The Eighteenth Republic - More U Turns On The Horizon? - INSET Days and travel problems

[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.

No DfE muppets allowed

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

@Nellodee

It might have been me who mentioned the stylus pad. I'm taking my daughter's in to school with me today and just checking how simple it is to plug and play and checking it gets on with the smart board software we have. I'll report back later.

My stylus pad works with all Microsoft applications but unfortunately not with SMART software. If we stay in school I don't need to convert my lessons from .notebook files but last term I converted everything to Powerpoint (cries at the memory). If you are using it with Powerpoint, I found that it works much better with slides in widescreen format - whenever I tried with a presentation in standard format, I would get lots of horizontal lines appearing across the slide when I tried to write anything!

Re: the European poster, noble sussed her and told her to bigger off back to FB. I had a look at U4T and there was a rallying cry to spread the word about that fucking "no case anywhere in the world" assertion. Bingo! Up pops our friend on MN.

@HedyPrism

That ToysRUs thread is hilarious. I must thank *@noblegiraffe* though: I found your assertion that all new teachers are a bit shit strangely reassuring

You’re welcome! MN has this strange idea that teaching isn’t a skill that you need to learn or practice to get better at. Teachers know otherwise!

@CallmeAngelina

Re: the European poster, noble sussed her and told her to bigger off back to FB. I had a look at U4T and there was a rallying cry to spread the word about that fucking "no case anywhere in the world" assertion. Bingo! Up pops our friend on MN.

Hah I thought the troops had been rallied!

I wonder what they did to get banned before.

twitter.com/g_gosden/status/1298222344226451456?s=21

Some stats from Germany

Talking of misinformation, The Times today has a spread on what schools will do and look like:

Point number one 'all schools will be temperature checking' : ermmm no
Number two : an example forma sixth from college doing part home learning...ermm no

Number three : their picture of a graphic of a classroom with Perspex dividers, about 15 kids sat at single desks and sneeze screens. WTAF!? Does ANYONE know of a school doing this in England??

I was having a nice dig on the European one. Just about to suss out her previous incarnation via my usual methods and poof ... off she popped.

That Woolhouse stuff should be retracted.

Greg Jenner on Twitter:

Might have Covid. Probably just a cold. Using the government website to get a test at my nearest centre. The website tells me my nearest test centre is Leicester. I live in Surrey

The government website for Covid testing is down, the phone lines unable to help. You can’t book directly with a local test centre. I can wait for it to be fixed or order a HomeKit which won’t give me results until possibly Monday. Not exactly “world beating”

Spoke to the people at 119 who said the government website is broken but hopefully will be fixed today. Local test centres exist but I can’t book in, so I’m opting for a home test which takes a bit longer

Just spoke to someone who said it will take 4 days not including the weekend

Bodes well for absences in the first few weeks of term!

Also... another one in the eye for U4T :

children's behaviour at home improved in lcokdown and they had fewer tantrums. Especially boys.

Wtf piggy aren’t the Times supposed to employ journalists not imaginarians?

Has anyone seen the thread in which a parent has an ill child and is essentially asking people to tell her that she can send the kid into school today.

Unbelievable! I am so disillusioned with people at the moment.

Yep, I used the 'keyworkers' site to try to book one (because I know for a fact there is one in my city and the normal system was sending me an hour away) and it said my closest one is Manchester (I'm south of Birmingham).

My home test should come today, but just had the email saying 2-4 days turn around time.

It's going to be chaos.

On a related note, setting cover is going to be a nightmare, we normally do 'page x of the textbook' stuff because our IT system is so slow the cover teacher will probably need 45 mins to log on, but our textbooks will need 72 hour quarantine after each use! We don't have enough at the best of times.

I may actually complain to them. Not sure how to.

Tulip Siddiqi has just been on. Spoke much sense until she said teachers don't want them in classrooms :may be true Tulip, but not because...students can socially distance in the classrooms. Who's going to tell her?!

On a related note, setting cover is going to be a nightmare, we normally do 'page x of the textbook' stuff because our IT system is so slow the cover teacher will probably need 45 mins to log on, but our textbooks will need 72 hour quarantine after each use! We don't have enough at the best of times

Oh shit. Cover.

I’ve never set cover before. Oh bollocks, this years going to be hard.

Read this?

:00
Face coverings in schools a 'slippery slope' - Tory MP
Requiring pupils to wear face coverings in schools is a "slippery slope", says Conservative MP Huw Merriman.

The MP for Bexhill and Battle told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he disagreed with the move because "we need to send the message out that our schools are safe with the measures that they've been taking and will be taking".

"Anything that sends a message out that it's not safe in the corridor means that it can't be safe in the classroom and we're on a slippery slope," he said.

Yes, well he's right...

They are having to acknowledge aren't they that teenagers spread...

In the meantime, a senior Tory MP called the government a 'shitshow'

Thanks @DreamingofBrie 😊

motherrunner I never fail to be shocked and disgusted by their comments.

@Piggywaspushed

In the meantime, a senior Tory MP called the government a 'shitshow'

I hope that makes BBC headline. With maybe a 💩 image.

Does anyone know why the WHO has suggested 12+ when the South Korean study said 10+?

I'm hoping for some new bit of reassuring research as I'll have over 30 ten/eleven year olds in my room. No screens, no masks, no visors and, after trying to rearrange my classroom in all sorts of ways, no distance over a metre.

@WhenSheWasBad don't fret over cover. Whatever you set will be fucked up. I once set an essay for a y11 class a few weeks before their exam. The cover teacher thought it looked hard and took them to his room to tidy it.

The whole announcement yesterday puts middle schools in yet another pickle.

@WhenSheWasBad

Don't worry, your school will have a preferred system, and the other teachers will be able to show you the sort of thing that gets set.

You'll probably have some training days as part of your NQT anyway so you'd have plenty of advance notice for setting cover for those. Ask your mentor to have a look over your plans for that and you'll get a good idea of what's expected.

[quote MrsHamlet]@WhenSheWasBad don't fret over cover. Whatever you set will be fucked up. I once set an essay for a y11 class a few weeks before their exam. The cover teacher thought it looked hard and took them to his room to tidy it.[/quote]
😂

I once came back to find Year 7 had done the wrong page of the textbook, on a totally different topic they were not ready for.

None of them had dared correct the cover teacher.

I love getting Art cover - shut up and draw this.