Teachers what ideas do you have for getting dc back to school

[whenthejoyreturns]

Some dc are engaging with home learning including mine. They’re secondary school age so by no means difficult to have at home so don’t accuse me of trying to palm them off because I can’t cope with my own dc.
They’re desperate to get back into school though, and I think it’s incredibly important for their continued development that they can, even though I appreciate they are more fortunate than many.
My very good friend is at the end of her tether. One Very bright secondary dc who’s not engaging in home learning, she can’t sleep with worrying.
My dds 13 year old friend has just been prescribed anxiety medication. I’m positive this would not have happened if she’d been at school with friends. I fear this is going to be the start of many dc going down this route. It all started off as a novelty for them, now the isolation from peers is becoming their normal.
I’m clearly clueless about schools so what do you think we should do?

The government have said 25%. Not the school.

To open the other site involves 623 different actions to make the site Covid Safe, so they may be focusing cleaning staff and site agents on one site. The cleaners may be partly furloughed so sticking to one site may well be sensible.

Countess kids can’t go back in current circumstances. That’s because of the virus and the incompetent govt response to the virus. Teachers can’t make school safe to reopen until the government have made the community safe enough for this to happen. It’s not the fault of schools or teachers. All this outrage and frustration should be directed at Boris Johnson.

I don’t remember expressing outrage?

There’s a lot of exaggeration isn’t there?

I should probably clarify that both sites will be open, but not accessible to Y10. The other site is housing 4 key workers children, who have the entire site to themselves, and it’s the bigger of the two.

Okay. Read. The. Guidance.

Outrage meant in general terms - there are numerous threads expressing a great deal of outrage at school closures and most of the ire is directed at the teachers, who can’t do anything about it. There should be a huge amount of outrage being directed at the government who are responsible for this.

It really is horrible when teachers come on being aggressive, using full stops etc.

And ending sentences HTH

Yes, but I’m not especially outraged per se. I’m frustrated by some things, confused by others.

@CaptainBrickbeard

I left teaching last year after twelve years in the profession (I’ll never go back!). Here’s what I think needs to happen to reopen schools:

The government need to drive community transmission and the r rate down to safe levels across the whole country and introduce an effective track and trace system that will keep the virus under control and contained.

There is no point tapping your foot and glaring at teachers to fix this problem. Compared to the rest of Europe, the U.K. has done spectacularly, monstrously badly and we are rewarded with the worst death rates. How can we open schools back up properly when the government have created a catastrophe and failed to do anything to get it back under control?

If our country follows successful examples from other countries and the government manage to regain enough public trust to get public compliance back after they have squandered it so shamefully - then schools can reopen.

Teachers can’t fix this. They can’t make schools safe. This is the fault of the government and they are desperately trying to pass the buck. As people are so eager to blame teachers for everything anyway, it’s clearly working.

You have no idea what a crisis recruitment and retention of teachers was already in. Keep up with the negativity and aggression towards the profession and your children will reap the rewards of an utterly broken education system even after this pandemic. It’s already crumbling. It won’t take much to destroy it completely.

This needs to be posted on every last one of these insufferable threads

I’m outraged. Utterly outraged by the government’s handling of this. And outraged that people are turning on each other instead of challenging those who are actually responsible for the disaster.

Also, you don’t like teachers using full stops?

Well at the end of sentences, obviously.

Not. When. Being. Pedantic.

I’m not being pedantic. I’m just really bloody frustrated. I’m hugely irritated by people blaming teachers for this problem when there is literally nothing we can do to change it. I’m desperate to be back in work and supporting SLT in whatever way I can to make that happen. I’m sorry for directing my frustration at you though Countess; I thought you were being deliberately goody as the things you’re raising here are things we can’t change (though I’ve since seen some of your comments on other threads about clear bags for sanitary products, which is clearly ridiculous and not in the guidance)

@CaptainBrickbeard is right though; we shouldn’t be turning on each other. We all want pupils back in school.

Goady

Thanks for apologising. No, I wasn’t being goady.

I’m a pretty chilled out person, I’m not goady, I don’t feel ‘outraged.’ But i do think there are probably lots of people like me who start threads asking things, or just wondering or expressing serous doubt/concern (like taking sanitary products in clear bags) and they get jumped upon.

Getting jumped upon takes many forms, and includes:

• being accusing of lying
• being accused of being ‘goady’
• being accused of exaggerating

Only this morning in relation to my posts (as a parent) you’ve assumed I was being goady, and somebody else has assumed I was lying about the sanitary issue. I think on both occasions it’s teachers making those assumptions.

I am sure that you are frustrated at the moment, you. My y10 DD is one of those kids on target to get grades 8/9, doing her best, under a lot of stress really. The idea of going back to some sort of dystopian school day finally caused her to crumble into tears last night after all of this time.

As part of a very long conversation with her last night, she told me that she thinks roughly 40-50% of the kids in some of her classes have done very little work during lockdown. I’m a bit cynical about it, some of this will be bravado, but nevertheless, I do feel sorry for teachers who will have to mop this up after the summer, and I suppose one of the things I don’t understand is why schools wouldn’t try to be hugely creative and pro-active right now and use the time they have to reduce the damage already done.

Although our school is opening for a few weeks, the first week each student gets to come in and meet their form teacher for five minutes. That’s all. It’s apparently to ask about their well being, but I think their well-being would be better served having something a bit more concrete.

Bravo, CaptainBlackbeard.

@CountessFrog that was me on the other thread. It's an awful thing that your daughter is being expected to do, if it's true. However, I can't see any relevance whatsoever to the debate we were having about the realities of part time schooling, so it comes across as dragging darker anecdotes into a debate for the sole purpose of casting an entire profession in a bad light. Why not start a different thread, or better still contact the school? I can guarantee someone will have already spoken up about that as it's a ridiculous proposal.

But to throw it in to a conversation in which you've already several times complained that teachers are not working hard enough doesn't make me feel like you are adding good fuel to the argument. Of course it's ridiculous. Dr Shipman was also awful, but we don't add his name to a conversation about why we're waiting so long for a hospital appointment.

" I don’t understand is why schools wouldn’t try to be hugely creative and pro-active right now and use the time they have to reduce the damage already done."

Sorry, posted too soon. In response to the above comment:
It is indeed a really difficult situation. I am a private tutor, not a teacher and don't always think that every school has worked in the best way for every student.
However, I think part of the problem is that the education system was pretty much broken before Covid19. Many SLTs and teachers were already using as much creativity and proactivity as they could muster just to keep going.
Most teachers and school leadership want to look after the students they teach but there is a massive lack of financial, physical and emotional resource to take this further. Just how imaginative do they need to be? I think teachers in the main are probably all out of imagination from just keeping going in normal times. The reason you may not have realised this is because of teachers' care and positivity and desire to support your child. They have been making the best of a bad situation for a very long time!

Think about how the NHS would have coped with Covid19 without extra finances, extra hospitals, coopting all private hospitals and even involving the military. Even then the NHS is still a long way from being back to normal with things like routine physio maybe taking 18 months to come back on line. People's health and lived have been badly affected by this but in the main, people understand things can't just go back to normal straight away .

Without additional funds, buildings and staff, there is a serious limit to what staff can manage. Maybe we should be recruiting troops as temporary TAs to work with some of the reduced size classes. Maybe the military should be building new temporary classrooms and washrooms on school sites. Maybe some other buildings could be used temporarily as teaching spaces, but none of this can be put into place by individual schools. If they haven't got money for photocopying or soap, they definitely haven't got money for any of the above.
Please petition your MP and the government to give the resources needed for schools.

I have actually cried twice today because the subject I love teaching just cannot be taught live remotely. It just can't. And pressure (and lack of a desire to listen to me, or believe me) has led this to being a solution that is not better. Add to that some live groups with 80 students in them at one time... hey presto; things are worse than they were before

Do you not find it seriously fucking annoying interesting that posters have complained that teachers should do as they are told.

Now we are getting complaints that we are doing as we are told.

Make your fucking minds up.

Not being mean but logically teachers will not be held accountable for either
-attendance

• results

Now attendance is logical and i dont want it enforced as i think it's too soon.
Results again logical but also tests scrapped and the kids moving up a year but sept and the likelihood that kids werent going to be back before then so really no incentive for teachers to provide online lessons (even if possible) or even more than links etc. Obviously many do go above the minimum. But there does need to be a higher minimum level as many kids will be SI shielding etc.

I think schools need to consider a 7 day week as the falling down is mainly buildings. Im sure some wouldnt mind changing to weekends if it means its safer and guaranteed to be say 6m only.
We could then do 2/2/3 days etc. Also this would reduce impacts on everyone being off on weekends and public transport usage during weekdays for kids.
Obviously not much use for working parents but helpful at secondary maybe and at primary people might be happier if it means their kids get more days of school /smaller classes and bubbles etc. Many kids clubs probably wont start up yet anyway and school is only till 3-4pm so you can still go out.
They might struggle with getting 3 sets of teachers but otherwise if groups of 15 you could have thur-sat and sun -wed etc for eg. Or 3.5 days each. So teachers and ta would be doing less contact time effectively paying them a bit more to work weekends. Or could spend 1 day setting online work.

Otherwise some school could build prefabs or tents for sept - nov time. Ours could so at least some kids could go more days.
One off payments of say 150 for a tablet for kids to use or for internet access (50x3). We really shouldnt have everyone held back because some dont have internet access. They could save that much if we dont need uniform this year...

@whenthejoyreturns This is the third thread you've made about teachers. Why do you think teachers will be able to answer your question? They didn't shut the schools, write the guidance or invite only a select few year groups beck. Why don't you lobby your MP for the answers you want, seeing as these directives have come from the Government? Or is being goady on MN a better use of your time?

Otherwise some school could build prefabs or tents for sept - nov time.

Maybe in the suburbs and rural areas but certainly not more urban areas where outside space is already extremely limited and where attainment is generally already lower.

That is a solution which will only serve to widen the opportunity gap.

Any ideas need to be something that universally can be implemented in some way.

Part of the problem with these guidelines is precisely because they are not universally able to be applied because of infrastructure issues - and this factor is one of the major ones about why we are getting some schools who are able to welcome back all reception, year 1 and year 6 whilst it's a physical impossibility for others. Something which some believe is the fault of 'lazy teachers' rather than the government. I do have to wonder how much the parents who are critical of the school in these circumstances regularly engage with the school in normal times and are therefore aware of the amount of space available. I feel like I'm living in a parallel dimension to others.

I have volunteered at DS's school until lockdown, and they were already teaching kids with special needs in the corridor on a daily basis. Whenever I went in to listen to the kids reading, it was like musical chairs moving around to find any available unused space.

The guidelines are nuts, and that's what's hamstrung the teachers.