School return will fail

[covidteacherscotland]

Okay so we have been back to school for a week! Great? No. Definitely not. Some thoughts on why this will be a disaster:

16 and 17 year olds are not children.

Social distancing is impossible. Genuinely impossible. Children will not or cannot stay out your space.

There is no PPE in school at all and staff are not protected in any way.

Children don't give a shit about washing their hands.

We've been doing double periods instead of single to minimise movement. This means that we are stuck in a room with 30 17 year olds with few or no windows as the respiratory droplets add up.

Educating your child is impossible if you can't go near them.

Our time management and pupil progress relies on us being able to give feedback to children formatively as we teach. To mark jotters as we go. We can't do this now.

I think that because infection is so low we'll be okay for a while - a few weeks - then the shit will hit the fan.

you didn't say some or most

My DS works in a well known supermarket and due to his Uni being closed in March he worked full time during the peak. Guess what, for the first few weeks he was given no PPE whatsoever and customers kept pinching the sanitiser provided for staff!

You must be glad that thinking has changed and things aren’t like that now there is risk mitigation in place in shops.

It's a want to do their job safely for the sake of their pupils and colleagues and with the hope of it's got right then there won't be another national closing of schools.

That would what the rest us have been doing for months now. Welcome!

And yet then HCP died, hospitals didn’t close

So you have forgotten the part where hospitals suspended routine services and threw everything and everyone they had at COVID? You don’t think in doing so, they created a little ‘slack’ amongst their staff so closures didn’t happen?

Schools don’t have slack. If your child’s teacher is ill and supply cannot be found, your child will not be going to school.

[quote solidaritea]@TrustTheGeneGenie

I agree that hyperbole is ridiculous.

Your posts are also full of hyperbole. Teachers and pupils are being put at risk. It is a fact. It is hyperbolic to say that this risk is higher than any other risk ever. It is also hyperbolic to say that schools will be totally safe.[/quote]
Eh how are my posts hyperbolic?

Live isn't risk free. Teachers have always been at risk of catching something at work. This is an additional (small) risk.

I have never once said schools are totally safe

Same in my school. We have been told masks are optional. I will be seeing classes of 30 in a confined room. With little ventilation. I then see my next class of 30. This happens 5x a day.

We have turned the water fountains off as we have been told they may be a source of legionnaires disease until they can all be serviced (school doesn't have the money to do that )

I don't feel safe I will be in a confined space with 150 pupils (some are 18 so adults ) every day. I am in my late 50s

@FrippEnos

TrustTheGeneGenie

You did say some, or most.

You said parents that send children in to school ill are desperate.

A generalisation to make your point.

Chardonnay, your first point is not true

My first point being what? That one doesn't need to be trained health professional to take temperature?

You are having a laugh. But it's not funny for the rest of us.

I'm muting all these threads now as they, and the pathetic home schooling my own children (and my friends kids up and down the country) received, have really damaged my opinions of the teaching profession as a whole to be honest.

I do wonder if a lot of this moaning is in part a distraction from how bad a lot of the home schooling stuff was. Some of the stuff we got was shocking, but then I learnt to be grateful as many people I know didn’t get anything at all.

TrustTheGeneGenie

Thanks that will go well with my coffee.

@Enoughnowstop that’s a generalisation which teachers normally don’t like! Services largely continued as normal in my trust.

@TrustTheGeneGenie

An additional (unknown) risk.

[quote solidaritea]@TrustTheGeneGenie

An additional (unknown) risk.[/quote]
How is it unknown? It's pretty clear who is at most risk etc.

@TrustTheGeneGenie

Oh no a personal attack, how will I ever cope.

[quote FrippEnos]**@TrustTheGeneGenie

Oh no a personal attack, how will I ever cope.[/quote]
It's not really a personal attack is it? More stating a fact.

@Mistressiggi

A switch to blended learning in the face of evidence to support it would be unavoidable I can see this point, but think for a minute about what the "evidence to support it" would actually be. At best, it would be clusters of confirmed, low symptom cases. More likely, there would be cases with young people and adults suffering longer term consequences of the illness. Worst case - deaths. I would rather we did everything we can to reduce the potential for the evidence to be generated at all, by reducing transmission.

Yeah, I do agree, and would have been supportive of blended learning from the start. I'm not arguing against it.

But schools are open now, and it will take something concrete to close them again. I think that will emerge quite quickly, with clusters in secondary schools. I'm optimistic that they will close schools quickly to minimise the size of clusters, and it will not take many clusters before they acknowledge that secondary schools are too high risk if open full time. That WILL place some teachers at risk, and it is shit. It's not what I think SHOULD happen, but it's the most realistic best case that I think is likely happen.

I disagree with a PP that they will keep schools open because of the election next year. New daily cases in the 100s will be more of a concern than the reaction to blended learning.

that’s a generalisation which teachers normally don’t like! Services largely continued as normal in my trust

But not normal. NHS services did not continue as normal. And still aren’t. We haven’t seen our DSN since January - we have had three phone appointments, nothing else. Just an example. There is no slack like this in teaching. If staff are off, schools will close.

TrustTheGeneGenie

Its certainly an opinion but you do seem to have trouble with the difference between a fact and an opinion

Our home learning was awful, No contact whatsoever. A lot of damage has been done to the teaching profession but ultimately this lies with the government/school leadership team. The defensiveness is strange, if you’re a teacher who worked hard/ did more than required , thank you. Why the need to defend those that didn’t step up?

We don't know the long term effects of covid. We don't know what will happen when schools go back as normal, as it hasn't happened yet.

It is an unknown risk. Yes, we know that it's not a huge risk of death for most individuals.

I accept that the same is true, to a lesser extent, for many other diseases. There is a chance that a child could die from chicken pox. We don't know which children this could happen to and we know that the vast majority will be fine. We all live with this risk.

For me, it's the long term effects of covid that worry me. I have two friends with long covid. They were never hospitalised, but still have symptoms 6 months on.

Maybe I'm being over anxious. It won't stop me from going back to work in my primary school and trying to teach the best I can. I want to be back at work as I know my pupils have missed out on learning during lockdown. But I am still anxious and don't think I'm unreasonable to be so. I certainly think that secondaries should have more protocols in place.

@FrippEnos

TrustTheGeneGenie

Its certainly an opinion but you do seem to have trouble with the difference between a fact and an opinion

Considering you did I didn't say something, when I did, several times it's a fair conclusion to come to I think.

Services did not close in my trust. Please stop generalising, we managed to do amazing things in very difficult circumstances. Ie transplants continued, cancer treatment continued.

@Pomegranatepompom

Services did not close in my trust. Please stop generalising, we managed to do amazing things in very difficult circumstances. Ie transplants continued, cancer treatment continued.

I think this goes to show that NHS services were actually very similar to schools - different trusts/schools delivered very different services.

Thank you :)

@wizzbangfizz

No one hates teachers, we're just fed up with their endless resistance to do their job.

This.

I'm muting all these threads now as they, and the pathetic home schooling my own children (and my friends kids up and down the country) received, have really damaged my opinions of the teaching profession as a whole to be honest.

To be fair, teachers have had their eyes opened to certain parents.

Zero respect for many of them posting here. Poor kids.