The Thirty-Sixth Republic - New Year approaching, no clear idea of what is happening next week and has Gav been sacked yet?

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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.

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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

@cantkeepawayforever
I hate that! Why do they do it?? I order the A4+ sized books and model my expectations to death in every lesson purely to stop the insanity but it STILL happens. I had one child a few years ago who managed to stick a single A4 sheet across 6 - 6! - pages, concertina style. I took photos to prove it to disbelieving colleagues

Does everyone else have the experience that even if you trim a worksheet so that it fits into the exercise book, the children will still always trim it a bit more?

Yes. It boils my piss.

This ^

harriet that is true commitment to pissing off the teacher. I'm impressed and glad it didn't happen to me

Bloody sixth formers trimming sheets I've trimmed for their practical books. And drawing and sticking in tiny graphs. "I gave you a piece of paper that big coz I wanted a graph that big". I do the book shake too :)

Anyone have any good book recommendations? Looking for a corker to enjoy before Monday. Into most things apart from scifi and fantasy (nothing too gory if it's a detective one).

Sky reporting a 6pm meeting where ministers will discuss tiers and delaying start of term.

So we may hear a leak tonight???

Few of mine can use scissors :(

And actually I think that's got steadily worse. Many moons ago they'd have to cut stuff out for their work. As that wasn't deemed literacy and we had to do it all for them, I truly think they've slowly lost the ability year on year.,

@hedgehogger1

Bloody sixth formers trimming sheets I've trimmed for their practical books. And drawing and sticking in tiny graphs. "I gave you a piece of paper that big coz I wanted a graph that big". I do the book shake too :)

My office buddy teaches maths and is also Deputy head. She was mortified the other week because she'd praised a child for doing a good graph with the words "I like a big one" which caused much hysteria among the year 10. It sent me hysterical too 🤣

How about War and Peace, Herc?

Where crawdads sing
Hamnet
The Binding
Once upon a river
The beekeeper of Aleppo

Sophie Hannah “Haven’t they grown” - or any other Sophie Hannah. Or a Maggie OFarrell? Maybe “The distance between us”?

Had a friend message from australia message asking about the students testing themselves in school as it was on the world news. She basically said the whole world appear to be watching the UK and US in total disbeleif at the handling of it all. Apparently in oz, single cases close the whole school for deep cleaning for a few days, track and trace highly effective in general and since sydney had that outbreak, everywhere else closed borders with it almost instantly....

Just posted that funny quote about gluing/testing and turns out most people I know, had NO idea that it was being suggested school children do their own tests. They all assumed that the army/others were being brought in to set up and carry out.....

So Boris is supposed to be having a meeting at 6pm today to discuss Tiers. Do you reckon they’re still on the pre-talk sherries .

@SmileEachDay

Sophie Hannah “Haven’t they grown” - or any other Sophie Hannah. Or a Maggie OFarrell? Maybe “The distance between us”?

I LOVE Sophie Hannah!

I've just read The Lido (easy reading) and Eleanor Oliphant is fine (or whatever it is exactly called!) and enjoyed both as easy readers. I love an Agatha Christie though.... have all of those!

This year I really liked The Five which is about the victims of Jack The Ripper who we hardly hear about other than as prostitutes (untrue). Not gory but fascinating. Hamnet is wonderful and Girl, Woman, Other is really entertaining.

Oh and the Richard Osman book is good fun. Not great but easy to read and very Midsummer Murders!

Oh Dear God! You mean the glue cock-ups continue into secondary?!
It is MY THING with my 8 year olds!! I spend bloody hours trimming sheets to EXACTLY the right size to fit in their books and I go bananas if they then cock it up. If they learn nothing else in my class (fuck fronted adverbials and multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000) they WILL stick things in straight and ON THE RIGHT FUCKING PAGE.

I second The Five. It is utterly gripping and barely mentions the murderer himself, which is as it should be, imo.
Bone China by Laura Purcell is excellent, as are The Corset and The Silent Companions.
In the same vein, The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements is an atmospheric historical family mystery.
For family sagas with a bite I like Jenny Eclair’s novels. Not a character to root for in any of them, she hates them equally
Saving Missy by Beth Morrey is an interesting take on the “old lady and her past” genre. Miles better than Away With The Penguins, which has just finished irritating me immensely.
Saturdays At Noon by Rachel Marks is an unusual “will they, won’t they” story with a superior insight into the realities of parenting a child with ASD.

So.....glue sticks? A dab in each corner, not smeared all over the page for 10 mins until it goes through the paper, all over the desk and into the hair of the child sat next to you?

Ooh I love a good book recommendation, thankyou.

Got my result earlier this afternoon and as predicted, I am positive. I’m slightly kiffes that I’ve caught it from H and not from work so I will end up being a ‘household transmission’.

I’ve just started reading Travels With Oscar Wilde by Rupert Everett. The lovely, incorrigible old ham that he is

Feel should have a suggestion as a librarian but I only read YA stuff these days.

Anyone who hasn't, should read The Hunger Games trilogy. And all the HPs.

That should say miffed. My phone gets confused over which language I’m typing.

Are you feeling ok-ish, Medra?

@Saucery

So.....glue sticks? A dab in each corner, not smeared all over the page for 10 mins until it goes through the paper, all over the desk and into the hair of the child sat next to you?

A dap? That, I couldn't do. It has to be a frame around all four edges.

My Year Sixes are quite good at sticking stuff in but that's because until October half-term, we do it "together" with modelled sticking 😂