Teachers: What is your school doing?

[noblegiraffe]

The DfE have said DO NOT CLOSE YOUR SCHOOL. Ofqual have said KEEP PREPARING FOR EXAMS AS NORMAL

My school seem to have taken this as an instruction to just keep on trucking. They might have put some posters up in the toilets about handwashing tbf.

Other schools, from what I can tell on here, are gearing up to teach lessons remotely, cancelling trips, stopping assemblies, wiping door handles with disinfectant, making kids wash their hands before lunch.

I can’t see much chat about it on edutwitter, even after the Times article suggesting that A-levels might be postponed and GCSEs put back to September.

I think my desks get wiped down at the end of each half term

We have an agency cleaner who spends her whole day walking around wiping door handles and stair rails. That's about it.

Nothing. I have a sneaking suspicion that a few are deliberately being as disgusting as possible too - I had to clean a big smear of dry snot off a table that had only been used during a cover lesson on Friday, before I could teach myself. My water bottle was also sneakily passed around between a group of boys too this week. I noticed it was on the desk of a boy who definitely wouldn't have taken it, but didn't take it as I thought he just had the same bottle. Then I found it on the floor at the end, open. Gross.

Tbf, my deskes are cleaned daily and the floor is vacuumed, but there isn't time for over a thousand kids to be handwashing, let alone for long enough to be singing happy birthday twice.

Desks

Fuck all. I hate touching banister, pens and books. And handing out my pass Water in toilets is cold.

I'm really shocked that desks aren't being cleaned daily. I spend an hour wiping down desks, sinks, windowsills etc.

What I’m getting from this thread is that primary is full of pristine-handed angels sat at gleaming desks while secondary has grubby trolls slobbing at snot desks.

My upper primary age child still.puts random shit in his mouth. All the hand washing in.the world won't save him.

We’ve been told what to expect in certain situations. As in what to do if lots of teachers are off sick, when the school will close and what’s expected of us if we do close etc. Thankfully we have lots of online whizzy VLE type stuff and I’ve already half planned out what I’ll set from home for most year groups. Year 11/13 have nearly finished their coursework but could hand in what they’ve done so far and pass if necessary and all the course content has been covered ready for the exam. Therefore could set them plenty of revision tasks from home. And tbh the motivated ones in year 11 would probably get more done at home than at school.

At my college there are a few posters up and we get forwarded random blanket emails that aren’t at all pertinent to us and include information I found out from MN about a week earlier.

Everywhere is pretty grubby - I don’t think tables, doors or computer keyboards get cleaned. Apparently they’ve ordered some sanitizer spray for computer rooms but there’s such a shortage they don’t know when it will arrive.

The mention of coronavirus is treated as a massive joke and nobody has mentioned the possibility of having to close and what we’ll do if so - it’ll be difficult as we haven’t even been able to access the intranet from home for about a year, and by no means all of our students have computers at home. Considering we all teach A level classes you’d think it’d make sense to start contingency planning now, but if they have they haven’t let us in on it.

I'm also shocked at people saying their desks don't get cleaned daily.
I do an early morning and an evening round but in two different sections of the school.

Before corona on a typical round I would hoover 4 class rooms plus the adjoining corridors. Wipe all tables, including teachers desk and clean sink. Quickly wipe round window ledges if I had time.
Toilets are cleaned and disinfected every day including mopping.
Weekly I would check soap dispensers, paper towels and put tissues in each class clean windows and mop classrooms.

It also gets deep cleaned every school holiday except Christmas.

The only thing I'm doing differently now is using the medical sanitizer every day and checking the soap dispensers more often.

Hold up there @MyHipsDontLieUnfortunately
Are you saying that your pupils pass around your water bottle and drink from it? Then chuck it on the floor?

@shuuush

I don’t think my teacher desk has ever been wiped down!

The teacher's desks are usually covered with stuff so admittedly rarely get cleaned. If they clear it, I clean it.

Primary.
My YR class has 30 children, two sinks and one hand dryer and if we are lucky the odd bar of soap. It takes at least 10 minutes to get them all to wash their hands, no time to do this before lunch. We do have hand sanitizer for the lunch queue, but I buy this myself and always have done.

We also have a 'help yourself' snack area where children are meant to wash their own cups in a bowl of water. (Not my choice!)

No soap in the classroom for teachers or anywhere to dry our hands.

No tissues.

No clean mops or cloths to wipe anything thing with.

A child was sick last week, but I had nothing to clean it up with except some tissues I got out of the children's toilets.

I have cleaning sprays, clothes antibacterial wipes and spray that I have bought myself so I can atleast wipe tables down and try and keep door handles/ computer keyboards clean. Technically this isn't allowed and we are not meant to have any of our own cleaning products in school.

Schools are disgusting places.

It's not in our cleaners' job descriptions to clean any non bathroom sinks, any kitchen areas, any staffrooms, or offices except the head's

I teach year six and have to use the phrase 'Out of your mouth!' on a regular basis when it comes to shared resources that at least 3 of mine still just put into their mouths (pens/pencils/ruler ends) despite them being old enough to know better.

Then on the other end of the scale I have the ones who come and ask if they can go wash their hands because they've sneezed.

Am I the only one wondering why the OP has been cleaning penises off desks?! Lol. Anyway our local secondary school has sent a couple of pupils home that went to Italy. They sent out emails with attachment to a website that simply sold posters to schools for the virus! (bit weird) If it was meant to help with advice then it didn't as the writing was tiny and couldn't be expanded. They have said that even if anyone there is tested positive that the government have advised school still not to be closed. No hand gel nothing extra at all. Some pupils have managed to feign illness and got a few days off though. Who can blame them really?!

Crikey - it didn’t even occur to me that I might have to teach remotely! Fuck that shit.
As for cleanliness in my classroom. It’s pretty gross. I disinfect my desk fairly regularly anyway but I can’t imagine the kids desks get cleaned much unless there’s a spillage tat gets wiped up (science lab).
I’ve taught all my classes correct hand washing but I doubt very much that they’re following my advice (they don’t usually)

Am I the only one wondering why the OP has been cleaning penises off desks

Apparently other teachers get their desks cleaned for them Do primary teachers also have penis-free classrooms? God, they get all the perks.

Fuck that shit.

That is also entirely my response to the idea of remote teaching.

Urgh, the thread has been moved out of the staffroom.

I didn’t actually mean ‘fuck that shit’, I of course meant I am ready, willing and able to remote teach your lovely children.

In my last job I was involved in making plans for the business in case of disasters Ie loss of a building, major sickness of staff etc. These were in place even without any suspicion of an incident. Surely education system should have had these prepared at some stage long before now.