The Seventh Republic - the debate rages on but for some it is half term!

[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.

If you are fed up with cakes and biscuits there is now a cheeseboard on offer

pfrench

I can see major issue with behaviour for quite a length of time.

I have a colleague who 'went' for an interview and had to teach a remote lesson! This does worry me slightly that the teachers with the best IT skills will get posts. These may well be wonderful teachers; they may well not be, equally. Recruitment has never been fair, that said.

My school actually made people go in for a socially distanced interview.

I've flipped my day quite a bit.

Selfishly I have no young kids, just stroppy (quite happy remote learning) teens.

So I do most of my school work in the evenings, sitting companiably with DH while he watches rubbish on youtube or TV. There has been zero expectation of live or recorded lessons here, thankfully. So I prep, schedule and give feedback to the work done that day (by the few that are engaging!) in the evening. Then in the day I do my own thing, with my phone on me handy so that whenever it pings with an email notification I can answer it immediately if there are any queries from the kids about the work. Hurrah for tech.

Currently working on my annual report, which is fun when I've not seen the kids I'm writing about for the last 10 weeks.
And sorting out form groups for the high school, and doing transition forms too.

Love year 6!!!!

I would work in the evenings if I had a child who would go to effing bed! As it stands, every other night when I'm on bedtime duty, I fight with her about sleep until gone 10, so that takes away any evening I might have.

I have a question - for those of you who are dealing with child or parent emails, do you have a time of day when they can expect a response from you? At the moment we are not marking or interacting with children (primary, year 3 and 4). I want to open an email address up for them to use, but it needs to be carefully offered.

I'm thinking that if we work on planning and recording in the mornings, then we can do emails between 12.30 and 2.30 maybe? Gives them chance to do the work, have a photo of it emailed in to us, and we can give feedback.

I'm going down the route of putting ALL the week's work up on one day - then they can choose to do it however they like. Does that sound OK, or ridiculous?

Aaagh...

Our school has put work up on monday morning for the whole week since beginning of lockdown. Emails are sent via admin staff and are answered on mon,weds and fri I believe 9-12. Definitely not answering emails from parents throughout the day.

My DDs school (primary) puts the week’s work on the website on Monday. She ploughs through it herself according to the timetable she made herself (geek!). DS gets his work each day according to his timetable he would have had at school. DH posts his lessons the night before or in the morning each day, then answers questions as and when they come through. I’ve not had to set much work as all my students bar one are Yr11 (I work in a pru 1-2-1) but I deal with welfare checks and emails throughout the day whilst planning for next year.

DDs system means she can choose what she does and when as long as it gets done.

Yes, that's my thinking - if all the work is there, they can do it whenever they want to/have support/are able to use a device etc. I was putting things up a bit sporadically before, because there was no expectation to do anything, and the school newsletter linked to project sort of activities every week.

Being Secondary pfrench, most of my emails have come from pupils and I have been replying to them when I see them and I check regularly throughout the day. That’s my trade off from norm following a set timetable daily.
I have found that to be much less pressure on the families involved, as we too upload the work for the week and pupils can do them when they are able. I will never understand the obsession with Zoom from the die hards. Even the ballet lessons I pay for via live link, on a Saturday is pretty painful for all involved

@pfrench my kids school have put up work for week, clearly labelled on a Friday for the next week for my Y1 - basically maths, English then there is a folder of ideas/links that stays static for anyone that wants anything more. My Y5 gets emailed a timetable of links at the start of a week and they have maths, English plus one more thing each day. Again suggestions for more if they want it.

Y5 teacher emails once a week but children are encouraged to email her back directly and she has drop in zoom chats (audio only) twice a week where kids ask for a slot and then she controls it via waiting room so one chat at a time. My Y5 is self motivated and loves this way of working and doesn’t do the chats but emails regularly.

Y1 teachers email parents via parentmail on a Friday about the next weeks. They email the Y1 kids directly once a fortnight ish. They encourage the children to email them back and take photos of work and upload it (no marking is done for any of them but they say well done etc). They ring parents on a timetable we signed up to either weekly or fortnightly depending on what we want/need so eg I am ring once a fortnight and usually talk about teaching as we are fine with the work, but I know friends are rung every week who are finding it tougher. Teacher asks to quickly say hello to children each call just has nice chat about what they’ve been doing and says they miss them and is lovely.

As a parent I can email the class teachers directly any time, and are actively encouraged to do so. They say they will respond within 24 hours (within work week so if you email on Friday then they will respond on a Monday for example). If any teacher is unwell we get an email letting us know from school. It depends from teacher to teacher their situation so Y1 teacher replies super quick, she doesn’t have any kids of her own at home but Y5 teacher is slower but does always reply’s. Even if to say I have received it and will reply properly on this day/time.

We (primary) have always put plans + all resources up for the week at the end of the previous week, which working parents have appreciated as they can get things printed etc over the weekend (most of our work is done on online tools, but there are some worksheets as we have found it has helped those families where several children are sharing devices).

There is a safe online space where children can put up photos and queries, and parents also e-mail.

The online systems we use for delivering work allow marking & feedback - the depth of this depends on whether it is a quick quiz or a piece of writing. We have found that giving rapid feedback to any interaction with us has fostered engagement, and we track what's completed and contact parents to see if we can help if there are gaps.

What we generally find, even though we plan in '1 activity a day for English & Maths' type chunks, is that most children do all the 'quick' activities early in the week, and then by the end of the week are doing the longer 'project type' pieces of work that we set outside English / Maths. Least engagement is for longer and less structured work, so we have broken down what would be our normal programmes of work into short structured chunks accordingly.

Online teaching is inefficient compared with classroom teaching, and tbh it has occupied me full time so far, despite the children covering less than they would in the classroom. About to get more complex as pretty much all staff in to cover returning bubbles from tomorrow, as well as keeping online work going for non returned year groups.

I would also say that initially I got and sent a lot of e-mails, which i chose to turn around fast because it stopped people getting 'switched off' at the very start of the process.

I now receive very few, especially as the children have a place to which they can upload pictures, work, queries etc that doesn't have to go via parents and which they are now adept at.

So if you are setting up e-mail now, I would also set aside a LOT of time in the first few days, as the investment in sorting problems at that point means that you should then have much less to do later on.

I'm going down the route of putting ALL the week's work up on one day - then they can choose to do it however they like. Does that sound OK, or ridiculous?

My sons school does this, y2. I prefer it as a parent as I can then organise what happens when and pre print things ready. They can essentially choose. I find feb literacy the least successful as I think it's an area that needs to be done in the classroom at this age; they've not yet got the independent skills and need structure. Spag exercises, reading and handwriting are easily done at home. White rose maths is great.

pfrench I teach Year 1 equivalent and always put the work for the whole week up on Monday and say that they can work through it in any order. For the first few weeks, they were very enthusiastic, but we are not at week 8 and have had lovely weather recently, so am getting hardly anything done.

I don't have any connection with parents via email and nor do any other teachers. If parents want to contact the school, they use the school admin address. They don't have access to teachers' email addresses.

If I were a main stream teacher going forward I'd probably utilise bbc more, giving some lower ability things for others and a list of challenges for the more able, but at a pick and choose level.

T

That's what I assume will happen - loads at the beginning. Particularly from some parents.

We haven't been calling children. There are SO MANY language barriers that even face to face in the playground we sometimes need a translator. Makes phone calls really difficult. SLT have been calling vulnerable kids/parents who aren't in school.

I think I'll put up a bit of a list of available lessons for each week - in a grid or table. I'm dithering about the idea of a term curriculum map like I'd normally do - we might end up with those classes back in at some point, and would probably change things a bit if that happened.

We've had no SLT guidance on this, so this is just me doing what I'd like to have as a parent.

We've bought them all Power Maths and have planned lessons from 8th June that match with those books. I've started recording those, but have next week to get them sorted. Reduces the need to print. We are assuming that no one has a printer.

If I were a main stream teacher going forward I'd probably utilise bbc more

Yes, I'm doing that for not maths, english or history. Means I can email SEND kids stuff that is more their speed. Although they are also getting printed packs sent out - only three times so far, but plenty to keep them going. Our history links to the class book I'm reading and we're doing the English around it too. Old skool!

I had a look at the first English lesson I did online back in March - holy crap, there was NO WAY parents could follow that, it needed so much input and knowledge from them. We've simplified things now - max 15 min video, one tiny step of skills practice.

I have a question but I don't want it to be teacher criticism. I'm just not sure how much to expect. ( I am a private tutor).
How much feedback of any kind should a year 8 expect from her maths teacher?
I'm tutoring a year 8 bottom set student. Her teacher is putting up a message each week with what to do in terms of mathswatch videos and questions. My student has been a little star and despite learning difficulties has worked through loads of stuff, even things that I would have thought were too hard for her.
As far as I know she hasn't had any direct feedback from her teacher since lockdown, not even a "well done for what you have achieved". Would this be standard or unusual. A "well done" from her teacher would be such a boost for this student.

Who knows? Like me, we've not been instructed to do anything specific in terms of feedback, or even of lesson and activity provision. That's from the DfE and from the school SLT.

If that person isn't getting updates on things like staff sickness etc, then for all you know, the work is being set by someone who isn't the usual teacher, and that person is getting work back from 6 different classes.

Perhaps her parents should contact the school.

If that person isn't getting updates on things like staff sickness etc, then for all you know, the work is being set by someone who isn't the usual teacher, and that person is getting work back from 6 different classes.

This is exactly my situation since my colleague resigned and our supply teacher was furloughed by their agency. I’m basically responsible for all their classes as well

I'm setting work for my phase - currently 3 classes. One of my staff doesn't have an internet connection because they've moved into a new build, the other has massive anxiety over recording her voice/a video.

Those things are going to have to slide over the next term, they need to pull their weight on the public stuff, but for now I'm doing it. I also really need some structure to my days/weeks, so it's helped me deal with the whole lockdown thing. Either work hard or furlough were my preferences, and furlough wasn't an option.

I’m off sick. I dread to think how many parents are moaning about how that useless bitch miss badger hasn’t given any feedback. This information doesn’t get fed through to parents and students.

@TheHoneyBadger

I’m off sick. I dread to think how many parents are moaning about how that useless bitch miss badger hasn’t given any feedback. This information doesn’t get fed through to parents and students.

This is the exact reason why so many of us tell posters to contact their own school. Not so they can give out personal information of course but so it gives the school the chance to do something to help. Better this than bitching about schools/teachers on social media or Mumsnet!

Does anyone else here do the Teacher Tapp surveys?

They don’t really allow for part time workers to answer! Several questions recently have been about how many days we are working at school this week or how many hours we’ve spent working. Not fair to assume that because I’ve done fewer hours, I’m slacking-it’s because I’m part time!

Yes I thought the English lessons are tough on bbc. I personally think work books are best for literacy.

Yes I try to do but frequently forget. Also part time and sometimes find it difficult to answer! Don’t know if they ‘know’ I’m part time from previous question at all somehow?!?