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

The story has definitely changed, hasn't it. A fortnight ago Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney were still on the 'schools are safe and the best place for our children'.... look where we are now!

@Frlrlrubert

Anyone else's school on radio silence? I know it the holidays but I've had absolutely no information on the plan for Jan - as far as I know (and parents!) we're back as normal on the 4th, no inset, no official plan for remote teaching. Nothing about testing.

We post weekly stuff online for isolators anyway, and planned to teach 50% live and 50% independent work if a year group isolates - we were told there would be a rota published for this if/when it happened.

I assume we'll go to 50% plan, but without that rota I can't plan the sequence of which lessons will be live and which independent.

I know I should switch off and wait but I hate uncertainty!

Yup absolutely nothing.

We are radio silence but that's to be expected as, as afar as we are / we're concerned, we are back on the 4th.

I've checked a couple of times in case.

No idea how we will coordinate any change in plans. I think staff would have to go in in order to sort some home school stuff. Some can work online but some asked for paper.

Many can't to any to be honest. Home is home and school is school when you're autistic. Plus so many need apparatus and equipment we use in school. (One boy last summer begged for extra work thorough, we couldn't keep up!)

I've just remembered I still have a stack of marking to do. Two of my year 8 groups were due to do their assessment last week but then I was isolating so it was expected that I'd do it in the first week back which is now online. I am unilaterally deciding they're not going to do it and we need to move on.

Colleagues scrapped the previous assessment because they were due to do it when year 8 were out of school whereas I'd gotten it done with my groups already so their marks are on the system. My groups will have had the same number of assessments just different ones.

You know when you just decide something and you know, 'that's what I'm doing and I'm ready to justify and I know I'm not going to budge'. It's one of those. Is that just me? It's like little lines in the sand that you know you're willing to stand by. No hills I intend to die on but sometimes things are so daft I'm like nope, not doing that despite generally being pretty compliant and wanting to follow 'the plan'.

I think that must be where a lot of heads found themselves with this latest fucking last minute half arsed plan being dumped on them at the end of term.

@DecemberStar

R4 headlines have just said Lincolnshire have had to open a temporary mortuary 😞

bloody hell.

Fingers crossed it’s a very mild case luckiest

No blue cheese here. I've got some goat and some yarg and some comte and some tunworth and some crookwheel. And I'm going to buy some more for making fondue because I bloody love cheese. We were in America last Christmas and the cheese selection was highly depressing.
Pritti Patel was on Today this morning talking about the tier rules and how people would be dealt with for "egregious breaches" of the rules. She was unclear what that meant.

@TheLuckiest
Hope you don’t feel too poorly and you fight it off quickly.

I had to Google ‘Yarg’. It sounds delicious.

Honey I've drawn so many lines in the sand this term it's looking like a Miro. With a small hill I'm definitely noisily defending.

Dunno if it's age? I refuse to waste time doing a number of very time consuming things that are utterly stupid for our setting. Utterly stupid anyway. And will be changed again next year.

I remember going to the place they make yarg when I was a child! (Gray backwards and nettles always stuck with me!)

You know when you just decide something and you know, 'that's what I'm doing and I'm ready to justify and I know I'm not going to budge'. It's one of those. Is that just me? It's like little lines in the sand that you know you're willing to stand by. No hills I intend to die on but sometimes things are so daft I'm like nope, not doing that despite generally being pretty compliant and wanting to follow 'the plan'.
We have a dept "rule" that students who underperform in an assessment at GCSE are strong armed into going to a resit session where they're essentially told what to write in order to do better. I hate it, especially because most people tell them what to write in the first place. I decided a long time ago that I wasn't going to urge or encourage or persuade. If they messed up, there's a reason and I know why and I'll work with them to fix it. Telling them what they should have written for a question they'll never have to do is pointless. It's a hard "nope" from me.

I'm going 70s retro here with Quality Street and a snowball. We have some cheese but DH is trying to be good (would inhale it given the chance) so we're eeking it out as much as we can. I've lost 5 stone since March so trying not to blow it but it's hard...

Cheese selection is abysmal in Egypt MrsH so you'd best bring your own. Haven't heard of any of your cheeses - are they all British?

Luckiest - sorry I meant to say so sorry about your test result when I was catching up with thread. Such bad luck. Every text I get in recent days saying another case in year 9, another case in year 10, a case of a TA etc makes me feel sad for the poor people being ill over Christmas just for the bloody idiots in charge's determination that schools stayed open for that last week.

She loves the phrase ‘egregious breaches’. She used it last week on the Today programme. I think she reckons it makes her sound well read, but it just reminds me of Pauline from League Of Gentlemen when Ross asks her if she is is ‘egregious’ in the role play interview and she attacks him with a clipboard.

I hope that Priti Patel, like me, learned the word ‘egregious’ from these two fine gentlemen.

I can imagine MickeyLuv saying Stop it, Priti, you nutter!

Glad it's not just me. Some things I'm wibbly about and I whinge and moan to myself but end up doing and trying not to roll my eyes and huff and puff too loudly but some things are just a hard, no!

In some ways, and I'm aware this is out there, it has been better this year because I've just gotten on with it and gotten things done rather than umming and ahhing in meetings and having to keep my face neutral whilst people come up with clearly shite ideas of how to do things that just create a whole lot more work for no worthwhile gain I suspect I'm not a great colleague

They are Honey. Crookwheel is a sheep's cheese from South Cumbria, Tunworth is an English Camembert and Yarg is a cow's milk cheese wrapped in nettles. The goat is generic Booths!
There's an amazing cheesemonger near Settle which sells a lot online - a lot of the stuff they stock goes to the fancy hotels round here and elsewhere and during the first lockdown they got involved much more in that side of things because the small producers were inundated with cheese they couldn't sell. They were even on the food programme talking about it. It's a tiny place off the A65 - but they had a pop up shop nearby today. If you like cheese, I highly recommend it. It's called the Courtyard Dairy.
I don't mind a break from cheese if I get to go on holiday!!

Ooh a snowball! @KnowingMeKnowingYule I might have one of those now

cow's milk cheese wrapped in nettles.

...er? To stop you eating too much of it?

Ooh Perl las - an amazing Welsh blue though no chance of getting that any time soon. Total radio silence here too. I'm really hoping it's because our HT is refusing to engage as God knows the man needs a break. I'm only checking email in case one of our kids needs something.

Don't do goats milk or cheese - just can't make myself like it. Though I'll happily eat goat meat I'm afraid (ex vegetarian so still feel guilty about loving meat) and the bedouin in Sinai know how to make that taste goooood!

My dad is a big british cheese fan so I bet he'd love all that and if I was ever near there I'd buy him a cheese selection. I am not a huge fan of hard cheeses other than for cooking and most of my cheese explorations happened in France. I look forward to you exposing me to more British offering at our cheese event which clearly you should host!

@noelgiraffe

cow's milk cheese wrapped in nettles.

...er? To stop you eating too much of it?

I used to juice nettles Full of good for you -ness.

They do a whole range of cheese by post. Dad and Godfather are both getting one on the 28th because I messed up my cheese ordering
Blue cheese scares me. I'll eat most things but not that. Fermented mare's milk will also never pass my lips again. Luckily we don't get that round here much!

I had a psycho boyfriend once who made me try some nettle soup, to "broaden my palate."
It was disgusting.