The Fifth Republic - safe space? Solidarity Comrades!

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff. Baiters and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

You can play here only if you are a member of one the following groups-

-ABBA - anti bashers and baiting association
-SWAB - school workers against bashers
-SWOT - school workers opposing teacherbashers
-STARS - schoolworkers together against ranting + slurs

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the toffee vodka is hidden.

In the other staffroom, there is rhubarb & ginger gin, along with tea and coffee.

ProseccoBubbleFantasies

Posts got deleted for it.

It was annoying the goady fuckers and we can't have that

Don't engage. That'll annoy them more. Or agree. 'Yes, all my colleagues are feckless twats. But not me.'

prosecco
I am if people are being goady or threads are largely goady, but I'm replying in good faith with those posters who seem genuinely interested in discussion.

I think putting flowers on threads where posters are genuinely discussing issues would be an own goal.

NEU are advising all pregnant people plus those on flu jab list to work from home, as per wider gov instructions (but not dfe ones). In PMQs Gavin W said years 10 and 11 should have face to face contact, eg meetings to assess where they are. He didn’t make it sound like anything near a normal timetable even with reduced class sizes etc like they see, to think primary will do (ha), more like meetings or visits.

I read a fabulous suggestion somewhere on here this morning (all the horrible threads are merging into one), that in order to manage all the children in school each day, we should teach in two shifts, one from 7.30am to 12.30, and then the second from 1pm til 6! How nice, that they thought to give us a half hour break in the middle - presumably to deep-clean the toilets.

And I presume if anyone dared to object, there would be howls of derision about us being lazy part-time bastards, not willing to "think of the children" and ruin their lives forever.

I don’t disagree with the I think it looks rather sweet as a complete answer, but I cba to even give goady twats the satisfaction.

My Yr12 dc won’t be going in for any kind of face to face before Sept. They are completing all the work, keeping in touch with subject teachers and HOY and there’s absolutely nothing to be gained going into the building. After 10 weeks of isolating at home (they were off before closure with cold/possible Covid) it would be ludicrous to expose them to anything before the next school year.
I’m sure their teachers will be fine with that. More than happy to discuss options if not. The Head’s communications show a barely-veiled contempt for the lack of notice or planning issued from govt, so they aren’t towing the official line unless they consider it to be safe.

@TheHoneyBadger

Realised the reason it's such a battle is that in school they'd introduce a new concept then do a whole lesson of exercises maybe that practised and embedded that concept. The stuff he's being set on Dr Frost seems to involve multitudes of new concepts (wrong word probably because i'm not a mathematician (you want to have seen how many attempts it took me to even spell that word) and then eg. 30 challenging tasks jumping from one concept to another or requiring blending them for a 8 steps of working out task. IFTS?

It might be worth asking the teacher if they are setting "auto-generate" worksheets on Dr Frost? Teachers have the option for questions to autogenerate, which then increase in difficulty as the student practses more, or to set specific questions. I always set specific questions because you have control over what appears - so many of the GCSE questions require multiple skills I've never been brave enough to set an auto-generate (you can also exclude certain topics by ticking them on auto-generate).

zhx3 - it's coming up as saying class x have been set new work by mr y rather than generating as you do it itms. Super weird is that the assignment I made him attempt on his own yesterday and he found super difficult and scored only 48% on yesterday (I presumed way lower given his rage and despair and 'don't get it' ness) we returned to today. You can elect to reattempt and improve your score on Dr Frost. Anyway when we went to reattempt it with my support today it was an entirely different set of questions and according to ds totally different to yesterday.

It's a bit awkward as neither ds or I recognise this teachers name and I work at the school. Ds recently had yet another new teacher and it looks like he was setting work initially. Now it's someone different and completely unknown to us. I emailed him last week, and tbf he's polite and replies, saying could he please let me know what topics ds should have covered and mastered in year 8 because he'd had a tricky year and I'd like to use this time and summer to consolidate learning and make sure he's on track for next year.

He replied promptly and said he'd endeavour to look into what year 8's cover but haven't had anything since. Thinking if he taught year 8 at our school he'd know? Really don't have a clue who he is and having been off sick no idea of the situation at school - could random people not on staff be assigned the job of setting work for maths?

A recent one was stem and leaf diagrams (may have that wrong) and I'd never heard of them and assumed it was one of those 'we used to call it something else in my day' things but ds was clearly as clueless as me. The assignment said you must watch the full video first but there was no video. We commented on the feedback bit that there was no video and we had never encountered this before.

I'm not lacking in roll up your sleeves and screw your brain into knots trying to work out what you have in front of you skills but it was literally alien to me. That was the one where when I looked at it again it clearly said it was for top set GCSE.

It has made me appreciate that if I as a graduate and teacher am baffled and ds as a teacher's son who has their parent sat beside them is struggling then????

NEU are advising all pregnant people plus those on flu jab list to work from home, as per wider gov instructions (but not dfe ones).

I thought it was dfe?

@thehoneybadger get him onto Seneca learning. You can choose the maths KS3 course and he can work through all topics at his own time.
We used Hegarty but also use Dr Frost and I find it a bit unyielding compared to Hegarty.
Seneca is good because they have to read and do things before they can move on.

Is that a free platform sureitwill? The person setting work was like, 'I want them to do what I'm setting on Dr Frost' when I asked what ds's password for mathswatch was (Of course ds should know - he's been there for nearly 2 years but tbf we've only recently gotten a computer that he can always access.

Will keep doing the work set on there but can't help but feel ds might benefit more from making up for the gaps in his learning this year whilst having multiple teachers start and leave and most of them having very limited levels of english and/or very limited levels of classroom management skills. Our school, and I'm sure many others are the same, have been prioritising exam groups whilst being unable to recruit and retain enough maths teachers.

I suppose it's "where possible..."

Joining the 5th

Apparently there are many thousands of volunteers that want to reach out and help our children in the summer. Where has Gavin got that information from?

A friend in France's primary children are going back in a couple of weeks but 8 to a class, so very part time. Their area had been "red" so hadn't opened.

I bet there are. No safeguarding clearance, no volunteering, unfortunately.

Afternoon. Duty done today. Our numbers had doubled from the last time I was in, and that was with some of the regulars missing. Much of the talk was about how they were going to manage social distancing and maintain safe working practices. At the moment it looks like everyone who is on the rota for the day will now have to attend and they will be put into 2-3 groups and spread further around the building.

Given the challenges of trying to get one pupil to do their work, I fully understand the concern of pupils who tend towards aggressive coughing, spitting and fighting. At the moment we don't appear to be using the sanctions aspect of the rewards/sanction scheme in our school, there are no consequences to rudeness let alone any other normally banned practices - mobile phones etc. This continued blurring of lines is going to cause problems I suspect and lead to an increase in 'poor behaviour choices'. Especially as pupil numbers increase and the divide between pupils being taught and those coming under childcare. Although I believe as more pupils come in, there is going to be somewhat of a return to normal lesson expectations even if there are more than one year group together.

Lol bless them. They all think it will be summer of play easy peasy stuff. Well still lots of rules and regs to follow - they will all need a DBS check. It will only brake a couple of things to go wrong or some allegations and the shit will hit the fan big time.

@TheHoneyBadger yes completely free. I would say get your son to try it and if he likes it then email the teacher again. No point doing something that is not helping and you are all just getting frustrated!

I will not volunteer to work in the holidays and I will not be planning lessons for ‘thousands of volunteers’ to deliver. Particularly since the summer holidays will be the peak of the second wave.

I can't even rant about the latest thing SLT have just decided because it is very very outing but it is very very very silly. And pointless.

And quickly popped out to get food - there were loads of people clearly back at work. All seemed to be getting on with stuff. Busy busy

Some of our baiters need to get their coats and get going

Lake District say they aren't ready for tourists. How dare they? The selfish work shy bums! I want some fresh lakes air!!!!

Don't even get me started on the dentists. Outrageous.

@CarrieBlue after reading the drivel we simply cant have those sorts teaching anything. It would be a giant step backwards having to undo all the bad bits in autumn.

Johnny- Henry’s mum taught us how to split the atom this way

Me - well she effing taught you the wrong thing. The exam board want it taught this way

honey I agree with you but the DfE is the guidance document. Everyone is obsessing about little children and distancing (understandably) so this is getting lost in any discussions.

And Jenrick is doing the briefing AGAIN so no one will ask.