The Twenty Fourth Republic - conditions not great and are teachers becoming modern day lepers?

[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 yo

@noblegiraffe

Why is Jenrick on talking about schools? Where is Gav?!

Who even knows! Looks like it's Jenricks turn this Sunday.

I needed to hear that Noble, thank you. I literally forgot the expanding foam (thanks MrsH) nature of the job somehow.

It's ridiculous that I spent hours on a set of year 7 books yesterday

I've literally screenshot your posts Noble and MrsH to remind me!

From Hancock on Twitter

JVT is right - this is a critical time in our fight against this unprecedented virus.

Our strategy is to suppress #coronavirus whilst protecting education & the economy until a vaccine can keep us safe.

@RigaBalsam

From Hancock on Twitter

JVT is right - this is a critical time in our fight against this unprecedented virus.

Our strategy is to suppress #coronavirus whilst protecting education & the economy until a vaccine can keep us safe.

But if they are not planning on vaccinating the under 50s or 60s (forget which), then it's not worth the wait is it?

In terms of spread within schools I meant.
They want it to spread like mad in schools as very few people in schools will be receiving the vaccination anyway.

But if they are not planning on vaccinating the under 50s or 60s (forget which), then it's not worth the wait is it?

Dont think they even know.

honey I agree with everything noble and MrsH say. You need to set appropriate boundaries on the time you spend marking. You are part time for a reason, and that reason is not to have more time available for marking. I always set myself time limits and race myself to see how fast I can mark a set of books (y7 books can be done in 40 mins- 1 hour, year 11 take 1-1.5 hours, sixth form generally takes closer to 2 hours, etc). I make sure I only mark the piece of work I set out to mark, no looking at the rest of the book, we discuss that work in the lessons. I used to spend far too long on marking, but I had to cut it right back to protect my mental health and give myself enough down time. I still spend about 8/10 hours a week on marking, but that's much more manageable.

I am currently only marking tests. Homework is self marking online quizzes that I just look at to see which bits lots got wrong.
If SLT are unhappy with that then I'll leave.

Incidentally, is Noteven the poser who said they would quit if masks in the classroom were introduced?

Quality marked as opposed to badly marked then?! Because that's what calling it QMA suggests to me

You say that, but my last school followed this to its logical conclusion and ended up insisting everything was depth marked, including maths. Nothing went in a book that didn't have '2 stars and a wish' after it. HoneyBadger, I'd do whatever it takes to meet the minimum expectations of the marking policy, but if it's not adding to learning, don't kill yourself over it.

Occ Health have OK'd me going back to work tomorrow after 3 months off. Trying to find some scrubs that fit and I can move in. Should probably have thought about this sooner...

Rafals, can I be nosy and ask what you do?

I get really confused by the secondary marking systems. I have to mark every piece of work in every subject and, because I'm Year Six, there's an expectation of quite detailed marking, particularly in subjects where there are longer pieces of writing. I'm also supposed to mark it rather rapidly so within a day or two of the work being completed.

Marking in primary is totally bonkers.

In secondary maths I read out the answers, the kids mark their own work. God knows why they couldn’t do that in Y6.

I do it in Yr 4, noble. They get efficient at it very quickly, and they take much more notice of any errors than if I do it.
They then leave their books open at the page they've been working at, and I go round and initial, make written responses if appropriate, take note of any issues and so forth. I currently do this at arm's length, to minimise contact with their books.
I do the same with their planners each morning.
They are a bit shit at marking spelling tests though, so TA and I generally have to re-do those.

I could not in a million years teach primary... and the marking is just a small part of why!!! Hats off to those of you who do.
I have 1 year 10, 2 year 11, 2 year 12 and 1 year 13. For the sixth form, I only mark exam questions, and do that fortnightly. Their other teacher does the same in the weeks when I don't.
Year 11 are on Lang exam work at the moment. Again, I'm only marking exam questions - but they get through one biggie or two small ones in a double lesson, so I mark their books every week (after the mandatory quarantine period)
Year 10 have really only just started, so I mark chapter summaries (tick and flick) weekly. I've got some decent self marking stuff on Seneca for them too. When they've done a bit more, they'll get an essay every three doubles or so.

Trouble is they're all recorded on GO and show whether they're on target or not and can be viewed by anyone including parents I believe so they need to be accurate.

I'm finding year 8s (of which I'm lead teacher of 3 groups and therefore do all the marking) have crazily unrealistic flight paths that their work bears no resemblance to and I suspect I'm going to get told off for marking accurately when we're 'selling the gcse' to that year group.

I will give good feedback and work hard so they genuinely hit and exceed their targets but I'm not bloody lying and pretending all is well when it's not.

I think current year 8s were worst hit by closures at our school and now worst hit by zones driven behaviour problems

@TheHoneyBadger I get my students to do work I am going to mark on paper. I take the paper away and mark it, they glue it in and I never really look at their books that way.... can you try that?

@noblegiraffe

Marking in primary is totally bonkers.

In secondary maths I read out the answers, the kids mark their own work. God knows why they couldn’t do that in Y6.

In normal times I put the answers around the room and they get up and mark as they go along. Some lessons these days I give a sheet of answers (printed on coloured paper so I can see them from far away!). They have one sheet per row (four students) and keep it face down except when checking their answers. Or I just display the answers on my screen as we go along.

[quote MrsHerculePoirot]@TheHoneyBadger I get my students to do work I am going to mark on paper. I take the paper away and mark it, they glue it in and I never really look at their books that way.... can you try that?[/quote]
Genius! Think I'm going to do this with the ks3 assessments I'm doing this week. Also saves me lugging books. Glue sticks are a contentious subject but I can just staple them in before handing the books out in the next lesson.

I don't think I'd have minded marking the maths myself. I just fail to see who exactly benefits from the complete waste of time that is writing next steps targets under a page of column addition calculations.

We were actually told to do lots of informal work and throw it away. So not loads in their books.

Also y6. We purple pen mark lots in primary now so they are generally marking their own work in maths and eng and wherever it is possible. We also pit stop to check for things they might miss mid lesson and they fix them there and then. And we have adopted whole class one page marking where I take a glance through their work while they are doing it or after and make notes on one page re: who did well and what need a addressing next time. Then that informs what we alter about what we do next. It just formalised what we naturally do anyway and stops having to write comments in 30 books x 4 or 5 lessons each day. Some things don't, end themselves to it and I still do a trawl for spellings and other errors every now and again, but it has certainly helped with work life balance.

Shirley Clarke said to us on a course that the kost effective marking is done there and then with the chikdren. And that every minute spent marking something they have previously done steals time away that would best be spent preparing effective learning for the next steps. And a lot of marking isn't looked at properly by the kids anyway.

Spell checking is my fail there...

Denis Sherwood has returned to his study of the inaccuracy of exam marking in many subjects. Interesting how this wasn't really mentioned when people were busy bashing us for our CAGs:

www.hepi.ac.uk/2020/10/10/dennis-sherwood-the-broken-school-exam-system-needs-an-upgrade/?fbclid=IwAR0xdBVU_0w1X78jePTTs_to8qB06P9Oal5OBb4FMwxF5sdJpkGKAHHPC3E

Exams are bizarre. There is no way kids are so much brighter now than in my school years that they need an a**

I think they should just be fixed grade boundaries that remain at the same levels like in university eg 70% plus is a 1st.

When someone says they have an A in English that should mean the same thing regardless of what year they took their exam.