The Twenty-second Republic - the DfE have no idea, Gav MIA, bubbles in and out

[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

@salty, I've found with the ones I made, I needed to adjust the depth on the pattern slightly, only by a cm at the bottom but it made all the difference. I'm between the adult women and men's sizing it appears. That and elastic which is neither too short or too long (although too long is more comfortable than the other). I've given up putting noes wires in as they actually get in the way of my glasses.

This weekend i challenges myself to make a mask with clear window for use in our staff room. We have a deaf colleague who lip reads and I'm not keen on keep removing my mask to talk to them. It took me a couple of goes but I managed to make one by adapting my usual shaped pattern. I just cannot get on with making pleated ones. They are too fiddly.

Sitting up late watching the news. Have that sense of something being about to happen, though I don't know what that something is! I know it won't involve schools shutting though.

Thanks re the mask tips.

Morning all. Some sort of briefing by Whitty and Valance today? I'm at home today.

Does anyone else now just feel resigned to this hell? I find I can't employ any other feeling as it's too traumatic. Months of being told you're vulnerable to this thing (not ECV) and now being thrown into a melting pot of contacts.

Apart from not mingling with school wide staff, I'm in different rooms with different TAs each day as classes have more staff . We try to SD but it's not that easy with the kind of dynamic happy chaos we can have. Bar tonnes of hand washing hygiene and sprays there's nothing to stop the spread by air. Especially as it gets colder. All our positive cases are in the upper school, where I teach too.

there's nothing to stop the spread by air.

This will be schools' undoing. It seems ridiculous to be cleaning tables six times a day while the virus is in the air we breathe without masks.

That's what I mean.

I feel numb and like a white washed wall with a few cracks in on.

Occasionally screaming anxiety seeps through those cracks.

Mostly it's sunny fake whitewash. With a few patches of purple anger in the shadows.

It's like I simply can't allow my actual feelings to come through and I don't really like it,

I am feeling anxious today : partly because I have a full day; I have a sore throat and can't get out of the back of my heads the concern that I spent time with my friend even though it was last Tuesday. I keep thinking what if I gave it to her in fact? What is this occasional irritating cough isn't seasonal allergy? And then I peer at a few other threads and see the Covid nutters are real people and one of their targets is schools. And then the anxious working parents who won't even countenance anything other than full time school. And then the exceptionalists who bang on about their schools and their area. Well, newsflash NIMBYs : no cases in my school and only one in any school in the county until yesterday and they both involve my network! FFS!

I am annoyed that this briefing is at 11 when teaching!

Do you think they will mandate face masks in schools?

to everyone today.
A meme just popped up on my FB, along the lines of ‘Replaceable at work, not replaceable at home’. So I’m very much concentrating on that and sticking to what feeble procedures they have allowed us. 2m distance has sort of drifted in my school, plus I’ve seen clear breaches of the Rule of 6 over the weekend on FB too. I’ve deleted those colleagues because I’m not a snitch or a spy, but it’s become very clear to me that no, we are not ‘all in this together’. So I have to do what I can.

Masks maybe in secondary? Even Yr6 perhaps? Who knows. None of this seems logic driven.

Morning.

Week 4 of 8 here. I have my only really short day with no trapped time today and finish teaching at 1.50pm. I’m not going to wait around till 3.30 for subject meeting to start. I’m 0.4 and will stay every week 1. Going to try to avoid running into hod so I don’t get pressured to stay.

Might have had a glass of wine too many at our family meal of 6 in parents garden so I’m glad I only need to do a load of printing and teach a couple of lessons.

Good luck everyone. Sorry to those not being updated think I said before that we get a daily email

@SaltyAndFresh - rumour has it that our school are going to be allowed to wear coats in class over winter, so we can keep the windows open.

I am not always popular with the students because as soon as I enter a room, I open all the windows I can reach! Tough titties if they don't like the breeze. They can out a jumper on under their blazer.

What's quite scary is I seem to do this every single lesson unless I'm in a room I have already been in.

Ours has a jumper as part of the uniform that no-one ever wears, so perhaps they will now!

I'm not going in. I keep checking my temp and it wavers is as high as 38.1, and I have a cough. I bet it's nothing but I can't take the chance.

That iis worrying mini. Doors and windows open are the only useful mitigation we’ve got really. I’ll be letting them wear coats if they’re cold but the windows are staying open.

I'm going to let them wear coats if they get cold too. But my windows stay open!!! And the door (right at the end of the corridor next to an open fire exit). The twice a week that someone else uses my classroom, they close the windows!!!! I hate it. They're paranoid about cleaning all the desks, but close the windows so there's no ventilation. I could cry.

Email and remind them of the rules MsDragon.

Good decision, Salty, hope you can get a test quickly.

Hope it's a quick, easy and negative process for you, Salty. Difficult for us not to soldier on if ill but that's the way it has to be now.

Good idea Salty.

Fingered crossed for you.

If they have a circuit break lockdown but keep schools open, that’s still going to be 8 odd million kids plus thousands and thousands of school staff (and parents) moving around the country and spending hours a day together in small rooms?!

Lucky schools have magic force fields, I guess!

I'm no electrician but that doesn't sound much like a circuit break to me!!

Not to mention all the service providers - deliveries, bus drivers, kitchen staff, cleaners, office staff, groundsmen etc... Plus all the parents out and about chatting on the school run and "just" popping into shops for sweets in the way home.

Plus students returning to universities

I know I shouldn't MN during a lesson but I have two kids sat here coughing coughing coughing!!

No idea what to do!!

Can you send them to someone???

Call slt?

One is beautifully isolated in the room and miles away from me. Other is at front, next to a delightful boy and coughing into his hand...