That state of education in my home state.

Recently, I have been in a county in SC working on some schools for my work as a roofing consultant.  Last week, it was a high school, yesterday - a different high school, and an elementary school today.  Most of the work was done outside and on the roof.  But in each instance, it was necessary to walk inside and look for signs of water intrusion (cripes, I sound like an engineer now with that instead of just saying "leaks").

While walking the halls of the two high schools, I noticed many signs up for various activities with numerous misspelled words and grammatical errors (things like "your" instead of "you're" and misuse of the tricky "their", "they're", "there" words).  An example of misspelled words?  Well, it appears that one high school is selling chicken biscuits from Chick-Fil-A on Tuesday and Thursday mornings as a fund raiser.  Apparently, there is nobody at the school that knows for sure how to spell "chicken".  Or nobody cares.  I saw many spellings (and only a few of them spelled "chikin" as the oh so cute cows spell it), including "chiken", "chicen", "chicn", "chickan" and "checkan" (what were they thinking there?).  There were a few instances of "chicken", but not many.  Are there no English teachers that walk the halls and see these things?  It's always funny to find these kinds of mistakes in places of education.

Then today, at the elementary school, we needed access to a third grade room to view the underside of the roof deck.  Third grade in SC means you get to study SC history.  What a great time.  I noticed maps of SC done by the students with the three main regions of the state located and colored on the wall outside the room.  Please see image below for an example:

It is hard to make much out of it because it is hard to take a picture of a wall trying to pretend it is a picture of the ceiling.  I think the students did a great job of locating the three main regions of the state.  Nobody can expect them to know the transition areas between these main regions.  And the spelling of "Cloumbia" and "Nort Careline" and "Jorjia" were understandable if they were done with no help from their parents or teacher.  My only complaint here is that a mistake in their education has been made.  EVERYONE of these students labeled the three regions of SC as "Lowcountry", "Midlands" and "Upcountry".  There is no region of SC known as the "Upcountry".  Whether it makes sense or not, SC is divided into three main regions - "Lowcountry", "Midlands" and "The Upstate".  Since they ALL labeled it this way, that must be what they are being taught.  I had to fight the urge to walk in while the students were in class, draw a map of SC on the board and label it correctly.  Sigh.  I think teachers are incredible and vital to this country, just wondering who told this teacher about the "Upcountry".

I know I have opened myself up to ridicule for all spelling and grammatical mistakes, but I found these incidents humorous and wanted to share.