The Forty First Republic - Gav encourages parents to report schools to OFSTED

[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

@MsAwesomeDragon

Have any of you used any of the oak academy lessons with your classes? I'm having a look at the inequalities and think it looks appropriate and better than my videos for my year 11 Foundation group. Do we think it is frowned upon to link to one of those lessons, or would your school be ok with it? Obviously I wouldn't do every lesson using Oak, but once or twice a week for some classes would save me a lot of time.

Absolutely fine! It’s what it’s there for after all!

This obsession so many have of demanding that they ‘see’ teachers working as hard as they possibly can, otherwise surely they can’t be working at all and are lazy bastards, is going to bring the profession to its knees.

We are using a mix of White Rose, Oak Academy and our own videos. Fine with our SLT and if parents are whinging they aren't to us. DS's school are doing the same. I am fine with it as a parent.

The DfE stuff was written by Daniel Muijs and is a lot more sensible. I didn't undersatnd soem of the techy bits about checking in on them mind!

My SLT have their mids made up. 5 full hour lessons , all live. Except they have now muddied the waters by saying we can go away after the first half hour and leave them work to do. Presumably logged out, who knows. It's all about the 'look'. Either they believe kids will really all sit there for half an hour unsupervised and do the work (which is equivalent to a teacher walking out of a classroom imo!) or they don't care. The 'we can go away' bit was done to appease teachers with busy timetables who were complaining of exhaustion and neck and back pain. Never mind the poor kids who 'must do an hour'.

I can't speak for other subjects but the three subjects I teach do not work on the 25 minutes 'delivery'/30 mins doing model. Only our SLT would assume there is a one size fits all model!! And I would feel the need to check they had done the work : so, more marking and feedback.

DH's school has always done complete live lessons and now also wants every kid to ahve additional hour to two hours of homework a night.

What are we doing to a nation's eyesight and spines??

A good textbook can provide the curriculum content and sequencing pupils need. It can also be easier to access for some pupils.

I do take issue with this, though. It kind of assumes textbooks are a) in existence and are good and b) every child has one.

A few subjects in my school have textbooks (mainly hums) and they are sets kept in school.

Our SLT like the one size fits all too Piggy. Though they have back tracked and said we can use Oak as long as we set them so
work after the half hour video. No idea what PE are doing though.

Yes, what we call 'one size fits all' they call 'consistency'. Heaven forfend anyone be a bit different!

I have just realised why my insomnia has reared its ugly head - too much bloody screen time.

anyone brave enough to ask their head to reimburse their eye test?

If it's more than one hour a day at our screens apparently our employer should pay!

Sorry not tech savvy enough to link, but from a BBC article on screentime during lockdown being bad for our health.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55620100

I wear sleep in contact lenses, and had to have a check up in November. Via zoom! It wasn't very thorough.

Is it just me or is anyone else completely destroyed after a full day of live lessons? I delivered 5 yesterday, also 30 min of tutor stuff. Apart from cooking dinner, I was incapable of doing anything else, just collapsed in a heap in bed around 8.30pm. There's no way I could have marked or planned anything.

Got a parents' eve in a few weeks, another 3 h in front of a screen after a 5 lesson day. 30 parents to see. Dreading it.

@MsAwesomeDragon

Have any of you used any of the oak academy lessons with your classes? I'm having a look at the inequalities and think it looks appropriate and better than my videos for my year 11 Foundation group. Do we think it is frowned upon to link to one of those lessons, or would your school be ok with it? Obviously I wouldn't do every lesson using Oak, but once or twice a week for some classes would save me a lot of time.

We are using them sometimes (secondary science). School is fine with it. Not for every lesson, but I am using a couple each week (I am recording powerpoints, and we start live lessons tomorrow).

I think they are pretty good and the students seem to like them. For science, they usually have an exit quiz at the end, so I get students to send me their score on this.

[quote MrsHerculePoirot]**@Appuskidu* and @CallmeAngelina* me too! Just finished working for the say after working all my two days off last week and all of Saturday and some of Sunday!

MrsH yes to those rubrics please![/quote]
Yes! Me too. 0.6 contract, I haven’t stopped since last Monday evening. It’s exhausting.

Is it just me or is anyone else completely destroyed after a full day of live lessons?

Not just you! And juggling my DD as well. Today and tomorrow I have no PPAs either. Start in 13 minutes.

Can’t wait for this to be over!

Not just you brie, but unfortunately I hadn't fully planned today so didn't have the option of collapsing.

Got a headache already and only just turned the screen on

A lot of my colleagues are saying they prefer the live lessons as they can just teach and not have to deal with behaviour and being stood up performing.

Before Christmas when we had 2 years isolating I had a calm day on my fit bit for two weeks looking at the heart rate thing. Normally it goes into the yellow section when I am telling them all to be quiet and listen on a normal day.

It's off the scale this week as I am generally stressed. I am not going in today. Have a nice day all.

The DfE stuff was written by Daniel Muijs

Or that’s who they’re claiming wrote it

Ofsted sometimes have decent people working for them. Sean Harford was good. Mike Cladingbowl from a few years back is now retweeting stuff slating Gav and his profile pic is the ONS infection rate graph showing schools are stuffed.

Look after yourself, Riga

Thanks Noble

Shattered after 6 live lessons yesterday. Got 5 today but with reduced input and more independent work.

Like that teams lets me record the lesson and inserts the video in the chat - good for any students who can't make the live session or want to review.

Still trying to find the balance that works well for me and the kids.

We aren’t used to a job that has us sitting down in front of a screen all day. If we wanted that, we wouldn’t be teachers!

Getting question packs sorted to post out to students so they have the work in front of them during the lesson. I did this last term with the kids keeping the work in their bag so they had it in school or at home.

Works brilliantly for science - especially for graph questions - but it's a lot to plan 6 weeks in advance.

As a parent I don’t want my child doing every single lesson on a screen (especially as screens also feature heavily in his downtime at the moment!) - He seems to have a mix of a couple of live lessons a day and then worksheet type lessons which are sometimes linked to a white rose/oak video. school are saying you can do most worksheets without printing them out (just view on screen and put answers on paper) but I am opting to print where possible as he had a headache after one day of too much laptop staring! Working well for him so far...at least I think it is, I am in school all week but he and his Dad seem happy enough and I am seeing evidence of stuff having been done when I get home!

As an aside we had a bubble burst yesterday - slow result coming through from a child who was in last Monday on our only day of full opening....

@noblegiraffe

We aren’t used to a job that has us sitting down in front of a screen all day. If we wanted that, we wouldn’t be teachers!

So true.

I career changed when my previous job went from being paper based to 100% screen based.

Molly Kingsley of T4T has written another really shit article for the Fail saying teachers are all refusing to use Zoom. Who the hell actually is this woman?! Is she a tabloid journalist who thinks she can’t wfh if her kids are there?