The Teachers’s Republic Refuge - solidarity comrades!

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

So continuing on from our boycott/flowers we need to continue to defend our profession. This is teacher/school staff chat - if you do not fall into that category please start you own thread elsewhere.

#solidarity

I’m glad I missed the thread about videos.

Why don’t they all make videos for all their co-workers. Go on then. I suspect no one wants to put themselves out there like that.

The sound quality on my Teams chats yesterday was awful. It was like hearding cats to get all the students in at once. I did the same explanation seven times as they were all popping in and out at different times.

And lots are still just e-mailing instead. Despite the fact that I know they have I-Pads and internet and I can see that they’ve looked at the assignment.

Bah!

Does anyone else just have to set work on their registration system or on the VLE?

No Teams, google class room or zoom

Seems we are in the dark ages but it sounds less stressful than what you are all going through. The constant emails has died down a bit this week too.

I think Rebecca Long-Bailey might be reading MN to see what we are all worried about!

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/apr/29/schools-must-only-reopen-when-safe-says-rebecca-long-bailey

She says a lot of sensible things!

However, stuff like this concerns me:

There needs to be a proper strategy: they can’t just open schools and expect everybody to go back to school without a proper public health campaign convincing parents that it’s safe to do it,” she said

Because we all know the government and co will say 'it is perfectly safe'. They said that before they shut the schools. I remember either Powis or Whitty saying school was 'the safest place to be' and I always wondered' compared with what?'

For the meantime, though, RLB is in our camp.

Can I join? Primary here, Year 3 teacher. Attempting to wrangle a 17 month old while giving feedback on work uploaded to Seesaw. Younger children are obviously getting lots of support to do this, and older children are able to do this independently.

My class are at that funny age where I either get work sensibly uploaded and placed into subject folders (parents able to help) or 27 random pictures of their cat with I LOVE YOU MISS THIGHS underneath 🤦🏻‍♀️

Solidarity with you all.

Grade decisions slowly killing me.

I think Rebecca Long-Bailey might be reading MN to see what we are all worried about!

I hope so. I emailed Kier and told him I was disappointed he wasn't thinking about teachers.🙈🙈

I am little bit about a thread just started in staffroom.

That's brilliant riga! Did he reply!?

I wasn't too happy about being landed with RLB for education but , actually, she does seem to be taking it seriously.

herc, I have been doing my grades for a week. I keep changing the 9s!!
I have to tell myself they really won't care whether they get a 9 or 8 well, one boy will take out a contract on me

Hello, I fell off the last thread. It's hard at the moment but I keep telling myself at least there's no drop in observations at the moment. Then I read the post another school using recording for pmr. Awful. The micromanaging that goes on in schools can be absurd.

I'm having minor palpitations about the set up of year one next year. We don't have a lot of space - certainly not enough to continue early learning provision but it might be needed. Too early to start planning as not sure what will have been missed but I want to plan. Especially as I know as soon as we get back there'll be a flurry of standards meetings, performance reviews, learning walks, book scrutinies, assessment and data, change all the bloody displays etc. And breathe

Good morning. Just found this thread . Solidarity

May I join you? I am actually quite enjoying my Google classroom. I wheeled up seeing a video of one of the girls singing one of our songs
My classroom hours are strictly 9 to 3.15 and no weekends.
Are we entitled to do nothing next Friday as we wouldn't have been in school anyway?

That's brilliant riga! Did he reply!?

No nothing.

been doing my grades for a week. I keep changing the 9s!!
I have to tell myself they really won't care

I am finding the ranking the hardest part

The ranking is so hard to do objectively. There's a whole load of what if about it all.

Ah, the ranking I can do. It's the grades. Yes, I know they did badly here, but would have done better. Then there's trying to keep in line with last year in terms of progress 8 and percentage of grades. It' a massive responsibility.

Did my ranking for Y11 yesterday. Two subjects - EngLang and Lit - took HOURS. and I've no idea how it's going to work when the entire Dept has to try and rank 280 kids over zoom.

On masks in classrooms... I have a v real problem. I am deaf and wear hearing aids. I rely a surprising amount on visual cues - not just lip reading but facial expression etc. I don't know if I will be able to teach if children are masked??and kids with hearing impairments will also be struggling.

keira top trumps : we have 420 kids to rank!! Aaaaaaargh!!!!

Even the thought of wearing a mask makes me a bit panicky. Can't bear feeling trapped. Even polo necks make me suffocate.

Jesus. How big is your school piggy?

Piggy - yikes! We decided to double the UMS to 320 as at least that gave a score available to every kid... you can't even do that!

I can't express how much I hate online teaching. Well, online facilitating, I guess.

Constant 'how do I...' messages - how do I get to the next slide in PowerPoint, how do I find today's Oak Academy lesson, how do I attach a document, how do I, how do I, how do I. One child I have between 60 and 100 interactions with every bloody day -what shall I do next? I don't get it. I've finished in 8 minutes the long task you set me in the hope of a break - she's incredibly sweet but she's breaking me.

I do enjoy all the little conversations and hearing what they're up to though.

Parent yesterday who was livid I'd set her son the year group below in English, despite all the Parents' Evenings and last years reports telling her he was behind. It show how opaque school is for some parents, I guess.

Then we had a genius member of staff in the staff meeting who suggested we download every piece of work to keep. I was too far gone at that point to protest - but why? What for? He's notorious amongst the staff for always making little suggestions that increase our workload.

I've honestly had enough.

I will admit that I haven’t really got my head around the ranking properly. I’ve looked at it a couple of times and I just don’t get how I’m meant to do it. I hate data. Every year I have students who go up three grades from mock to real exam. And yet I’m meant to decide grades that are fair and consistent based on mocks. The students who usually would do surprisingly well in the real exam are going to be short-changed.

BTW, we only have 23 students to decide on.... I have no idea how core subjects with the whole cohort and several teachers can do it!!