The Ninth Republic - stand by for the return of Year 10

[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

If you come with a stick to beat us with then please do so elsewhere and not in the staffroom.

Report writing today... so you know, I'll be on here more than usual!!

Fucking hate report writing. Largely pointless.

@TheHoneyBadger if you just want to add a narration to your PowerPoint just go into the insert tab, audio is on the far right, down arrow, record audio. When you are happy with it press ok and a speaker button appears on the slide which you can move around. If you have any other animations on the slide either do the audio first or reorder the animations so that the audio is first.
If your kids are anything like mine, you then have to save the audio again (right click, save media as) and send the audio separately in an email because they can't play it on their phones.
Sorry if that's teaching you to suck eggs!

Thanks goats for the alternative screen sharing app.

I’ve posted on the aibu thread but it will be seen as whining and making excuses no doubt

With loom you can download it from their storage and then upload it to where you want it. That's the software I'm using, I just have it set to cam only, and make my camera bubble full screen. The free version only has a limited amount of videos allowed, so I do the video, share it for a few days, then delete the earlier videos to make more space. It's a faff downloading and uploading the videos, but I love just sharing a link to the video on my emails to the kids. We haven't really got up and running with any other platform consistently across the school, so the pupils are happiest with an email each day. At least they can find all their emails (although the very weakest have still not quite grasped how to respond to emails, but I can see them doing quizzes so they must be able to read them)

It's a faff downloading and uploading the videos, but I love just sharing a link to the video on my emails to the kids.

Yep - that's a weakness in my system. I don't upload to Screencast O matic's whatever, I just save it to my laptop (hard drive at the minute because getting onto our VPN is a ballache). Then upload to youtube. Then post a link.

Takes me an hour to plan a lesson with powerpoint faffing, then 15 minutes to record it, then anything from 3 minutes to 4 hours to get a link onto the school website.

Other staff can somehow just upload their vids straight to the site, but not me apparently. At least posting links means that it's not clogging everything up/slowing it down at their end. Maybe.

Still NOTHING in my email inbox for work to be marked. I'm just going to have to do reports. In front of Homes Under the Hammer.

Thanks MsDragon. Makes sense that they’d do it that way as a taster but encourage towards monetisation. As long as I can download them and keep them to re use
that would be fine for me.

I usually produce worksheets to go with short videos to ensure they are actively watching rather than being zombies. I think I could do lessons with a bit of talk over a PowerPoint, a video with worksheet with simple q’s, word frames etc, then more talk going over answers they should have gotten and introduce the next bit of independent work.

That as an example would surely be ok? I don’t want to do live lessons and I’m not hugely tech savvy obviously

Anything that required showing them how to do something eg work out an equation I could either do the home made visualiser business or just record my screen with me typing into a word doc.

News from Education select committee

After 45 minutes of some pretty heated quarrelling on the education committee, union chief Mary Bousted says: "Some of the line of the questioning here seems to be that it’s schools' and teachers' and leaders' fault for following government guidance."

2m ago 10:55
At the Commons education committee Tom Hunt, another Conservative MP, also strongly accused the teaching unions of resisting school reopening. He said people felt the teaching unions “had actively obstructed the reopening of schools”. And he said you could not blame people for thinking that. As an example, he cited what Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT, said in early May that suggested that schools should not open until September. Roach said:

The NASUWT urges ministers to act to end speculation on the reopening of schools beyond the current restrictions prior to September 2020.
And yet this morning the teaching unions were presenting themselves as constructive, he said.
Roach said he stood by the quote cited by Hunt. He said he wanted the government at that point to end speculation. The speculation was damaging, he said. He said he was not opposing reopening in principle.
Hunt said, in the light of the Roach quote, the claim that his union wanted schools to go back was “difficult to swallow” for people.

At the end of the Commons education committee hearing Robert Halfon, the Conservative committee chair, paid tribute to the work done by teachers.
But he said 4m children from disadvantaged backgrounds were getting very little contact with teachers. Why was that, he asked. He said his “huge worry” was the state of vulnerable children.
He stressed that he did not mean the question as a criticism.
Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said she thought vulnerable children should have been a priority this term. They should have taken priority when pupils were going back, she said. She said schools knew who these pupils were.
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said her members had been trying hard to help this group. But these children often had complex and difficult home lives, she said. It could be difficult to engage with work at home even when that work was set.
It was “incredibly difficult” to learn if you were at home with a large family, little space and no technology, she said, particularly if your parents were having a difficult time too.

OK, so then you have a situation where some schools are full, others are empty. You also have a thing where there is stigma attached to 'those families' being focused on. I don't imagine many more children would have come back.

I don't know what the right answer is, obv.

Robert Halfon is well meaning but if he doesn't know the answer to his won question there that speaks volumes.

Any big plan announced yet??

The anti union thing is so irritating.

These people really need to watch American Factory.

Robert Halfon is well meaning but if he doesn't know the answer to his won question there that speaks volumes.

Any big plan announced yet??

Exactly!

Not read anything about it yet.

So , Teach First has dropped 120 trainees for next year...

Hope they are good on MSTeams.

Someone is now moaning about key worker children going in to school, when she only has a nanny 4 hours a day but works full time.

I'm not sure many people 'get it'.

I am converting my narrated PowerPoints into Microsoft Streams. They work a treat on phones. Sorry if someone has already mentioned it but better to repeat than not say at all!

How do you do that @likeafishneedsabike ?

Boris said Gav is going to announce it shortly.

Then said about getting schools back and accused labour of ' wibble wobble'

@ohthegoats

Someone is now moaning about key worker children going in to school, when she only has a nanny 4 hours a day but works full time.

I'm not sure many people 'get it'.

That is SO mumsnet diddums

Have got ds to do a solid chunk of work today including a piece of writing tabloid style. I find he will not/cannot work on his own. He wants me there with him and he seems to need me to point out he’s missed a step in a maths question or to remind him to edit what he’s typing for mistakes. Bit concerning how much he needs chivvying on at 13. I’m going to need to sell a kidney and have tutors in year 11.

Honestly we could have all answered Boris better at PMQs that Keir did today. He didn't think fast at all. He probably didn't expect Boris to blame unions as an answer to his question.

Unbelievable really.

Where's the nanny thread? AIBU?

I’ve written loads in good faith on the aibu thread. Teachers and parents should be on the same bloody side demanding decent funding and great conditions for teaching and learning in schools from the government. Somehow we’re fighting each other grr