The Twenty-fifth Republic - circuit breaker before/during/after half term

[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 and you will receive a detention

Ah... we used to have a "learning conversation" in the books. It died a death and I'm not sad about it. The green pen industry might be though.

Kids can't read my perfect cursive handwriting, adding 'next step' or extension questions is pointless.

I do whole class feedback - look over the work, find general issues and attack that accordingly in the next lesson.

@ohthegoats

Kids can't read my perfect cursive handwriting, adding 'next step' or extension questions is pointless.

I do whole class feedback - look over the work, find general issues and attack that accordingly in the next lesson.

I wish we could do this but our SLT are obsessed.

Kids can't read my perfect cursive handwriting, adding 'next step' or extension questions is pointless

My handwriting is less than perfect, and totally buggered after remote teaching since March, but even before I found increasingly students won't even try to read to read my writing, handing it back to me to translate. I hand it back to them and say come back next lesson after you've tried and we'll look at it then. What is noticeable is they can't even make a contextual guess at a word; they painfully peg through every word separately.

I do whole class feedback too. I generally know what my starters are going to be for the next couple of lessons by the time I'm half way through the pile of books. Year 10 (tonight's marking) definitely need more practice on factorising quadratics. I'm not sure quite how often I can cover something without going insane though. And they're getting annoyed that we've spent lessons and lessons on it. I might just give up on it for a while and come back to it later in year 11

I do whole class feedback too. SLT hate it as there's no evidence beyond the sheet because the retrieval starters aren't obvious. But I'm convinced it's the best thing for them.

I'm convinced it's best for them as well herc. And my SLT leave the maths department alone for the most part, because our results speak for themselves. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!!

Any plenary that happens in my room is either self and peer marking with the purple pens...
Or...
Crap, I forgot that we now go to dinner 5 mins earlier...pack up quick and off you go!

What I really hate in my job is the relentless need to constantly reinvent the wheel in primary. And to still pile on lesson obs, PM meetings and gov meeting invites on top.of everything I do. I'm SMT but not dept and there is no time given for anything management. I'm spending some ppa next school week on a gov meeting on zoom. Discussing blended learning. No idea why.

Got told off by a colleague today for not doing one way system properly. We have to go up the indoor stairs and out the fire escape stairs. I had taught on second floor gone down fire escape, gone in from fire escape on first floor. Bearing in mind we have staggered lesson times so my second floor lesson had already finished after the time my first floor lesson was meant to start...

Apparently I'm not allowed to come in the fire door, should have done all the way to the ground floor. Walked round the building to the in door. Then gone back up the indoor stairs to the first floor.

Can you tell it annoyed me?

[quote Piggywaspushed]Anyone want to read about unicorns?

schools.forhealth.org/risk-reduction-strategies-for-reopening-schools/[/quote]
🦄 s indeed! Harvard Smarvard....

(Weeps)

Will the madness never end.

SLT want us to set maths assessments via teams for isolating kids. Have they lost their tiny minds.

Apparently French public health have said that secondariy schools are the main source of infections. (Seen from French resident on the Data thread).

Yes @noblegiraffe I was wondering that too, as am already on half term. Especially as for various reasons I was expecting an outbreak in Y12.....

I concluded that SLT would have to contact us at home (phone for suspected contacts, maybe email for everyone else when they notify us). There is no other way, surely?

But don't know about the stage when we're all asked if anyone else believes they may have had close contact (not sure all schools do this, but am so glad we do), surely they couldn't ring 200+ of us? Potentially multiple times, if there were more than one day when cases were reported?

Although I don't know

I don't actually know how that last line appeared there....

@Hercwasonaroll yup, we are doing remote assessments via teams as well for isolating kids.

My writing is big, round, teenage girl handwriting. They still can't read it.

'What's that say?' they cry, at a word on the board in a sentence I said three times before I wrote it.

'Electri*al charge' - is that an e? No guys, it's a c over a smudge on the board, engage brains please!

(Is it half term yet? 5 more lessons!)

@Loshad There is just no way I'm doing it. Here's a non calculator paper.... Of course they'll all use a calculator. It's pointless and gives false data. I'm holding firm on this one. I'd rather assess them properly when they are back.

I tend to agree. Obviously in science we don’t have non calculator papers and we “try” to limit cheating by having very strict time limits. I’m not convinced they are valid but arguing against such strictures at our place is like fighting with the tide.

5 @Frlrlrubert, don’t make me jealous. 11/12 still to go.

@Loshad

5 *@Frlrlrubert*, don’t make me jealous. 11/12 still to go.

Sorry, inset on Friday for appraisals, training on new KS3 assessment grades, and starting our lessons for the new isolation lesson format (which will take most of half term to sort as it has been dropped from a great height at the last minute), so only a full teaching day to get through tomorrow.

She does have a pro forma but doesn't use it. Then when reminded to use it she just uses one part of it completely ignoring that she's meant to fill in what ability the group is, what send students she needs to consider, what the learning objectives are etc.

I don't think she grasps how much work and years of experience goes into teaching 'appearing' effortless and thinks she can just make no effort.

I haven't filled out the observation form yet but have written a list of reflective questions for her to consider. The kind of questions that she should have at the forefront of her mind when planning and when reflecting on how a lesson went and how it could be improved.

I think everything needs spelling out to her multiple times yet ironically she doesn't get how explicit explanations to students need to be and how you need to repeat things multiple times to ensure a) they get it, and b) there's no excuse if they're not on task.

Unfortunately she needs to wake up to the level of work needed. I think small slots with very explicit targets is the way to go even though it makes my life harder. I am beginning to see glimpses of how she could have an effective presence but she needs to grasp the basics of what did you want them to learn, how did you plan to achieve that and how did you ensure they had learnt.

I'm out of touch with current buzzwords but the basics hold.

I might actually try to make her see how her difficulties with reflecting, explaining and following criteria could actually be strengths if she used them as a way of empathising with her students difficulties and therefore helping them to address them. The challenge is that she has to address them in herself (maybe this is the consciously incompetent bit) before she can exploit that understanding to help students itms?

I'm happy to say I have a holiday on Friday. The Grand Final public holiday was covidly-moved from its usual school holiday timing, so schools get it for once.

Yay!

Honey my dramatic response to her not having a proper plan in advance of the lesson would be to not allow her to teach the lesson. I've done that before and although they are outraged about it, they're really got nowhere to go with.

My writing is big, round, teenage girl handwriting. They still can't read it.
'What's that say?' they cry, at a word on the board in a sentence I said three times before I wrote it

It's funny because it's true. Especially the bit having said it three times already. :o

Letter for latest class isolation mentions PHE. The other 2 partial and full class isolations didn’t. Wonder if advice is different if it is the teacher who has tested positive?
I know medical confidentiality is the issue and I’d be reluctant to see that being compromised, but I think parental engagement with isolation would be different, particularly over a holiday, if they knew it was the teacher who had it, given that they know that teacher will have approached every single child in the class.
It highlights that the stay 2m away ‘where possible’ is impossible in a primary school environment.

I’ve taken on extra hours. Not to cover for Covid reasons, but a role that would have come up anyway. For all my moaning I love my job, but I’m veering between I’ll be ok and I must be MAD! on an almost hourly basis.