The Seventeenth Republic - The Pick Your Grade Show continues as we edge towards INSET days.

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders 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 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
Do not give ‘The Every twat for Themselves mob’ the staffroom password as a number of them are operating in an alternative reality.

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 goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom. Close the door quietly on your way out

@CallmeAngelina I blame 50. She's been in full time school forever so it must be her fault.
Also - please can you organise a staff night out?! I normally sit on my sofa under a blanket but I want some of this bar licking before I'm too knackered to appreciate it.

I nominate one of you lot as patient zero and I’ll blame you for infecting me through the Internet 😆

Well it is a virus..

Thanks saucery. I'm having to quarantine or bubble a lot of things so will add it to the list.

My query is if it lasts in moisture more than 72, eg in wet clay or play dough etc.

I know someone researching sewage works so may ask if the virus is still infectious there after 72 hours!

[quote MrsHamlet]@CallmeAngelina I blame 50. She's been in full time school forever so it must be her fault.
Also - please can you organise a staff night out?! I normally sit on my sofa under a blanket but I want some of this bar licking before I'm too knackered to appreciate it.[/quote]
This made me actually 😆

Loving your work @WhyNotMe40!

Well, we did have a party on a hill planned in one thread, didn't we?
None of you lightweights turned up!
We should do another one before the weather turns - maybe we should have a bonfire campfire, and toast smores and maybe effigies of aged posters people we don't like.

I have kindling leftover from last weekend’s camping trip! And plenty of fire lighters.

@NeurotrashWarrior

Loving your work *@WhyNotMe40*!

Thanks!

About to sign off now though so if someone else could babysit it for a bit, that would be grand?

I have a lot of gin and some big marshmallows

We can all chip in @WhyNotMe40!

It can be quite stressful and time-consuming, starting a thread, can't it?

I'm just about to start an Etsy shop selling sweary cross stitch patterns. It would be dreadful if I was deemed to be bringing the profession into disrepute and got the sack, therefore vastly reducing my risk of becoming infected with Covid.

With respect to playdoh/ plasticine
Could you make your own playdoh and include something in it that kills viruses but not children. ( Not sure but maybe washing up liquid or tea tree oil or something?)

@StaffAssociationRepresentative

I couldn't teach primary. I just don't have the patience with all the toilet trips, he said she did squabbles, needy parents wanting 'a quick word' and now the play-dough plasticine - yuk!

Primary (KS1) here. The needy parents comment made me snort with recognition. My school has always had a ridiculously 'open door' policy. Now, on the bright side, what a terrible shame that our parents are no longer allowed on site to ask ludicrous things / hunt for lost stuff / hover about making it worse...

I have very much enjoyed reading this thread even though I have been a casual bystander more than an active participant.

All I can say regarding plasticine is no. Don't do it. 🤢

We made a LOT of salt dough back in June/ July. Cheap, does the job and if they lick / eat / press filthy fingernails into it, it won't get used by anyone else....

(And also, however lovely it may look, never, never eat anything baked at home brought in by a child...)

[quote Piggywaspushed]Some amusing stuff about the hit by a bus crap here:

twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1297887660158136321[/quote]
I was sort of hoping the PHE would troll the government by releasing the number of people who tested positive for covid and then died getting hit by a bus when they changed the numbers.

That's just reminded me of the good old ASDAN days. I had the special English group who I adored, and they had ASDAN on a Friday before me last thing. They would often bake and bring me treats. Since half of them had permanent dirt under their nails from farming or "mechanicking" and one of them had a permanently drippy nose, I'd "take them home" to enjoy later.

I’ve just done 50 laps of a pool with limited numbers. My non teaching friend must be so sick of me. Eg we are blocked from entering leisure centre (for which we’ve had to pre book a 45 minute swimming slot and are not allowed to use lockers or showers) because we are not allowed to even enter the building till 5 minutes before we’re allowed in the pool. Cue me going on about how I’ll be rammed into a 4x4 room with 30 kids next week.

I’m sure I did similar when we went for lunch the other week

I must stop. Non teaching friends are essential to my sanity but it’s so bizarre the hoops we have to jump through to swim in a chlorinated pool with 10 other adults compared to my work reality next week.

Going for lunch tomorrow and swimming again on Wednesday. Fitting things in before I’m told it’s my moral obligation to only leave the house for work.

This is definitely not the year to eat the cookies your child made at nursery. Terrifying at the best of times

I was always brutally honest with DS. I applauded his efforts in Food Tech but the only one who would be eating the results would be him, if he wanted to.

I’m surprised “don’t eat food brought in by anyone else, or unwrapped goods given by parents” hasn’t made it onto RAs. The amount of MrsX-produced cake was unreal last term, as well as those Germ Farm mini flapjack plastic containers. 🤮

I am meeting my friend for a coffee and taking the kids to a nice secret spot for river swimming. Going to cram in a visit to my dad too because won't see him once we are back. He is 85 and diabetic with 2 heart shunts. (He and my mum divorced when I was 5 - he's been through 3 wives since- i think he's pretty tough!) Then I promised the kids we would go to a beach. I am weirdly thinking about Xmas because usually my sister has mum to give me a break so I need to really think of something there.

I never eat anything my 6's bring in. When you've kept three of them in for "Dirty moustache" you don't want to get anywhere near them let alone eat anything (it's the charming habit of wiping your finger in your butt crack then immediately wiping it under your friends nose. Year 6 are disgusting).

Oh dear god. That's grim.

Watching C4 news to restore my sanity.

Well, this is reassuring...

Are you disappointed there, Piggy?

That primary school in NI which has only got one pupil per double table? And a secondary where they're meeting their Education Minister all sitting miles apart? How are they managing any of these things?

Yes! NI does have different rules but I don't get how they are achieving what we saw.

They always go to such sparkly clean schools too.

That said, my school has been used twice on telly and I barely bloody recognised it.

You have made me laugh tonight, thank you. I've gone through the whole of primary as a 1:1 and every year group is as mucky and vile as Reception really. By the time they are in year 5 and 6 they absolutely reek after PE and the little ones are just incontinent from every orifice. I had one a few years ago who liked to cough in my face then pick his nose, lick off half the contents of his finger and wipe the rest on me somewhere (on clothes if it was a good day) and say "I done sharing"......