Sick of all the 'advice' written by anonymous teachers etc

[SouthWestmom]

Honestly ever since that head teacher wrote some speech years ago for post graduating students in America it seem sharing crappy 'advice' on social media is a thing.
The latest one is when anyone posts as they are worried about keeping their kids education up they get the 'don't worry no one is behind, no one is ahead, I'll catch your kids up that's my super power' post thrown at them.
Why can't people genuinely be allowed some anxiety without some vomit inducing bilge chucked at them which is inaccurate and patronising? It's like people are children needing saccharine reassurance.

I agree OP. I have a Y10 and a Y8. I'm especially worried about the Y10.

Our school have been as great as they can be. Setting a lot of work online and on their own home/school site plus lots of extra links to Iplayer, OU and YouTube for documentaries etc. Form tutors are phoning us every week.
It is however a bit over-whelming.

As teens (and working from home myself in a garden office so not even in the house!) I have to trust that they're doing things. I've seen they are, but it no way replaces school.

People I see are tending to fall into 2 camps -

Competitive home schooling i.e Waking up at 7am and doing a full timetable, plus extra self directed learning online in extra hours, plus extra curricular baking, exercising, music and craft etc.

Or

Competitive give-no-fucks schooling - dcs not waking up until lunchtime, spending all day on x-box, tv, Netflix etc. Parents declaring on SM that they are WFH and can't school as well and they are going to spend any free time 'enjoying their family'

I'm somewhere in-between I think. But yes, I'm anxious.

Rabbits. It's this one that's annoying me today. I'm sure their are others

'There'
My kids have no hope.
They are currently having a musicals sing off across the hall.

Mine is yr9. Since lockdown, he's lost one grandparent, will lose another in the next few days, and could well lose a third (she has terminal cancer and is now over life expectancy) before they go back. No feedback from school on work he is doing, no check ins from them, no live lessons, just upload the work and do the next just to upload it and hear nothing. And he's one of the lucky ones, having a PC to work at, quiet environment and so on. I'm really worried as to how they will catch up in the subjects they are on GCSE syllabus for, and having been told over and over how attendance is so important, how missing 5 days of school has an impact I can't see why now they will magically be OK

Oh I'm so sorry what a lot of family to lose at one time x

I wouldn’t worry about school at the moment. If we are in lockdown for another year to year and a half as predicted then the whole education system will have to be reworked.

For year 12 it's bollocks that we'll just "catch them up" - I mean, clearly we'll have to be flexible and do things a bit differently but I've made it clear to my HoD that all my lessons and assignments are on Teams and when we do go back I'll basically just be expecting anyone who's missed work to get onto Teams and just do everything then. Of course I'll give them time to do it and maybe run some lunchtime sessions but I can't individually reteach it all/painstakingly talk through it. Any student who has tried their best to keep up with the work and submit things to me demonstrating they've engaged with the work and taken time to do it (which I would say is about a third of the class) will be FAR better off than the rest. There's no getting past that.

And for that reason I'm making my own DC do maths and English every day and banning recreational screen time during "school hours". (Roughly 9-3) That still leaves plenty of time to run around in the garden and watch crap on Youtube.

Thank you gravity that sounds reasonable. My dc are going to have to accept some responsibility for keeping up; however I don't think this is some meaningless period and they will all return to school and miraculously catch up again.

Please write share your poem - make sure the background is really meaningful - a sunset, or a cute kitten will do it

Newborn baby and a kitten asleep and cuddling up in a basket with the sun setting in the background. That will make everything OK.

@WhenTheRabbitsWentWild

Talking of schools though, my youngest DS (16) is to go into school each Monday , for 2 hours per Monday, for 3 weeks . Its to do with their GCSEs and the fact the exam board wants to see work . Its only a small school so the kids will be apart . He is actually , I think, looking forward to getting out for a bit even if it is to school

That absolutely should not be happening! Read this article [https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-pupils-must-not-go-school-sit-mocks] Similar guidance in Scotland. Schools are open for keyworker's children and vulnerable children only.

Those without able, involved parents are going to be genuinely and seriously disadvantaged

It's not just those though, we have two laptops, I have to work so I have to have one and then I have 3 DC sharing one laptop, it just can't happen even with the best will in the world.

I don't like the sats letters/memes either, so I am generally quite grumpy.

I saw that on Facebook (posted by a friend who is a teacher) and it annoyed me. Of course some children are behind and this situation may exacerbate that.

As usual with rubbish on Facebook, I ignored it, but I was tempted to respond.

I'm a teacher and that post is complete bollocks.

"I'm really worried as to how they will catch up in the subjects they are on GCSE syllabus for, and having been told over and over how attendance is so important, how missing 5 days of school has an impact I can't see why now they will magically be OK*
There's a huge difference between on child being off for a week and the who country's schools semi-closing.

If one child misses a week (for whatever reason) then they miss that week's learning in all their subjects, that could be final content for a unit, information required for an upcoming assessment, knowledge that forms the foundation of the following week's learning. The other children in the class will have covered all of that material so when the absent child returns they are further behind than the rest of the class. The teacher will support and aim to get them caught up, but that's still a week of learning they've not got and the teacher isn't going to deliver the full week's missed teaching to one child whilst moving the other 29 others on.

During lockdown the schools are semi closed. The whole cohort is in the same boat so the teachers will have to adapt the curriculum, accelerate some parts, remove other parts, change assessments so that when schools return everyone is accessing the adapted curriculum that's been changed to reflect school closures.

Teachers are worrying about fitting the GCSE content in, but they're working on it now. You can't compare a push on pupil attendance in normal times with school closures.

Let’s just sit back, plug our kids into fortnight with a giant bag of crisps and wait for this to all blow over (cause the schools would love to receive a bunch of over weight gormless brats at the end of this)

That bilge from all the teachers on planet Earth was posted quite seriously on a thread the other day as apparently it’s meant to “reassure” worried parents. Yes seemingly the teachers of the world have had an Extraordinary General fucking Meeting and declared that everything’s fiiiine as long as there are lots of hugz n fairy cakes .

I don’t know how my eyes don’t roll out of my head some days! I suppose some of this rubbish appeals to people for whom reassurance really means stick your fingers in your ears, sing fa-la-la and pretend there’s nothing at all to be concerned about.

I have no doubt teachers will do their best for their students but their best often isn’t good enough even in normal times because: staffing issues, class sizes, SEN, budgets, poverty of aspiration, actual poverty and so on. Encouraging denial and delusion to cope with perfectly valid feelings of anxiety does no one any favours, not the parents or the children.

Not true that "they will all be equally behind"--inequalities will expand rapidly during this period. Private school kids will (in general) be making more progress than state school kids. Kids of switched-on, educated parents will be making more progress than those of poorly educated parents. Kids of parents who can afford online tutoring will be making more progress than those whose parents can't. Kids with one parent not working will be making more progress than those with both parents working full time (or a single parent).

Kokeshi123
Most of that is no different to life outside of Coronavirus.

The children who get a good early years tend to have better outcomes than those who don't.Children in note affluent areas tend to achieve higher than those in poorer areas.Independent schools offer smaller class sizes and more intervention.Better educated parents are better placed to support GCSE study than those without higher qualifications.Those who can afford tutoring have always been able to afford it.

This has been the case in education for centuries. This isn't a Coronavirus situation. It's a social inequality situation.

I've worked with families who've had to choose between heating and food, where 4 members of the family sleep in one bed, who live in properties full of damp. There's children in those situations now just as there was before lockdown. Schools can't solve that. They can just do their best.

Meanwhile we've got people on here complaining that their child hasn't got live streamed lessons because the teachers are being lazy.

We’ve just had an email from one of DCs teachers - looks like it’s been sent to the whole class - saying that she’s not been sent much work by pupils this week, and asking everyone to try and do a bit each day, as it’ll help when the kids go back to school.

I’m guessing that she’s not sending round memes about catching kids up being her superpower 🤷‍♀️

(Although of course I’m now a bit worried that I’m one of the parents not doing enough )

Most of that is no different to life outside of Coronavirus.

Yes, but it's being amplified massively. The gaps between children are going to be a LOT bigger when they finally go back.

The gap is going to be bigger and extended. Families who are normally engaged with school, may not be able to at the moment for various reasons such as trying to juggle working from home, lack of technology, illness, bereavement.

I'm a secondary teacher.
Those memes are rage inducing and are most definitely NOT from me.
Saying that it is a real battle to get my own primary aged kids to do more than an hour or two of focused work each day, and the seemingly endless lists of links of things I could be doing with them, is actually getting me very anxious.
I'm also failing to potty train the 3 yo ready for starting school in September, and he is constantly disrupting any help I try to give his siblings.
Then there are my own students whose work I need to set and monitor, and worry about.
Its a no win situation, but we have food, a garden, beds, a house. And beautiful weather...

Most of that is no different to life outside of Coronavirus

But in normal times, they all have access to the same teaching for approx 30 hours a week. Now, the gap between them will be massively amplified.

CMOT - I'm sorry for your and your family's losses

Yes and not true at all from some schools, my son's primary comes out with such waffle but my daughter's secondary (she's y7), they've basically been told 'do the work or we'll call your parents'.