The Sixteenth Republic - waiting on the GCSE results show!

[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

We've been allocated a week at a time in the IT room - presumably we have to cover all our computing curriculum per term in that one week. How boring. Hate teaching computing.

I sometimes miss doing supply. It was a kind of spiritual/psychological practice of remaining positive and unflappable and having your energy win out and set the tone.

It should be the same in a permanent position but the reality is you have so much more stress and ten things you’ve got to juggle and personality politics and emails flying in demanding things of you.

Supply was literally classroom management and teaching on your toes creatively.

I need to find a way to not be effected by the whole school stress and atmosphere and get back to the lesson and then I enjoy my job. It’s hard when there’s pressure and demands though or any kind of bullying or unnecessary extra pressure though.

Sorry off track.

One of my year 11 students was baffled to learn that you needed a degree to teach PE because "my dad (head of PE) isn't that smart".

@MrsHamlet

One of my year 11 students was baffled to learn that you needed a degree to teach PE because "my dad (head of PE) isn't that smart".

Presumably sports science?

@TheHoneyBadger the classroom is my safe space. No one can get me there. I know what I'm doing and where I'm going.
I'd like to think SLT will be supportive this year. Sadly I know that staff well-being is a tick box exercise, and that when they say they care, what they mean is "if it affects me".

@ohthegoats

We've been allocated a week at a time in the IT room - presumably we have to cover all our computing curriculum per term in that one week. How boring. Hate teaching computing.

Computing is brilliant!

Check out Barefoot Computing - they've just released some short non-tech activities for different primary age groups that take little prep, few resources and teach some good concepts.

I've never asked him. Although never having to do any marking but still getting the pay and the holiday is pretty smart. I couldn't deal with the footwear though.

@mrshamlet I hated English at school but find grammar really interesting. I like learning languages and then seeing the links to English, such as the subjunctive explaining 'if I were a butterfly'... What do you mean by kinds of verb?

I miss having my own classroom. As a full time teacher with my own room it was definitely a haven and somehow imprinted with my atmosphere. I used to hate internal cover in someone else’s room because they seemed to behave in the way they were used to behaving in that room.

I’m a nomad as a part timer.

Have been putting off turning on my work laptop for fear of what I might find but I’m going to brave it. Most probably still no proper timetable but I’ll check.

Will check out Barefoot computing. I always give it to my PPA/MT cover, but now it's a whole week I'll have to do it. Main issue is the shit-ness of the actual hardware. Nothing ever works, half the kids can't spell their own names. Takes 20 minutes to log on a class of 30, and at the end of that 4 or 5 children won't have been able to log on at all/4 or 5 laptops not working. Meh.

the classroom is my safe space

I'm very much looking forward to my bubble to be honest. No one will be coming in, just me and my dudes.

@Flagsfiend are you a geographer?
Main verbs and auxiliary verbs, and then you can look at modals as a category all of their own. And then at tenses and active and passive voice... it's all very exciting!

Radio 4 now talking about mass testing roll out "in the coming months"... maybe!

Except A level language when I have to teach grammar and they get very upset that there is more than one kind of verb.

Bizarrely, a concept that we teach in KS2 in primary (modal verbs, for example, being taught in upper KS2)... but which, i agree, does 't really surface again until very late in the secondary school curriculum!

It's crazy that by year 6 they have to know 6 tenses, modal verbs, subjunctive voice and all the different types of adverb, as well as being able to tell whether it's been used as a preposition or adverb, then it all gets lost again till so much later!

The grammar content of the sats is what I used to teach year 9 sats many moon ago.

Weirdly my 6's always like active and passive though. I use the 'by zombies' trick.

I work in a dept which likes to think that primary grammar is "just for the test" so it doesn't get mentioned again unless they're lucky enough to have a Lang teacher. Boils my piss!!

@MrsHamlet

Boils mine too! A solid understanding of grammar and language makes writing accessible to more people. For those who need it, it almost transforms writing into a science.

[quote MrsHamlet]@Flagsfiend are you a geographer?
Main verbs and auxiliary verbs, and then you can look at modals as a category all of their own. And then at tenses and active and passive voice... it's all very exciting![/quote]
No, I'm a scientist. We definitely didn't learn any of those at school, but I know what most of them mean from language learning :)

My HOD takes the old school supercilious view that secondary is where the "real" learning happens. It doesn't matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, so we have some exceptionally shite schemes of work which are embarrassing in their assumptions.
In other news, I've just been shopping for essentials and seen this. The shop is about the size of my classroom.

Hmm even my hypothetical might be different timetable has now disappeared from sims and school has blocked or is blocked from access to Go

So no timetable, no risk assessment, no clue what the inset days are going to be on. It’s quite stressful not knowing anything!

Apparently the bm has raised a query about my missing reckonable years for pension.

I’m hating not knowing what I’m even doing in September

@MrsHamlet

Our local secondary used to feel like that until a member of their SLT and English HOD came and watched my English lessons for a week and saw what the kids were creating with their own eyes.

It's difficult though because every child reverts back to being that "Can I turn the page?" kid when they start a new year.

It’s not just schools that are safe-it’s work, too!

Chop chop-back you go, there’s nothing to see here!

[quote Iamnotthe1]@MrsHamlet

Our local secondary used to feel like that until a member of their SLT and English HOD came and watched my English lessons for a week and saw what the kids were creating with their own eyes.

It's difficult though because every child reverts back to being that "Can I turn the page?" kid when they start a new year.[/quote]
Oh yes! I still treasure the time when head of KS3 maths from the nearby secondary school came to observe some upper KS2 Maths lessons.

Her mouth kind of opened....and never really closed again...

The meeting with their head of Maths when I pointed out exactly how many marks in Foundation Maths GCSE you can get assuming only a knowledge of what is strictly in the primary Maths curriculum [and not even allowing for a child having a common sense approach to unknown material in statistics] was a fun one, too. IIRC it was enough marks for a 3....

Matt Hancock can’t say ‘yeah we’re following France and recommending masks for offices’ because he had already said ‘schools, like offices, don’t need them’.

I wonder if people will kick off about this?

[quote Iamnotthe1]@MrsHamlet

Our local secondary used to feel like that until a member of their SLT and English HOD came and watched my English lessons for a week and saw what the kids were creating with their own eyes.

It's difficult though because every child reverts back to being that "Can I turn the page?" kid when they start a new year.[/quote]
Don't they just. I remember a year 7 a few years ago who came in a L5 but want using any punctuation in assessed work. When I told him I knew he'd been taught it he said 'yeah but that was just for SATs.'