The Twenty-third Republic - school attendance not great - half term to be renamed circuit break?

[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-

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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

@minisoksmakehardwork if the windows are shut in any classroom I arrive at I'm not going in. I've already refused to go into one room as no wipes. They arrived pretty sharpish when SLT realised they'd have to teach class. I'm not making myself popular but I don't care.

I open all the windows... teachers often seem to be busy getting kids sorted into their seating plan etc.

What concerns me is I'm opening windows in classes that have just been vacated! But I have decided if I'm not in the room at that time, it's not for me to worry about. And I happily override anyone who thinks about closing them by reminding students when they complain, that the windows being open is part of our current risk assessment.

What concerns me is I'm opening windows in classes that have just been vacated

This is happening at my school too.

Also I’m kind of jealous of other teachers. In my school kids are wearing masks in corridors but taking them off in class.
I met up with other NQTs who were discussing how hard it is to hear the kids in masks. In their schools the kids are masked up in class and the teachers wear visors.

I came away feeling very much at risk.

I’ve been lurking on these threads since they started but I’m hoping I can have the moan that I can’t have a work.
We’re a small school and we’ve had daily absences of 7+ of staff. We aren’t being told if students are off due to positive tests.
We’re being used cover instead of staff being bought in which means that getting work done is hard.
We’ve been threatened with contract revision if we complain about anything.
Teachers aren’t following the risk assessment and aren’t leaving doors and windows open.
Year 11 don’t want to work and every other year has forgotten how.
I just want to cry and that’s been my state since Tuesday 🙁.

I shut windows in my room on Friday. Sorry. The kids were whining and the blinds were banging incessantly.

I am on to the feeling fatalistic stage about spread in schools tbh.

And some bastard stole my special hypo allergenic hand sanitiser.

I am very sympathetic to cold children, I feel the cold horribly myself. It’s already under 5 degrees in the morning in Scotland.

Just in case anyone is deeply suspicious of me, I feel the need to point out this is the room with windows.

The room with no windows still exists, and I still teach in it 60% of the time!

That sounds awful, Herdy.
I've been keeping an eye on the absence codes and comments on SIMs and agree that there's some fudging going on.
One child has been away for a week with "a headache," (when does a headache last for a week?) but returned yesterday with a hacking cough. Probably not Covid, but nonetheless, the parents didn't report that as being the reason for absence. And I later found that child close up with another, each blowing in the other's face (as a 'joke!').

@minisoksmakehardwork

U4T are going to use NEU's own advice and recommendations about minimum classroom temperatures in order to fight the issue of windows being open through winter.

Surely that will just result in schools closing?

We're getting a lot of x in the register at the moment - and the office are run ragged checking that Jonny who is off with a cough doesn't have siblings who are in.
We've been given the go ahead to allow coats in the classroom - but no electric blankets. Sometimes our HT seems almost human!

Also lots of children are desperately ill with colds for a day and then are coming back. No tests, no checking with a doctor. People are just assuming it’ll all be fine.

@Piggywaspushed

I shut windows in my room on Friday. Sorry. The kids were whining and the blinds were banging incessantly.

I am on to the feeling fatalistic stage about spread in schools tbh.

And some bastard stole my special hypo allergenic hand sanitiser.

Piggy - I feel the same. I almost want to catch it now and just get it over with as I feel it's inevitable. I'm drinking too much and just feel hopeless. Sorry about your hand sanitizer.

@MrsHamlet

We're getting a lot of x in the register at the moment - and the office are run ragged checking that Jonny who is off with a cough doesn't have siblings who are in. We've been given the go ahead to allow coats in the classroom - but no electric blankets. Sometimes our HT seems almost human!

Same here with the Xs but we never know if they've even been tested.. probably not.

X , as I discovered , is also a code we use in sixth form for when a teacher cancels a lesson! That confused the hell out of me on Friday when three kids turned up who were marked X for the previous lesson!

It feels a bit like going mad when seeing things like groups being broken up by the police for being more than 6, people in parks or on beaches being castigated on social media for not following the rules because it's SO DANGEROUS and yet it being our normal day-to-day.

I saw a thing about how awful it was that there were large groups of people outside a McDonalds and the staff should do more to break them up. From the photos it was obviously a bunch of sixth formers with school bags looking exactly like they look in school.

Am I supposed to be worried when I see kids grouped like that? Am I supposed to think it's fine? Because fine or not fine based on where exactly they're standing isn't making any sense.

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/26/our-first-case-of-covid-parents-are-hounding-me-staff-are-afraid-diary-of-a-headteachers-week?CMP=share_btn_tw

I picked up terribly sensible DS from school yesterday and pointed out he was not SD with his mates outside the school. He was non plussed that I thought he would.

That’s the way I feel too. Tnere are more safety precautions in the Apple store than my classroom.

@Piggywaspushed

I picked up terribly sensible DS from school yesterday and pointed out he was not SD with his mates outside the school. He was non plussed that I thought he would.

Don't blame him. I've asked students to separate at breaktime, and they look at me as if I'm mad - after all they are crammed into classrooms together, and then I ask them to separate when outside. They have a point.

[quote mumsneedwine]@minisoksmakehardwork if the windows are shut in any classroom I arrive at I'm not going in. I've already refused to go into one room as no wipes. They arrived pretty sharpish when SLT realised they'd have to teach class. I'm not making myself popular but I don't care. [/quote]
I'm going to refuse too. Us4Them can go fuck themselves if they think teachers are going to dance to their tune on this one.

@SaltyAndFresh I refused last week. Form tutor then told all of class to open windows 🤦‍♀️ Why are other staff so blasé about it all?!

I said to a colleague yesterday that I can see the complaints from parents (esp in primary) could actually lead to schools closing:

So many parents raise the issue of the freezing nature of classrooms with windows wide open in winter: petitions, letters to Heads/LA/MPs etc, some even keep their kids off because of it

• increasing numbers of teachers off - perhaps a few get really, really ill, so that the media actually take notice

• a never ending merry-go-round of year groups isolating

=> Gav and Boris give up!

Maybe?

I think blended learning will be brought in before a blanket closure.

I'm also going mad at the horror at how many uni students are isolating. Way more kids than that are isolating. Why aren't the numbers being published?

One of the rooms I teach in was ludicrously cold with the wind blowing through yesterday. Luckily we can have hot drinks at our desks and it’s also fine for us to wear hoodies/wrap up in massive scarves in the classroom!

However the downside of a more casual workplace is that it’s normal for students to hang out in classrooms at lunch/break. We loosely supervise (as in chuck out if it gets rowdy/messy, and we don’t really like students from outside the department in our building), and on the whole it’s really nice that they feel safe and at home in our area, but when they’ve shut all the windows and are all bunched up together, it frightens me. So I’ve been throwing them out if there’s more than six or so together. Although if there were 10, sitting at computers working I wouldn’t care. It’s that they basically sit in each other’s laps! And these are aged 17-19, not even first years.