Thirteenth Republic - School’s out for summer, no more pencils no more books!

[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.

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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

Regional lockdowns will be the way forward for the govt, I think. Increased local tracking databases etc. Also catastrophic for those schools in those areas.

[quote hedgehogger1]@Piggywaspushed I'm sure I was reading an article showing that people (inc kids) were happier and less stressed in lockdown [/quote]
Of course a load of kids will be happier - no homework, no assessments, no strict timetable, no commute, no bullying .....

@BelleSausage - your new name oracle

Ffs, how many more people are going to quote that fucking Times article about no proven cases of children passing it to teachers.

I have this Aver visualiser which just plugs into a USB port. School bought it for me when I had to move classrooms a lot because it folds down nice and small but works really well. It's been a godsend in lockdown

I think the guidance is very clear on improving online/blended learning. That will be key from Sept and heads that haven't taken a blended approach into their planning will be screwed. I think 11th August will be crunch time and plans will change after then. I'm guessing Oak Academy will feature highly!

It's just going to bumble along being shit, in my opinion.

Children in and out all the time either ill (not covid), or getting tested/waiting for test results/being nervous about other children getting tests.

Children within 'bubbles' not being able to behave because of the disruption of the above.

Local lock downs with some school closures, erratic home learning again. And I mean erratic from a parental input point of view, rather than supply of options.

And that's without anyone getting, or dying from, covid.

If it's REALLY awful, deaths and so on, unions will get shouty.

There will be lots of teachers leaving at Christmas if they can.The jobs will still be there in a year's time.

heads that haven't taken a blended approach into their planning will be screwed

I think I'm the only one in my school thinking about this properly. No idea why.

In fairness our SLT plan of tutor groups and 2 hour lessons in ks3 does mean that online stuff is much easier. One lesson suits all students in the year group so there will be capacity to put something online for a blended approach. In the case of a local lockdown it means only one lesson is needed for the whole year group. They can all have the same online lesson.
The in school part of the plan isn't great but the ability to switch online is definitely easier.

I do wish school guidelines would be firmer and clearer about teachers and other staff. I wish it would say ' do not have meetings, no parents evenings etc. I feel like heads need to be told, not hinted at.

@Piggywaspushed

Are schools still
Planning to do face to face parents eve? Surely not. We’ve been told no face to face meetings at all with groups over ten. Our department is going to do them from home after everyone has picked up their kids. Same with staff training.

School have bought a brilliant parents eve system that cuts off the meeting after 5 mins. Amazing!

I'm thinking local lockdowns are going to require some system from the exam boards to maintain equality nationally (and then here's international entries, if those still happen??)

My DH had that parents eve thing too.

My school is having face to face training day.

We’re in school but in subject areas for inset in September using tech to stream stuff that’s for all staff.

We have face to face for one day, one day online, one day half and half and another day in departments. I guarantee 90% of whatever we do will be useless.

Now I’m having a Personal Panic about DS’s Yr13!

Hate inset at the best of times as I sit there resenting all the useful things I could be doing. Being made to go into school just to watch it on a screen anyway sucks but at least it should cut down on time wasting cringe worthy attempts to get people from different departments talking and sharing good practice bollocks.

I know I’m a miserable hag but I’d really rather just get on with looking at class lists and working out sen, op etc stuff for working out seating plans, planning, working out who I share groups with and establishing contact and agreement as to how we’ll do it etc etc. We never have a definite timetable and definite classlists till September which means tons to do.

Moan over

Oh dear lord I’ve just remembered an inset day on the year where nobody’s dbs clearance had come through and we weren’t sure we could legally open. We had to sit and listen to a non teacher patronising us with a lecture about how you have 8 seconds to get into your frontal lobes and out of your reptilian brain before adrenaline kicks in and you can’t respond from your more evolved brain.

His science was iffy, he’d never taught but somehow had an ongoing gig with inset in schools.

Maybe it’s a good thing we can’t afford external trainers anymore.

I hope inset and training is done via Teams at home 😂

Thank goodness we can't afford external shit anymore. The edutainment and VAK rubbish pedalled by some were beyond a joke.

Training at home will be fine. I can shove it on in the background and do something useful.

Oh interesting! Michael Rosen is fact finding about how many schools have outlawed masks and why on Twitter! He is appalled.

Yay, go rosen!

Good as he nearly died he should see the risk schools pose to everyone.
I did not like the study saying under 5 are even more contagious.
Imo too many kw are parents and will end up with 10d isolation at least with pt blended for primary and secondary its halving the chances in any week etc
Maybe gov need to publish the contacts 30 families would have 240 etc so people can understand the difference between 50% of school in (when most of economy was shut) and 100% primary in plus secondary and pubs etc.

I think partly ifs the rules in the uk we are used to pushing them eg driving faster than the limit.

twitter.com/MichaelRosenYes/status/1289259763612569600

One of his threads.

Isn't it weird, literally watching the penny drop......

So many now starting to say / accept what we have said all along, and usually getting that lightbulb moment is so great!

Love this tweet form Teacher's Manual :

If Matt Hancock was a teacher, he’d forget to set h/w for 5 weeks then suddenly set loads and ask for it to be handed in tomorrow because there’s a book scrutiny. He’d even email the kids at 10:45pm the night before to remind them