Worried about coronavirus thread 25

[ofwarren]

Here's the new thread
I'll get Mumsnet to add the links later as I'm busy.

1st case of a newborn baby having it in London so does the mother. it’s terrible. I really didn’t think babies could get it

Labour is the last thing I’d want to happen now. Not that they are anywhere to be seen.

I’ve just seen an article online where they are openly criticising BJ’s handling of this and saying he needs to step up, get some control over this and do what’s needed to stop thinks getting worse.

Regarding financial implications....I’m a nurse so there’s no way I’ll be told to stay at home My husband is a teacher so thankfully will keep getting paid (we hope as it’s an independent school) so we are simply hoping that we’ll be ok.

1st case of a newborn baby having it in London so does the mother. it’s terrible. I really didn’t think babies could get it.

I read this and felt so sad for them. How awful for both mother and baby to be separated from each other. The article I read almost insinuated that the virus crossed through the mother’s bloodstream and infected the baby whilst it was still in the womb?

Hopefully once BJ realised that the very young are also at risk it may make him take action. He may be happy to sacrifice the older generation (twat) but will he be prepared to potentially sacrifice the health of babies/children?

Let’s just hope there are good outcomes for the mother and her baby

@Bogoffrain well we knew they could, but the thinking is that it's not too overly symptomatic. Which it might not be, mum was admitted before birth with pneumonia so they've probably done a lot of tests, rather than it being noticed through symptoms necessarily.

Mass gatherings to be cancelled next week.

These people have clearly never had to change classroom for the next lesson, and battle down the corridor in a sea of teenage children.

Perhaps we could overthrow the Government, get BJ out and get Labour in to sort out his mess

Best laugh I’ve had this year

schools could be forced to stay open

They can fuck off.

Will definitely withdraw dc if schools are still open after Easter.

Its luke they don't care about the teachers and their families.

They live with NHS staff and aged parents.

Like!

It could be for health care workers. Germany has closed schools to everyone bar them.

Teacher in France here - just to confirm that we won’t be at home doing nothing. In fact, we think we’re going to have more work than before.

However, we’re bloody lucky that we have job security. We will be paid. We will keep our jobs. And we will have something to go back to. But we haven’t just won 4 weeks paid holiday.

No one is complaining about it (actually one colleague did and she got firmly put in her place by the entire staff room). Colleagues who almost never do anything digital are all signed up for the training on Monday about live online lessons, and are keen to get up and running. We have exam classes too, and everyone wants to get the students back in with as few gaps as possible.

We’re still following the timetable, we will be logged on, setting work, marking work, finding and creating work that is suitable for distance learning, and answering questions from students. The only way to check work is actually being done is to require them to submit it and check it. Planned lessons need to be more or less scrapped and remade for online learning (subject dependant).

Also we will still be attending meetings in person (although with reduced numbers), and we have reports due next week, which are still going ahead. And the heads are assessing whether we’ll be in on rotation to cover HCP’s children. The government has guaranteed there’ll be provision for them, but we’re not sure as yet how it’ll be arranged.

So basically the big priority is continuity of education, and we’re on it! It should all go well. As long as students and parents commit to following the programme, and don’t just decide to watch Netflix for weeks.

Also remarkable how many excuses the students have already lined up about why the work won’t be done. The most connected generation ever already telling us that they don’t know how to attach an image or a file to send work back to us. Or that they don’t have internet, a computer/tablet/device of any kind at home, their phones don’t get 4G when they’re at home, the school platform doesn’t work on any of the devices at home, etc etc. Except that, astoundingly, when we tell them that if they can’t access online work at home there will be provision for a small number to come into school to work, they become very sure that they’ll manage. We’ll see...

Oh and we’ve already been told we’ll need to do extra hours when they’re back to catch up. (In France there’s enough slack in students’ timetables to do that.) Exams will almost certainly be pushed back to allow this to happen.

Ops that was really long. But was meant to reassure people worried about exam classes that they won’t just be turned out with no support. The UK is much better already than France at online learning etc, so if they do close schools I think the students will be okay.

My husband is also a teacher and has told it will be online/Skype teaching and he’s to be logged in from 8.30-3pm and be doing work.

All well and good.....but how do they expect teachers to do this when they have their own children at home with them?

Ah yes, I have three primary aged to homeschool at the same time. But we’re not doing direct open camera lessons (yet) so it should be okay. And even if we do, it’ll be roughly one per class per week, not for every lesson. And it’s not required for the full hour. So maybe just to explain the concept, address initial questions, check understanding, and then it stops and they do activities and can post questions.

Most of my colleagues have primary aged children and will be homeschooling whilst teaching from home. But that’s going to be the same for all parents wfh.

I reminded all my students yesterday that I have three small children whom I’ll be teaching as well, and that might slow down answers. They were all fine with that. As are our heads, who have 4 and 3 children each, all school age. They’re expecting us to do our best under the circumstances, which we all will, but not to work miracles.

Also our timetabled hours are 7.55 - 5.15. But we will still get to log off on Wednesday afternoons

Flingon what sort of school are you in?
As in college/lycee/private?

I watched the ch4 programme last night and it made me want to cry. That complete idiot scientific guy who is advising the government. What a dick he was. The NHS person saying no we aren’t ready at all.

So many people are going to die. And with that I feel there will be large scale civil unrest. When the rest of the population realises it’s every man for themselves. Frightening times ahead.

I would think a potential problem could be number of suitable devices. Eg a household with 3 dc and only one laptop. I'm not sure it's sustainable for kids to be writing essays on their phone screens. (I'm a uk teacher)

@Cheeseismylife agree with you.
I am WFH so using the laptop, dp is taking his to work with him.
Ds has been given work to do while he is off school (Ireland). He can do what is possible on the iPad, but dont know if he will be able to do it all. And this is only with 1 school page child.
Have also heard others here worried about the same thing.

It’s a collège + lycée. Private (in the French sense, not the UK sense). Fairly provincial, so it is actually possible that some of our students might struggle with internet, a lot of them live in tiny villages (with around 200 people), although so do we, and our internet is fine.

To be fair, that’s one of the reasons we’re avoiding too many video lessons, it could really strain the broadband in the countryside.

As far as we’re aware, all local collèges end lycées, public or private, have put more or less the same provision in place.

But for schools that can’t cope with providing online work the CNED (national centre for distance education) is stepping in. And in particular for primary schools as their work is harder to adapt, and the CNED already has the provision. My DSs are in our primary branch and they’ve come home with a CNED code. Plus access to the school’s onedrive for each of their classes. And the primary teachers will be updating that daily too.

New thread available when you are ready
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3847540-Worried-about-coronavirus-thread-26

Apple have closed all stores (except a few in China) for 2 weeks. Employees still to get paid.

@Meruem I also watched the channel 4 program last night. The guy on video link was so cross with the advisor backing Boris. He made a good point about Wuhan having already gone to lockdown at the stage the UK is already in. It's clear the numbers don't stack up, they are not testing because the reported cases would be triple if not more.. I am actually very worried about the suck it and see approach to this!

Stop if you think the numbers through there are a huge amount past Wuhan and it is too Kate to do a China style lock down. And that only works if you use the same measures at the beginning.

Cheese that is definitely an issue. But the government has said they are able to provide laptops for those that need them. We’ve told students not to work on their phones if possible. But ours do very little on computers anyway. The vast vast majority of work here has to be handwritten, even in lycée, because all exams are handwritten. So they may have to read questions on the screen, then hand write the answers. And then take a photo of the answers to upload. If they can use a computer, we’ve told them that typed answers will be accepted for once.

Also, the window for submitting work is wide. So even if my lesson is at 10am, they have until 17h30 to submit the work, to allow for wiggle room with shared devices. And for afternoon lessons they can submit the next day. I’ve told them that for my lessons, the work will be there at least one day in advance, and I don’t care when they do it as long as it gets done and submitted on time. And that I’ll only answer questions on the day.