The Twentieth Republic - all back and its time to bubble bubble ...

[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, especially if you have not used the hand gel. Close the door quietly on your way out and put your mask on.

Zones and bubbles where I am. Lots of barriers and segregated outside space, entrances etc. Year groups can do pair discussion etc, though all desks forward facing and teachers not supposed to circulate. I have some crazy distance to cover between lessons. Canteen closed.

I taught my first actual maths lesson today. Doing the register and get to the one child who's not there and I get a chorus of "X isn't coming back". Of course at that point I stupidly asked why, and the reason this child isn't coming back makes me think we should have been allowed to insist on vulnerable children coming to school over lockdown rather than just offering it. The child is ok, but if they'd been in school this reason for not coming back to school wouldn't have existed. Sorry that's all so vague, but I obviously can't say what the reason is. I wish I'd been told about it before the class told me!!!!

It's ok though, I've got a replacement in the same class arriving on Monday. New child has a whole different set of issues for me to get to grips with.

Year 10 and 11 are currently the least likely to observe any social distancing at all. They were wandering around all over the place at break and lunch, rather than staying in their outside "bubble zones". That's a stark contrast to year 8 and 9 who stood outside in their zones getting wet because they hadn't been told it was wet break and they thought they weren't allowed inside. It was torrential!!!! They were soaked to the skin before we noticed that they hadn't come in to their wet break zones. Poor souls.

Hugs Angelina.

Are there no automated hand gel dispensers. They didnt seem that expensive on amazon. And allows for more distancing.
Clean hands otherwise but teachers close to all students.
I must have been within 1m of loads today and since dc back at school.
Just too many people. I back away from people talking to me as they get closer.
If the kics are wearing masks can more go in the toilets.
Just feels like everying else is to avoid the masks. (But nothing else really works).
They just havent changed anything for airborne. As they shouldnt all be in a canteen (though i see some are eating outside).

I set a year 7 class some homework today (for next Fri), one of them had submitted before 4pm. Another has included 'I 💛 Science' on his poster.

They might save my sanity.

I set up a test assignment in Teams today to demo something. It was for a class I've never met. Some of them read it and one marked it complete. They aren't back until Tuesday!!!

From my local news tonight. Wonder how many times this will happen but won’t make national headlines?

www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2020/09/04/100-pupils-told-to-self-isolate-after-coronavirus-case-at-staffordshire-school/

Are there no automated hand gel dispensers. They didnt seem that expensive on amazon. And allows for more distancing.

Haha. Of course not!. For one thing, they enter through an external door to each (primary) classroom, and everywhere's glass, so nowhere to fix one. It's no bother to stand there and squirt.
But more to the point is that the HT's view is that everything's fine as long as we're within one bubble. (Two parallel classes of 30 count as one bubble, even though they only really mix at breaks, playing outside in the same area). So, sharing equipment, getting up close, even singing is allowed, according to her.
This has contributed to my stress at being back at school - trying to work out what my OWN boundaries are. And reading of others' schools who are doing much more, and conversely much less.
How come some of you can't even hand out paper directly, or mark books? Apparently, it's fine to do so in my place! How does Covid know the difference?
And we have to quarantine reading books that have come from home for 72 hours, but then have to take in and check their planners each day for messages as parents aren't allowed on site. Those planners also come from home. My head is exploding.

My year 7 seemed older and more confident than usual as someone else noted on here. They were very good though.

I have really taken on board what primary school teachers on here have said about expectations and I chatted to this group and said sometimes we underestimate you guys but I know you do tons of good work in year 6 so I know you can do me a lovely paragraph explaining this. They told me they had to write “whole pages”! at primary

This thread has been very helpful.

Sorry to those who are stressed and upset. I don’t mean to sound glib but I really expected things to be much worse.

It's entirely reasonable that Yr 7 teachers jolly them along a bit when they arrive - it's all very different after all, but the kids do seem to report (when they come back to visit us) that the work is "easy" and a repeat of what they've already done. Probably needs repeating (and was maybe inappropriate for Yr 6 in the first place but that's not our fault; we have to teach it) and you are presumably taking kids from a wide range of schools with different approaches.
But we have very high expectations of our Yr 6s, in terms of behaviour and maturity - we're tough on them! That must add to the culture-shock for them the following year.

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/04/teachers-tell-parents-in-england-to-ignore-baseless-letters-on-face-masks

I'm starting by stating that I have had a large gin and half a bottle of red wine...

SD hugs to those with wanky SLT. We only had y7 and new y12s in today so it was ok. Bubbles seem well-thought out and reasonable to keep separate. My line manager/HoD, who after 18 years of working together is now a good friend (only the 2 of us teaching classes in this dept.) is petrified of catching it. No tea/coffee facilities or water fountains so we need to bring in flasks and water bottles. Most staff only paying token regard to SD, which does worry me, but now I'm one of the older ones.

As a Head of House, I volunteered to do a school tour with my newbie y7s and their tutor who is also new to the school. It was quite fun - I teach or know quite a lot of siblings. One deeply irritating child got right on my wick who was "sad that there were no SATs".

Teams has still not updated all my teaching groups, so the start of the week could be fun. Apparently it can take up to 96 hours to sort out. I am meant to set homework on Monday using Teams, so this might be quite fun (not).

Plans for the weekend include much sanitising from within in the form of more gin & wine. I do a little bit of instrumental teaching and one of my wonderful students had a grade 8 exam cancelled in March. The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music have introduced adapted exams for grades 6-8 so she decided to give it a go in August. We recorded all the work SD at her house and uploaded it, and found out 8 days later that she had a high merit. She is delighted, and her mum gave me a litre of very expensive-looking gin as a thank you. Not being a fatalist or anything, but in case anything happens to me, it would be terrible to leave undrunk gin, so I intend to do my best to neck the lot...!

My classroom is next to the kitchen. Not only does this mean I have to listen to their tinny radio blaring out through open doors before school, but also the banging and crashing as they set up for lunch during the mid-morning session.
I then have the "slop" bin right outside my door, which means food on the floor which is then trodden through onto my carpets.
But now, on a Friday afternoon, they are deep-cleaning the whole area. This is a good thing I suppose, but it involves loud drilly, throbby machines, more banging and crashing as they upturn metal containers and bins outside the windows and loud conversations.

Bloody hell I've earned this wine tonight.

I didn't see any of the ISage but these are apparently the key points made.

Gaslighting I referred to earlier on Radio 4 more or less was around the PHE report I think, not recognising risk to staff and also that both cases and numbers in schools were very much less than in sept.

They acknowledged it was mostly primary schools. However they were clear it was split into over 10s and under 10s. Obviously they forget Y5 and 6 is in primary.

Yes @NeurotrashWarrior the person on More or Less was good but I was so annoyed that the piece ended without them asking her "And what do you think will happen this term, with all children back in full classrooms?", as I'd have been very interested to hear her answer!

I love that iSage appear to only have a 1980s typewriter to their name....

Am coming to the realisation that, just because it's in the RA doesn't mean people are going to do it - even things like "wipes will be provided at X location". Did none of SLT think that maybe someone needed to be tasked with actually obtaining the wipes and putting them at X? No one? OK......

There's a terror in our slt's eyes so yes there's definitely an organisation at our place; they've got a couple of cleaners working all day now. Fairly onit. Ask and you get. And we've got little bottles to add to our already very weighty lanyards! (Keys, visual flip book things, id etc)

But I can well Imagine the places I've worked where it wouldn't be like that. In fact, our own school a number of years ago...! A few fuck ups led to much slicker management.

Our issue is that the classes with pupils who are most needy cannot have the door left open for ventilation, staff and kids cannot SD at all and the children are getting less stimulation than they're used to with equipment and swimming etc.

Our corridors in some buildings are now impassable in lessons because the support assistants are sitting in the corridors.... it's insanity.

sanitising from within in the form of more gin & wine

Yes, I'll be doing that too.

Am coming to the realisation that, just because it's in the RA doesn't mean people are going to do it - even things like "wipes will be provided at X location". Did none of SLT think that maybe someone needed to be tasked with actually obtaining the wipes and putting them at X? No one? OK......

Or that having Y10 and 11 zones one above the other would result in them all converging on the staircase at the end of the day. Or that it makes no sense to quarantine text books bit not ex books. Or that we can't quarantine said text books if we don't have enough for the next class or a photocopying budget ...

My mind is totally boggling.

We aren’t allowing assemblies for year groups BUT are making whole year groups stay in a canteen area (smaller and less ventilated) for a whole 30 minute break each day... where presumably they will also not be sat in rows facing on direction?!?

@CallmeAngelina

We're sharing maths concrete resources and reading books with children in our bubble. We're taking any jointly used resources in on Fridays, and putting them out/making them available to someone else by Monday after 'quarantine'. Children in each bubble are not socially distancing, there isn't room. The adults aren't really socially distancing either. It's impossible to teach 7 year olds from 2m away, and it's also impossible to do any interesting work that keeps them engaged just by standing at the front. Not a chance.

I'm trying to keep it all quite straight forward, and away as much as possible, but it's not very fun in terms of teaching to be honest.

Yes, I was a bit gobsmacked listening to R4 tonight. Got in the car to leave school as the bit about the PHE report was on and it was so much just repeating the govt propaganda about teaching passing it on, not kids (the report itself doesn't even say that - there's barely any difference in the - tiny sample group - figures) that it just didn't seem like the usual, sober, scientific More or Less.

How long before the complaints that this is damaging for kids' mental health (which it is) start? Is blended learning starting to look like the kinder option yet?! Just imagine - they could be in two days per week each with none of this shit.

[quote motherrunner]From my local news tonight. Wonder how many times this will happen but won’t make national headlines?

www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2020/09/04/100-pupils-told-to-self-isolate-after-coronavirus-case-at-staffordshire-school/[/quote]
I do feel like the national media is being oddly quiet. I wonder if they've been silenced somehow

More or less proper pissed me off with the chat about 32 outbreaks in education settings. I was screaming at the radio THIS WAS WITH BARELY ANY CHILDREN IN!

I'll see if they've had any tweets about it because that really was poor.

@Mistressiggi

Your school can't reopen without a risk assessment, and if the risk assessment isn't being followed this needs to be escalated. Union, who can take to whoever is in charge of the school (beyond the HT) if no improvement from the HT. Do you have some kind of H&S committee in your schools? What's that law we can all invoke if our working conditions are simply not safe?

I believe from something our SLT said that the Covid risk assessment is now one of those things that MUST be published on school website. Like the ofsted report and some policies