Drowning in a sea full of tiers

[Cismyfatarse]

Next thread. DD's birthday so can someone link.

@WouldBeGood I think that would be easier. I would prefer it. Many teachers have been rejected keyworker places because they are working from home. This makes delivering live lessons challenging if not impossible. Even if live lessons are managed for every period I just don't know that the same standards of normal classroom teaching could be achieved. Not to mention the kids who won't have the technology to follow a timetable. Many will have to wait until their wfh parents are finished with the house devices.

@kurtrussellsbeard I honestly think it makes more sense. It’s too complicated and unfair and stressful as it is.

It’s not so bad for me because of my circumstances but still very stressful. Must be horrendous for others. At least it would be a more level playing field

And unless we are all back in school full time from the beginning of March I don't see how the current plan for estimates can operate anywhere near fairly. 2021 is actually worse than 2020.

Yep. Total shitshow all round. Maybe less pressure all round would help.

I dunno.. I’m just musing

Many of my colleagues are two teacher couples or have partners who are medics, police etc. They have all been refused places. Just need to do your best. If you're jiggling a toddler on your knee or have an older child making noises in the background whilst you are talking to your class - then just do your best.

They are gutted and know there will be complaints.

@Perihelion

WaxOnFeckOff Richard@rp131 on twitter is amazing and almost overwhelming with charts and does Scotland too. Charts showing positives by actual dates not reported and showing lags and catch up. John Burn- Murdock's Twitter is also good.

Thanks :) I'll take a look as I find the stats interesting. Obviously they can only do what they can with the info available and core data doesn't seem to exist.

@Lidlfix

Many of my colleagues are two teacher couples or have partners who are medics, police etc. They have all been refused places. Just need to do your best. If you're jiggling a toddler on your knee or have an older child making noises in the background whilst you are talking to your class - then just do your best.

They are gutted and know there will be complaints.

Something is going to give. It's either a public health emergency or we've to deliver a proper education. I don't think it can be both. We can keep things ticking over but too many children will slip through the net and it's just not fair on them. Especially the certificated classes.

Yes I think my classes are about to hear all sorts of shit going on 🤣

Feedback on one piece of work a week is an absolute joke. Not the teacher's fault as they won't be the ones making these decisions but it's just not sufficient. There is no point in kids doing work without feedback.

The two parent rule continues to infuriate me. In any other circumstances what some parents are being required to do would be considered at best poor parenting and at worst neglect.

I'm aiming to get half a day's work done per day - I don't see how people with kids at home can deliver a full day of quality work and a full day of quality schooling, teachers included, I couldn't do it and I don't have issues with broadband, devices, print costs, stationery or any of the other constraints many are facing.

The scot govt should make a commitment to assess and catch up post covid now, to make parents and teachers feel a hell of a lot more confident about the situation.

@StatisticallyChallenged it's not even just the two person rule it's the fact that if one of those keyworkers are working from home it's. A knock back too! 🤷🏻‍♀️

We'll see what happens next week when the kids are back.

@WouldBeGood

If they say online learning I’m expecting a full programme tbh.

Otherwise just be honest and call it holiday and furlough the staff.

It's 6.28 and I'm taking a brief break from a teams meeting to have some food and look at my phone. After this, although I don't work on Fridays so should have finished for the week, I have two full days of prep so I can be ready for the online extravaganza that will be Monday morning. I cannot describe (nor can I really explain!) why it takes so long to prep PowerPoints, record audio, check out any video links, produce a set of tasks that can be done alone (no group work etc) and write fool-proof instructions. But it does. It took me four hours today to get one lesson absolutely ready to go - and this is a lesson I already had completely ready to go, had we been back in the building, not something I made from scratch. It's not the case that schools had "months to prepare" - we spent those months teaching , writing reports, preparing for potential SQA changes etc etc. I assume all schools will also have spent time getting all the classes set up in Teams/google etc. I'm going to withdraw although I would like a local thread and I can't take a thread of complaints about teachers. By all means complain to your school if they let you down, but they haven't even started the term for pupils yet!! Please note this is not me saying I'm worse off than anyone else on this thread, but I am not having a fucking holiday

I know KurtRussellsBeard - I did mean to say "two parents out of home"

We've finally received (via an industry group) a letter from the Care Inspectorate providing guidance to providers. It suggests the two parent thing but has a caveat along the lines of "providers should make the decision in the best interest of the child and their family". Well, poverty, being ignored for 8 hours while a parents works...not in their best interest in most cases.

@ItsIgginningtolookalotlikeXmas

It's murder. Same thing. Absolutely knocked my pan in today. Ignored my (very young) children. And still so much to do.

ItsIgginningtolookalotlikeXmas

Can't speak for anyone else, but in my case the irritation isn't with the individual teachers, it's with the lack of joined up thinking. I know it takes ages to prepare proper written resources (I've delivered a lot of training, different audience but I get you and hell yes, I'm a powerpoint whiz and a good slide deck still takes fucking ages!). But surely in that case the education departments could be going OK, it is not possible for a single teacher to prepare the material, mark it, be available for questions, and so on. So let's pool resource. All the schools in a cluster will work together to prepare materials so let's say across 6 primary schools the P1 teachers (let's assume 10 of them for ease) will discuss and agree a lesson program for the week and each will take responsibility for preparing 1/2 a day worth of materials.

Instead it feels like every teacher is running themselves ragged, but the result is still a totally inadequate offering simply because of time constraints? Maybe I'm missing a lot of coordination behind the scenes but I've not heard much to suggest it.

Thank you, Kurt

ItsIgginningtolookalotlikeXmas - people complaining about teachers in these circumstances need to take a long hard look at themselves. I have neither the talent nor the patience to teach, but I have friends who are teachers, and I think you all deserve a medal just now. Putting politics to one side, regardless of which side of the border you're on, you all just seem to have been thrown under a bus.

Look after yourself

Too much is being asked of individual teachers - it's not complaining to or about teachers to ask questions at the governmental level about educational provision and the way forward post covid.

Of course transferring lessons online is a lot of extra work, and not allowing teacher's children access to hub places seems strange to me.

@ItsIgginningtolookalotlikeXmas I agree this is not about the individual teachers. Both of my kids teachers are excellent and I've emailed them both often to say how grateful I am to them.

But this is the sort of thing the ScotGov should have been quietly preparing for over the summer/autumn period and it doesn't seem that they have. Even though they always said this winter would be very difficult.

If I haven't been clear enough - I think teachers are fucking amazing, and I'd be one if I hadn't fucked up my Standard Grade maths 24 years ago...

There's no joined up thinking and no coordination and it's an absolute disgrace. We were far too busy when we are actually back in school to be prepping for online learning. We were too busy dealing with normal teaching, the added burden of assessment and moderation because of the cancelled exams, huge staff absence, huge child absence etc etc. Now we're in a situation where we're scrabbling trying to prepare and people are, understandably because they have no specific knowledge, saying why wasn't this thought of? What have the teachers been doing?

Now next week we will run the gauntlet of:
You're setting way too much work!
You're not setting enough work!
My child can't access the device until after five but never gets any time to speak to their teacher.
Half your class aren't engaging you need to make it simpler!
My child isn't being challenged you need to make it harder!

There are no winners in this.

Parents are worried about their children, they want them to have enough education, they are working themselves and don't have the time or the talent to teach, especially if they are working/have younger DC.

Teachers are mostly in the exact same boat as above. They are experienced in doing live lessons where there is to and fro, questions and answers which are also learning points for other DC, they want to praise and coax and inspire. That doesn't really equate directly to a recorded or live non interactive lesson. maybe half of every hour is about supervising work being done, dealing with queries etc and that doesn't translate to provide an hour of content. And lets remember most folk aren't technical wizards either.

I have every sympathy for everyone trying to work in an unfamiliar way with technical issues added in, in short timescales, under pressure and with their own caring responsibilities and home circumstances thrown in.

As has been said, this isn't about individual teachers or even schools, it's about not having a standard model across the country that can be deemed best practice and can be picked up and run with so that all DC get at least the basics evenly.

There is now no doubt in my mind that all students need to repeat this year. I just cannot see a way in this works out fairly for young people.

Myself and my partner are working from home and so my children cannot access the curriculum through the day because we simply don't have enough devices. We are certainly not in a financial position where we would expect or qualify for help but equally we can't afford a new laptop or iPad. That means the kids will get what they get school wise after our working day is done. There's no way we're unique in this.

If I had a child sitting an exam (or not) this year I'd be stamping my feet and screaming for them to get the chance to repeat.

Thanks for these supportive comments people, I wasn't expecting that
I don't think we can do a National home learning system tbh, my school has a lot of parents with devices at home, for example, but someone else's will have hardly any. Schools need to provide what works for their own community (or, the government should provide better resource for all, but that ain't gonna happen!
slopes off to read usforthem on Facebook as hasn't had daily dose of teacher whipping

@WaxOnFeckOff I've been trying to think about how a standard model could be applied all day but the curriculum is too big and unwieldy with too many choices and options. Too many schools approach things differently meaning adopting a top down approach just wouldn't match in or suit the work that has already been done. It's a very sensible idea and had it been the start of the academic year, if they had recruited teams of specialists to make materials or if they would admit that the games a bogey and cancel the assessments then it could possibly be a goer. As it is, however, we're in too deep to claw that back. For my subject certainly but many will be the same.

A standard model with options I think @ItsIgginningtolookalotlikeXmas. As you say there isn't one size fits all but there should be available content that can be delivered in a variety of ways to suit the school community.

Oh we'll all be named and shamed on us for them soon enough! Can't wait for my five minutes of fame!