A dad who discovered his child had been left upset by her teacher mispronouncing her name was called for a meeting with the school after asking her to correct it.
His seven-year-old girl has been taking part in virtual school sessions at home during the coronavirus lockdown and he overheard the teacher use the name 'Kelly' a few times.
He said it grated on him as there were only about 15 children in the class and, even as a parent, he knew the names of all her classmates and none of them were called Kelly.
After a while he realised the teacher had been referring to his daughter, whose name is Keeley, pronounced 'kee-lee'.
When school finished, his child admitted it had been happening all year and attempts to tell the teacher how it should be pronounced were ignored.
The dad sent an email explaining the misunderstanding as his daughter would be in the teacher's class for many years, but got no response.
He asked his daughter to log on to class early and tell her teacher politely it was "Keeley like really, not Kelly like jelly" as people often get confused.
Class started shortly afterwards and almost immediately the girl was again referred to as Kelly, so the dad went over to the screen and said: “Hi, this is Keeley’s Dad. Her name is not Kelly. It’s Keeley. Hard E. Sorry for any confusion."
A few hours later, he received an email asking his wife and himself to speak to a senior member of staff.
Writing on Reddit, he said: "The long and short of the meeting ended up being the school feels that while the teacher probably should’ve learned her name, that the real problem is she feels I challenged her authority by correcting her in class and that the names were 'similar enough' for it to 'not have warranted such drastic action'.
"That surprised me. I couldn’t believe a meeting was necessary, let alone that it cast blame on us."
Questioning whether he was right to be furious over how it had been handled, he received full support from others in the replies.
One wrote: "Challenge her authority over YOUR child’s name? She can f*** right off."
A second commented: "Incorrect authority doesn’t have authority. And honestly if teacher’s authority is fragile enough that being gently corrected over something damages it, teacher has bigger problems."
Another suggested: "I had a teacher do that to my daughter and she only corrected herself when I started addressing her by the wrong name."
