The Twenty-Eight Republic - Lockdown Light

[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 booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation.

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

Yesterday I took in 22 mock exams. Today I got another 32. And I had stupidly planned a practice essay for my year 10 so that's another 26.
Thanks, Boris, for locking the world down so I can spend my whole weekend marking.

Haven't looked into it (ONS claims) in great detail but noticed they said they were unadjusted figures - so the fact that secondary workforce is more male than primary (or care workers, nurses) won't be taken into account. Not that that supports our argument, am just trying to analyse it.

MrsH We've shared an additional 3 people's worth of assessments for all years between 5 of us. It's been tough. At least lockdown means I have no other plans.

Another tough week. Everyone is knackered and has no more to give. I'm trying to be positive face to face with people but think I scared the NQT this morning by almost crying in front of him.

My hard work has been noticed which is good.

Wine and Hamilton tonight. Feel like a proper Edu Tweeter now 😂

Took part in an ONS survey about lifestyle, wellbeing and corona.
Questions focused on interactions and exposure outside of work. Very telling the lack of questions about contact in work.

Ouch piggy. Would a bath help? Maybe for you too dragon to help you relax.

I've got 30 qmas to mark. 30 more on Monday and again on Wednesday. They just keep coming. Determined to be faster at marking them this term and to not get sucked into marking other lessons work.

Tonight is pizza and near pornographic outlander and then hopefully a decent sleep. The joys of marking will just have to wait

I once did some marking to help out a colleague who was struggling. Hod bollocked us both and accused us of being unprofessional. Apparently I should have let her struggle, fail to complete the marking in a timely fashion, and let her get bollocked for that. The fact that I'm quick and accurate was apparently not the point.
The departmental leadership team are every man (and they are all men) for himself, and the minions can go screw themselves.
I've done the little set and the first question of the big set. A solid day tomorrow will take care of those, and Sunday will deal with the y10. My exam marking is in training mode so I need to have a look at that too. Gah.

I will mark at the weekend when it's prelim exams, no bloody way am I doing that on a normal weekend. I can't believe how much time you give up.

(Unless you love doing it, in which case !)

I don't mind marking, actually. I do mind when someone else sets the timescale with no consideration of workload. I'm the only one with two classes but I have the same amount of time to mark them.... they'll be done, because that's my job, but it's irksome.
Exam marking I actually quite enjoy. It's important but I'm not responsible for them, if that makes sense.

I'll be marking tomorrow. Sixth form homework. I have 2 sets of that to mark, one lot from year 13 applied and the other lot is year 12 pure. It'll take me most of the day I think, I'm so bloody slow at marking sixth form stuff!!

Year 10 are supposed to be doing a test on Monday, but that's the class with the student self isolating having been in school while they shouldn't have been. I'm pretty sure that child will get a positive result over the weekend and half my class will be self isolating by Monday. I don't quite know how I'm supposed to deal with tests when kids are SI. I'll find out on Monday I suppose. Just one or two kids and I'll just keep the test til they're back in school, but that doesn't seem reasonable if it's half the class.

Hamilton sounds good herc. Do we think it would be ok for a 10yo? I quite fancy watching Hamilton again as a bit of relaxation, but can't remember if it might be a bit old for dd.

I'm really not very with it but I can't make much sense of those ons data analysis.

The positive spin seems rather gaslighty.

Don't understand how you could avoid marking outside of school. It's a pretty substantial part of the job and no way it fits into non contact time.

I don't mind marking assessments. But 300 in a week and a half is too many. Sadly staff absence means it's necessary but on top of other deadlines it'll be another 65+ hour week. Hey Ho onwards and upwards.

What do you teach mistress?

I'd let my 10yo watch it but I'm V liberal when it comes to films etc. Some of the more adult themes would probably go over their heads anyway.

I didn't say I don't mark outside of school though, I just won't do it at the weekend - our union has had a campaign (pre Covid) called #workfreeweekend so we were all positively encouraged to switch off then! Our working week is 35 hours - I would say most people do ten more than that. But I will not do full days of unpaid work, been doing the job too long and need to stay sane

300 in a week and a half is crazy!!!!

I'm in humanities

@MistressIggi

I didn't say I don't mark outside of school though, I just won't do it at the weekend - our union has had a campaign (pre Covid) called #workfreeweekend so we were all positively encouraged to switch off then! Our working week is 35 hours - I would say most people do ten more than that. But I will not do full days of unpaid work, been doing the job too long and need to stay sane

Probably no difference overall then. I do it on days off but never in my evenings. They're my sanity priority.

Marking is such a funny thing, I think. I see 6 classes multiple times a week, but my Geography friend has loads more classes less frequently. Her marking looks like mine in that it tends towards essay style stuff. Maths A level marking upsets me. There's always squiggles which mean something - and there's loads of them! My maths friend never seems to stop marking.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

It’s Friday at last.

Honey. If it’s dust mites/ Monod spores have you tried an anti histamine as well? That and the brown inhaler might be enough to get on top of it.

Seretide is the alternative to fostair. My guess is they’ll up the brown first, if needed, then go for fostair if that doesn’t work.

For my asthma I take the seretide250 which is the stronger one. I already take a daily antihistamine and then they added in montelukast to further suppress any reaction. It made a huge difference to how much blue inhaler I have to take.

I'm currently doing a 4 week peak flow diary for them and they arent going to be imimpressed to see I average out at 275-350 if I'm lucky.

That's the strength I take DrMadeleineMaxwell with an antihistamine during summer. Have had montelukast before and they wanted to add it in last winter but I don't find I get much extra benefit from it. Colder weather + heating has knocked quite a bit off my peak flow though so I don't think the 1st course of pred this winter is far off. Trying upping to 3 puffs twice a day of the seretide first.

Be surprised if I don't end up with a persistent cough and a covid test next week.

MrsAD and anyone else who needs them.
[painkillers] for Piggy.

Interesting re: the asthma. I had assumed my worsened breathing was due to stress and tiredness but I hadn't thought of the amount of sanitizer I am spraying and cleaner I am using on desks. Usually my asthma is triggered by dust, pollen or illness but I can get bad with certain reactions with washing powders or bleaches.

My peak flow is rubbish. Quite bad at night so i've woken up at 2am ish with a peak flow of about 230. I've got montelukast to take. My peak flow is usually about 275 - 300. I thought that was ok!

My marking is relentless. Every maths, english, reading and topic book every night. I try to box clever and mark in class if I can but somehow this weekend I have ended up with long division, narratives and science write ups to mark as well as year 6 reading papers. It's just relentless. When I was in secondary the load was not as heavy although I did get bogged down with A level essays and gcse courseworkat certain points. When I moved to primary the marking expectations knocked me sideways and they've got worse, if anything.

I can't see me lasting much longer. Both the year 10 and 11 in my kids secondaries have cases and we have year 5 shut now.

My 10 and 12 year old have watched Hamilton. They’re now so obsessed I can hear them performing it with a bunch of cuddlies.

Mine's normally about 500 although slightly lower these days. It's somewhere around 400-450 at the moment, although it was 380 last weekend.