The Fortieth Republic - Schools are safe but they are vectors so go online

[SantaAssociationRepresentitve]

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

@cantkeepawayforever

I wish to record here, just because I know I would have posted had the opposite happened, that I have had a completely constructive and very detailed response from my (Tory) MP about testing in schools as an alternative to isolation.

OK, he admits it has now been overtaken by events, but he has gone out of his way to find out some information and to say he will raise it with ministerial colleagues. I have been encouraged enough to reply with more detailed data.

Still catching up but I'd be grateful if you could share anything with me. I'm in communication with my HT about this because I've refused consent for myself and ds to be tested and have raised the question of whether there are any implications for making children mix with known close contacts without their parents consent and presumably without informing parents that their child is eg. sitting next to a known close contact of a positive case in Maths.

I just used breakout rooms in teams with a tame sixth form group and it worked really well. They were far more inclined to discuss with each other when it wasn’t the whole group they were talking to.

Not sure it would work with a class who would arse around rather work when not directly supervised.

Anyone else just received the most gaslighting bullshit email from DfE? This is a particularly good paragraph -

There is no evidence the new strain of the virus causes more serious illness in either children or adults and there continues to be strong evidence, to date, that children and younger people (those under 18 years old) are much less susceptible to severe clinical disease than older people. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey data from 2 September to 16 October showed no evidence of difference in the rates of teachers/education workers testing positive for COVID-19 compared to key workers and other professions. Additionally, the Schools Infection Survey (covering 3 to 19 November) found the infection rate among teachers to be similar to that of the wider population.

The email is called 'advice to school leaders' and is about dealing with staff who are in unions and don't feel safe. Awful.

That's awful. wasnt 3-19 November when we had 'lockdown' last time. I cant believe they think its unsafe for them but fine for us!

You know the way you can record your voice over a PowerPoint? Is there any way to do the same over a worksheet? Or would I be better changing it to a PowerPoint version of my worksheet? Thanks! (I know some of you geniuses will know)

You need Loom, Mistress

Then you get a weblink for the video so you don’t need to upload it anywhere which is really useful.

Thanks Noble, I'll have a play around with that tonight (when not arguing with strangers on the internet )

Top tip, if you log into a meeting from two devices, remember to leave it from both devices otherwise you’ll have an iPad sat in your kitchen merrily in a recorded meeting for half an hour after it’s finished (which appears on the recording). Thank god on mute!!

Loom yes. You can use it for free for short clips. Our school has subscribed to it to be able to do full lessons.

I'm getting really narky at constant emails from HOD. I've just turned my out of office reply on. I'm not paid to work today - I'm happily marking my GC work as it comes in but I'm not jumping to people's orders on my day off. I'm doing more kw provision than her and going into school whereas she is at choosing to work from home despite sending her child to nursery and being full time. Enough is enough. I'm starting to really see the repercussions of her not doing enough work despite having a massively light timetable and I've got to draw boundaries and only engage with her in working time or I'm going to lose it.

ha, that's good hedge. They would say I had to fund it from my dept budget which is £72 pa for 5 classes. I kid you not...

There are also only 3 copies of the DVD available to buy which is Amazon being annoying to be fair.

My school will NOY buy ClickView : feet have been stamped!

I don't have Teams : Google Classroom.

I can insist they buy the film, yes,and I always have. These ones just haven't because Miss will watch it in class anyway...

Sorry for resisting all useful answers but thanks for moral support!

We've got snow here, and it's knocking my internet connection out intermittently today. It's a good job I haven't got any live lessons scheduled for today, but it's taken ages to upload the videos for my classes.

I was up half the night as well, so not feeling great or motivated. I had a safeguarding alert yesterday which really shook me, and obviously I can't talk about it to anyone. It's really, really shit for that poor family, and there's not a single thing I can do to help

NOT even.

Any head rabbits that back at you tell them the SIS survey only looked at test results from staff present in school! In other words it picked up rather a lot of asymptomatic cases!

Those SI or actually ill don't show up in that data... Hmm

You could also ask the head if they understand the weasel wording of the ONS survey.

We had breakout rooms in a meeting and they sent SLT to spy on us!

In the dept meeting where that wasn't possible we arsed about and we are hard working adults

I do think it could work with a nice sixth form class though if there was an end product.

None of my classes want live lessons other than year 12. I've been asking them all this week, and they mostly seem to want video explanations then independent work, so they can access it at different times. That's ok, but I'd actually prefer live I think, at least I would get some feedback from the kids about how it's going.

Could you ask them to send you notes? That's what I did before we went 100% live and it worked really well?

Dragon are you on GC? I put up posts on the stream asking things about a lesson like do you feel very confident, somewhat confident or not at all confident in your understanding. That sort of thing.

I'm stuck on my day off waiting on a colleague providing the lesson that I need to assign. This is part of why I did her first recorded lesson for her over Christmas because I knew it wouldn't be ready on time and I'd be stressing needing to set it and it not being there. Turns out doing that just kicked the can down the road because here I am in that exact situation but with the second lesson. Shouldn't be me who needs to notice stuff isn't done and nag for it but HOD is neither supporting or managing this colleague who needs both as a newish teacher.

Awkward.

I seriously hope none of my department are on this thread!

You could always have a 5-10 minute check in and then a pre-recorded bit afterwards. Make sure they're there and engaged but they can go through the explanation bit in their own time. I've been implementing little check ins at the start even when the lesson was independent work, I think it helps my 6th formers feel like I'm present and keeping an eye on them (and makes registers easier!)

@Piggywaspushed in all honesty I'd just rip the DVD and put it on a shared drive somewhere. I know it's a copyright breach but you're not trying to profit from it or anything and you could password protect.

Fair amount of teacher bashing on the Coronavirus board.

@DipSwimSwoosh

Fair amount of teacher bashing on the Coronavirus board.

The obsession with live lessons! I think they think that dumping the child in front of the computer screen means they can pass all responsibility to the teacher exactly the same as at school. They don’t want live lessons, they want babysitting via Teams.

The threads are vile with the moaning complaints. The inability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, that what they want isn’t what everyone wants. And the idea that children work solidly the whole time they’re at school. So utterly depressing.

The ones that complain to Ofsted that the school is providing links to lessons on Oak Academy will be disappointed to find it’s government funded.