay we were writing, completely unprovoked, he told me that he talks like a hick, seriously made me laugh really hard.

The true definition of 'tragedy': when students forget what they are spelling half way through the word.

And there goes another piece of my soul. Say what you want about it being my job to teach them how to spell, but this was a test and 'indirect' was spelled out in the question.

Expulsion, expedition, expository, expletive...explanation? Nope, they were shooting for 'exposition'. Anyway you look at it, still got the answer wrong.

The slang version of 'condition'. Basically I teach thugs... (shaking head).

Ok, now my two favorite word slaughters. It took me at least a minute to realize what either of these were getting at. Look at it.

If you are anything like me, your first thought was 'Where's Burt?' Oh no, this is THE most creative spelling of 'irony' you will probably ever see. Irony, people. I'm pretty one hundred percent positive I had it written on the board too. 

And finally, the piece de resistance:

I'm still not sure that was what they were trying to spell. At this point, your guess is as good as mine. 

So there you have it. The best of the worst. I am slowly but surely working to get our countries future to be able to spell. And be smart. It's clearly a work in progress. But it is a labor of love, which I love, and I will gladly let my soul act as a martyr so that you don't have to. Seeing as we live in a time and society where a colon has never has so much love, but not to introduce quotes, explanations or even series, rather as the eyes of smiley/frowny faces...we teachers have our work cut out for us! 

Colon apostrophe open parenthesis? Never a dull moment as a middle school teacher.