Spelling

So as you may have previously guessed, my kids are working on a project this week and today they were working in the computer lab typing them up. Here is an example of the conversation I overheard:

Jake - wait, how do you spell "could've?" (as in, I could've seen it coming)
Ben - you dummy, "could've" isn't a word, you have to write "could of."
Me, breaking in, in utter frustration - "it is could HAVE!!!, could "of" makes NO SENSE!!!!!

Oh - and we've gone over this REPEATEDLY in class.

Due to some technical issues, I had to email some kids their papers so they could work on them at home, and one of the email addresses I got (handwritten by a sophomore) was shut_up_hips@--- (last part changed). This was from a masculine boy and I wondered as I typed, what the supposedly hilarious story behind the address was. The address didn't work, so I emailed my friend whose class the kid was currently in and she asked him what the address was supposed to be. He told her shut_up_hipy@-----. She was trying to read it but he corrected her pronounciation, telling her that the last word was pronounced "hippie." She looked at him and asked if he had misspelled the word on purpose. No...he just didn't know how to spell hippie. SOME DAYS ARE LONGER THAN OTHERS. This was one of them.