The Thirty-Fourth Republic - Time to recharge our batteries and make the best of our festive break

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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

Interesting twitter discussion about new strain and children, all views are up for grabs:

mobile.twitter.com/kakape/status/1341050330176479232

I'm beginning to feel really worried about this. Have read somewhere today (maybe in something have already posted, I dunno!) that although the current mutations probably don't affect the vaccines' efficacy, if they mutate any more that could well change.

The head of DS's school is very committed and very very public spirited. If he is sold the line that testing daily is morally the right thing, he won't perhaps read the science critically.

@Timeturnerplease and @ChloeDeckTheHalls

I’m also Y3, in an area of rural poverty. Huge proportion of FSM/PPG children, very little parental support or engagement. A small minority engaged with online learning but for most of our children, mum’s phone and her pay as you go data was the only source of internet for online lessons. Live lessons just weren’t practical for that reason, nor anything that needed printing. Mostly I uploaded pdf versions of my lesson slides and typed up additional ‘scripts’ for parents to read. I sent exercise books and pencils home for children to use as there was no guarantee they would have them.

We had to print and deliver a lot of packs for those with no internet at all, and then offer telephone support at least weekly (daily for some), as well as look after a large number of Keyworker/vulnerable children in school. It was hard going. If I’d had young children at home as well it might have broken me.

Shielding emails have apparently been sent out this evening for those in Tier 4, to stay home until 18 Jan.

This may have been mentioned already, but they are starting to say that this new strain may be levelling the playing fields between adults and children in terms of infectiousness.

Which is not good news.

DD y11, had to isolate too many times already when it didn't spread all that much (so they said), and my primary got away with one or two cases. This suggests that it's going to be much more of a shit-show in Jan going forward.

@GleamingBaubles

So we are self isolating due to me occasionally coughing (just to clear phlegm) and feeling shit. So the kids are climbing the walls as I haven't taken them out for their usual 3 hours of exercise (I swear they were labradors in previous lives). Worse - when I did my self administered swab, it stuck to my uvula! So it's probably wrecked isn't it? And ive

@GleamingBaubles

I read "uvula" as *"vulva"

I was thinking absolutely you've fucked it up if you've touched it there.

That'll teach me to use swanky anatomically correct terms

I blame it on my mother - she was a HCP and used to leave Grey's anatomy lying around.. .

On a more serious note - I'm another one who found online learning less stressful. I could set up the "live" bit for 10 minutes into the lesson, and leave them to do a set task with just audio on so they could say "miss" if they needed help. Also, only about 4 per class actually engaged with the lessons - and they were the nice swotty type. Not the ones who flick glue stick bits or pens into the ceiling whenever you are not looking, who make my life stressful.

I'd like it formally minuted here that if I mess up my covid test tomorrow by swabbing my vulva, it's your fault Gleaming
In other news I've decided to make a family sized trifle just for me for Friday

yeah yeah,

Trifle.... Mmmm. Haven't had a proper adult alcoholic trifle in years! My Nan used to make one that was so strong you got drunk just from sniffing it!

My mum does that every year MrsH. The family sized trifle just for her, not the swabbing her vulva (I assume). She adores trifle, the rest of us can take it or leave it, so she eats it all by herself, from the serving bowl, in the evening after everyone else has stuffed themselves silly on other things. She has been known to make 3 or 4 trifles over the festive period, and she never shares.

Your mum seems like my kind of woman, MsAR

I'm making two family sized trifles, one jelly and one sherry! TBF we only ever have guests in Christmas Day itself, so snaffling it for breakfast ourselves throughout twixtmas will be nothing new 😳

I didnt realise how bad live stuff was until dc1 started zoom brownies.
There are parents leaving kids alone in the house (while they are in a shed) while they are online. but also dc1 is so difficult and i have to sit with her to mute her fart noises etc. She is enjoying it really i think.

Imo the advantage is the booked time slot. basically we turn up and get the activity done. Vs dc2 in rainbows no online and havent always got it done.

keep I'm running teams Brownies, and I really don't like it. The other leader can't share her screen at all (we think it might be to do with her having a Mac). I can share my screen, but then find I can't see the Brownies, and they are quiet and shy so don't talk while they're doing the activity. The only advantage (for me, not them) is that all mess is in their own house and I don't have to clean the church hall in the 15 minutes between Brownies finishing and the next group coming in. We have specified that an adult needs to be in earshot at all times, but since they aren't on camera we can't tell if they're actually there (they were on our last meeting because the craft was a bit fiddly so we saw every Brownie getting help from an adult sized pair of hands)

@msawesomereindeer may I be cheeky and ask for some Brownies nights that have worked well? I need some new ideas for Cubs. Thus far, the main leader has run all the sessions. He is child free himself and is wfh in a much calmer job. However, he's running out of ideas now so I said I'd run a couple of session after Christmas.

@HarrietDVane It did nearly break me! And that was without doing live lessons. Regardless of how much parental support we have, live lessons can’t happen because of the lack of independence of the children - if you’ve got a Year 1 and a Year 3 at home and both of them have live maths at 9am, you can’t possibly support them both at the same time. We do Zooms twice a day, morning to introduce the day’s learning and afternoon to catch up on how it’s gone. The rest is set on Seesaw, with a video for most activities (usually White Rose for maths but English etc often teacher made).

I did all the filming etc evenings and weekends and spent the day following a toddler around with my hand permanently glued to the Seesaw app on my phone. I got around 120 uploads a day from children to give feedback on!

I really, really feel for secondary colleagues doing live lessons with young children at home. I do not know how they do it.

Stupid brain not letting me sleep. Apparently as soon as i'm on break my anxiety rears its head.

As a primary LSA, i'd much rather things were in place to keep us safe but schools still open - i work with a number of children with unsettled homes and we are their stability and routine (behaviour before christmas got worse as they knew they were off for 2 weeks).

@eitak22 dealing with tricky behaviour from children who are stressed and dreading the holidays is so hard. I've been teaching for years but I still get emotional over this and more so since having my own child. There are so many that I have wished I could take home with me for the holidays.

squashed we've only been doing teams meetings since November because the Brownies weren't interested in doing it before then. We did a Christmas challenge badge so our activities were mostly aimed at that. We had one night making Christmas cards, which they then posted to each other. Another meeting we made Christmas trees from a stick and some lengths of ribbon. We iced gingerbread biscuits. They enjoy a scavenger hunt, we played charades, and pictionary on the whiteboard function. We had an "only connect" quiz one night, a Christmas music quiz, a taskmaster evening (that went down very well), we've done a virtual campfire (not quite so good on the ears, there's quite a bit of lagging but the girls seemed to enjoy it). Maybe you'd like to share some stuff that's worked well for you? We've got to plan for next term now. I think we're going to do some bits of the official programme this term. So we'll be looking at a skills builder badge and some of the unit meeting activities ideas from the programme packs. Our girls do love getting a badge, so if the cubs enjoy badges too you could work on one with them. We got our Christmas badge from an unofficial challenge badge group on Facebook, and we'll probably try another one of those as well as doing the official stuff. I find we fit more in to a teams meeting than we do face to face, because there's none of the messing about, faffing with getting tables out for craft bits, etc.

I have a few that I'd like to take home with me for the holidays too. One cried on Friday when they realised they had to stay at home an extra week in January. Bearing in mind that I only teach year 10 upwards this year, that's quite unusual for them to be so visibly emotional. This is also the child who deliberately sets out to get after school detentions because school is better than home . Obviously all the right people/agencies are involved and we pass on anything they tell us.

@MrsChristmasHamlet

I'd like it formally minuted here that if I mess up my covid test tomorrow by swabbing my vulva, it's your fault Gleaming In other news I've decided to make a family sized trifle just for me for Friday

The whole of the teaching profession may now be fucked if we all do our lateral flow tests in our fanjos

It always saddens me how some kids would far rather be in school than at home I have a couple in my form like that. We really are the safe space for some kids (which is good that we can provide that safe space).

I'm not looking forward to doing online learning with my Y10 after Christmas, even if it remains only for one week. They are absolutely lovely but very low attaining (targets 1-3) and need a lot of adult support in lessons. Trying to do that over teams is not going to be easy. Problem is, I have no space in the rotation to do some revision/consolidation for a week

Y9 -most will be ok I think but there will be some who don't log in/complete tasks.

Y12 will be fine as they are a really good group. Only issue with them is that I am doing some tricky concepts which are mathematical/require visuals. Need to improve my handwriting with my digital pen!

11/13 in school so that will be ok.