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

Health warning: an opinion piece by dr max pemberton (whoever gets is) in the Mail will infuriate you. Avoid.

@tadjennyp sorry to hear about your mum.

Don’t worry @NeurotrashWarrior I will be straight on the local news.

I am pretty desperate for it not to be Covid because DD would miss her first day of reception and I would miss the first two days of term.

It is going to be shit show once term starts!

@CallmeAngelina

Health warning: an opinion piece by dr max pemberton (whoever gets is) in the Mail will infuriate you. Avoid.

He's an NHS psychiatrist. Politically, he's an odd one. He holds beliefs and ideals that are more commonly seen on the left but, in his journalism, he writes exclusively for right-wing media.

Well, he's rolled out all the usual stuff of children needing school and no child ever having passed it on to a teacher and so forth.

From the DM article
“If, because of the machinations of the unions, all school-age children are not back in the classroom next month, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson will undoubtedly go and they can claim his scalp.”

Is there even a sniff of a hint that schools might not go back anywhere apart from the Daily Mail?

They’re acting as if a massive battle is raging and the opening is on a knife edge.

Machinations? What's that...a few emails to members with a checklist of what to look out for? Hmmm.

@CallmeAngelina

I had to read it (sorry!) 😂
His premise is fine: the time away from school and social contact will have an impact on mental wellbeing. I don't disagree. But his conclusions lack a clear evidence base. To suggest that all children have had an environment that has lacked stimulation is ridiculous. I know loads of kids who have used this time to start learning a new language, built things with parents (sheds, greenhouses, guinea pig huts), learnt about plants and gardening, learnt how to cook, etc.

Unfortunately, he then goes on to use some stock lines that have already been refuted and/or disproven.

That article is such bollocks.

Demands about teacher safety and working practices are a smokescreen; this is brazen politicisation of a crisis, in which children very definitely aren't being put first.

This really pissed me off. How can having worries (notice though, it’s ‘demands‘, not worries) about workplace safety be ok for other people but not for us??

I expect this is going to ramp up massively over the next week as they roll out one ‘expert’ after another to say schools are safe, children are being let down and teachers and unions are fucking lazy.

This has been the most stressful holiday I have ever had, I think (y13 and y11s in the house aside)-I am so cross with the media for peddling such lies, T4T for peddling even more and the government for allowing the mess (all 31 points of mess) in the first place.

@noblegiraffe
Is there even a sniff of a hint that schools might not go back anywhere apart from the Daily Mail?

If the unions are planning to make any suggestion or play that schools remain closed, they're being incredibly subtle about it. So subtle, in fact, that none of their members have any idea about such a stance.

Homeopathic school blocking plans.

Undetectable by science and yet incredibly strong and effective.

@noblegiraffe

Homeopathic school blocking plans.

Undetectable by science and yet incredibly strong and effective.

I had to pull myself away from a twitter thread rabbit hole about the school in Bletchley where it's compulsory to wear a mask or visor inside school. Apparently, the picture of a child with a small piece of thin cloth on his face was 'too much' for the people in this twitter thread and that child was absolutely being abused by his parents and his school. There were people on this echo chamber thread stating that it definitely was child abuse to wear a mask.

I hope that those people never speak to someone who has suffered actual abuse in their childhood and try to compare wearing a thin bit of cloth to the hell that survivors of abuse have endured. It's disgusting.

Times had a back to school thing today : picture of a teenage girl in a mask. FFS.

How many people with school age children actually read the DM?

I am really down today. I’m so tired and my throat is really sore. Everyone is eating lunch in their own classrooms so there’s no adult interaction and I’m so worried about infecting my friends and family. I feel like Typhoid Mary.

@DollyMixtureLulus

I am really down today. I’m so tired and my throat is really sore. Everyone is eating lunch in their own classrooms so there’s no adult interaction and I’m so worried about infecting my friends and family. I feel like Typhoid Mary.

Be kind to yourself today Dolly-you have every right to feel the way that you do (I feel the same-especially about the lunch scenario!) and I hope your throat feels better soon.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-53869028
Don't know how to do clicky link
Reduced assessment next year in NI

Apparently I do know how to do a clicky link

dolly.

I was told there might be a zoom lunch thing happening at school to tackle loneliness. I can't decide if that's worse though...

At least we work in teams of 3-4 and so I do see some adults. Which is a risk in itself of course.

Iam my 2 year old throws a tantrum if he can't wear a mask when I am...

To counter the Daily Mail, here is Ian Dunt:

“If we can't have ethics, we are least entitled to a bit of class. Politicians who attempt to deceive the public will obviously lose our admiration, but it would be nice if they could bring a little style and accomplishment to doing so.

And yet that too is now a kind of heritage brand, a rose-tinted memory of better days - of Iraq war dossiers and expenses claims. We look back fondly at the era in which politicians lied to us effectively, and with a base level of subtlety. Today, we have the kind of deception which could be uncovered by a child before it was capable of walking.

Gavin Williamson is a case in point.”

www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2020/08/21/week-in-review-we-deserve-a-better-class-of-scoundrel

Sorry you are down today dolly

I’ll bet it’s awful. People tend to become teachers because they like human interaction. My Dh could happily go all day without speak to another person, it would drive me crackers.
Be kind to yourself

noble yes I do follow Clarissa Grandi, her stuff is truly beautiful. Also Samira Mian on YouTube does fabulous tutorials on amazing Islamic geometric designs.

Jenny I'm so sorry to hear about your mum 💐 Take care of yourself, and ask for help/support when you need it.

@Iamnotthe1 - I suspect U4T have rallied their supporters to decry how awful children wearing masks is.

They do a lot of that - posting a link one person has found then asking everyone to pile on and say how awful it is. It gives a very skewed view imo.

BRTUS do not, as far as I can see, rally the troops in the same way.