The Thirty-Third Republic - End of term and DfE threats- cheers all!

[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 staffroom password just in case it attracts the wrong sort

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 come with a stick to goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom and you will receive a detention

Ah honey , my long lost ex user name was AF inspired!

Love how, even in their guidance, they can't answer a straight question:

"Who will be doing the testing in schools and colleges?"
"The Government is supporting all schools and colleges to set up appropriate spaces on site that can be used for testing. Schools and colleges are supplied with test kits and PPE and training will be provided. We will provide an advice line and guidance to support schools."

Thanks for the support. Being in this staffroom makes all the difference.

I'm hanging in there. Feel like I am the 7 dwarfs.
Yesterday- Sweary
Today - Weepy
Tomorrow-??? Sleepy perhaps?

I need a deep breath and a large drink tonight, there have been some very interesting views!

Nearly there, guys!

This Twitter one is good:

twitter.com/MrMountstevens/status/1339293365834223616

Def not pregnant! HRT ridden over here...

Oh sorry, I see Piggy has already linked that one.

Wow this grew fast

The edge of my jaw seems to have developed a twitch. Need to step away from the internet and wrap a couple of presents!

They are making quite a big story on Scottish news today of a ten year old boy up here who had inflammatory shock with Covid and was in an induced coma for several days (he is making a good recovery). Interesting timing I thought.

I've got a whole new timetable in January. Thanks to three members of our dept going and us being unable to recruit. I don't have google classrooms set up for my new classes so no idea how I'll be setting them work if we're online for first week back

yikes hedgehogger1.

My old username years ago was SwallowedAFly which I rather loved till I got MRA targeted and had to have all my history deleted because it was too hard to trawl through everything looking for giveaways on where I lived but those saddos could have had a team of incels with lots of frustrated energy to channel into it

It's actually quite deep as in what it means to me.

HoneyBadger is just because honey badgers don't give a shit. Ds and I made the honey badger our emblem and our motto is, 'never surrender'. We haven't got a flag or anything.

Honeybadgers are amazing. I take it you've seen the BBC natural world documentary.

I never knew a honey badger was an actual thing. Have just googled and there's a honey badger taking on 6 lions

I cried today. Not work-related luckily. But dd(16) decided she'd regret it if she didn't go to see her late Grandma in the funeral home, and as my DH really didn't want to go and see her I sucked it up to go to save him from that. DD was very sweet and sensible (offered me a tissue and a hug) but it was obviously always going to be a difficult thing to do.

I then went home, had an hour of sleep before going out for my last exercise class before Christmas and the lockdown that we will be under.

One bonus, we got all our junior staff into the largest classroom and had a distanced staff Christmas dinner, paid for by the HT, where we could all chat to each other. And 10 of my class were off for one reason or another, leaving a very manageable number even with it being their last day in. TAs are taking care of the key worker kids in the hall (mixing bubbles!!!) for the next 2 days, and we are in for planning towards the new curriculum (because Wales in it's wisdom has decided that it is still rolling out on the original timescale and there's a lot of auditing and rewriting of schemes to be done).

Yesterday a parent sent their child in while the parent was ill and getting themselves a test. Test results came back positive this morning. At least at that point they phoned the school and admitted what they had done. That parent is going to be popular if anyone in the class tests positive in the next few days.

One of the primaries near here had a kid who was waiting for a test sent in. They are now extremely popular now the test has come back positive and a whole class are going to be isolating over xmas.

They do seem to have owned up and admitted what they did though. Not a phone call I'd have wanted to make.

Yeah the idea that this week is more educationally valuable than the first week of term is ridiculous. I am done in and so are the kids, so we are definitely not doing anything demanding - Christmas themed practicals, quizzes and a bit of revision. Friday is a half day anyway with an extended tutor time, and the chances of teaching anything that morning are about zero.

And yes, we also have students taking Btec exams during the first week back. But I bet the government have forgotten those exist.

Well, they let students wait up to three weeks for vocational course results in the summer, didn't they?

Of course they don't care about BTec/NVQs.

It was discussed a bit on R4 just before 7 this morning. Head of NAHT (Whitney?) talking about how some schools still don't have laptop allocation, huge probs with testing plan, why, if Education is govt's priority, do they keep loading schools with non-education responsibilities.....

I'm wondering if the "to allow training for the mass testing" is a smokescreen to cover the U turn, ie schools would not be "remaining open as it's essential"?

@DrMadelineMaxwell that sounds like a hard thing to do, but your DD sounds amazing - it made me think I hope my DD would be the same when she is older.

and for everyone. I taught my last 4 lessons of the year yesterday (2 remotely) and ended up giving a couple of sanctions out last period. Came home wondering why on earth some children are so damn rude and entitled. Am at that stage where I don't want to see anyone other than my family for at least three days!

We've had to switch to remote learning for all year groups till the end of term (just a few days, thankfully). The situation has turned scary in a very short time frame. Raged about the DfE to dh last night. How can they be so incompetent.

Hope everyone has a calm few days .

Oh yeah, NAHT guy mentioned that the pilot schools had staff supplied to do the testing, as far as he could gather!!!

Apparently our SLT didn't flag up the available asymptomatic testing because there will be 'mass testing in January anyway'.

sansa we just had a festive email instructing us to have no fun today.

I think ours will arrive next week. Important to remember no fun should be had on Xmas eve.