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

@thebookeatinggirl

Can I ask for some advice? I have 16 children, KW and vulnerable, in my Primary class and I'm currently trying to do both teaching in school and home-learning as we are single form. With the 'new' guidance from Friday my Deputy tried to get numbers in school down, as we knew there were a few with one critical worker but the other parent at home. He phoned round and tried his best but there are 2 children in my class who have one Critical worker parent but the other is a stay at home parent (admittedly both have a toddler or baby) but both are definitely not working at all. Both refused to have child at home as too difficult to home school with younger siblings. Deputy says guidance says 'should' not 'must' so he can't do anything. Head agrees. I'm furious. Can he and should he insist?

I would contact your union for advice.

It is ridiculous those children are in school.

Many heads have not accepted children in those circumstances into school, but I'm not sure if they can turn away a child they have previously offered a place to?

I would be furious in your shoes too.

We've had a few parents on secondary lessons too... Not usually that rude, though

It’s even worse for secondary, surely the parent doesn’t need to be there at all...

@Useruseruserusee

My Year 2 child has a genuinely lovely teacher, I think she is an NQT but absolutely great and adored by all the children.

Today I got to see some of his live lessons whilst teaching from home myself and was shocked at the behaviour of other parents! Surely you keep yourself out of view and do not speak? One parent interrupted her as she was taking the register for some random unrelated question and another talked over her during the lesson input. Why are people like this?

Oh my gosh.

I think in that situation I wouldn't be able to help but treat the parent like a child who had interrupted me, refuse to answer and wait for silence! I'd perhaps even remind parents that this is a time for children's learning, and if they have a question there are other ways to contact the school.

The entitlement of parents is shocking!

I would be using the ‘mute participant’ button and then removing them from the meeting if they carried on. However I am not an NQT and have grown in assertiveness since I was!

Gosh you lot are chatty!!

Re kids and tech, dd2 seems to be better at using tech than a lot of my secondary pupils. I suppose that's because I've taught her how to do a lot of it last lockdown and now she can do it for herself. If other kids don't have a parent willing or capable of teaching them these basic skills then I don't know how they're supposed to learn it. Even some of my year 13 are still unable to submit work in the way I want it, even though that's the way I asked them to do it last lockdown, made a very detailed video explaining how to do it, and showed them again in September, and again in December. They're supposed to submit it as a PDF via Moodle, but at least half of them try to submit a photo, which then isn't accepted (file size too big) so they email it to me . It's really not that difficult to scan a page or two using the Adobe scan app on their phones i even checked their phones when we were in school to make sure they all had the right app

Me: submit it in turnitin
Work appears in teams
Me: submit it in turnitin
Them: it's not there
Me: are you in the uk site?
Them: it's not there
Me: are you in the uk site?
Them: I don't know what you mean
Me: does it say uk?
Them: it doesn't say that
Me: then you're in the wrong bloody website and that's why it doesn't work you drongo.

Hi useruseruser,

The best thing you can do is send the NQT a message saying thank you and how you thought it was a disgrace how parents were on the lesson with her.

It might give her the courage to speak to SLT regarding it.

Riga I'm glad you're off now. CBT can be really useful, but it doesn't work for all people or all situations. Sometimes how we're feeling is actually very logical, so trying to train our brains to think otherwise is a strange thing to do.

Some parents are horrifically entitled. I couldn't imagine interrupting a primary school lesson for anything, even just sitting listening in is quite intrusive unless your child needs you to help with things (in which case, sit back and shut up until you're needed).

Other parents are truly lovely though. I'm building quite a relationship (purely professional!!) with some of the parents from my nurture group. Those kids need help with everything I send them, so their parents are often the people writing and sending the emails. It's like having individual TAs for those kids rather than the one classroom TA we normally have to share between the 11 of them. Of course, any nurture group pupils who don't have that level of parental help can't really access the lessons because they can't cope with the technology. I also can't use live lessons with them because they are the pupils most likely to be struggling with having enough devices or bandwidth to watch my videos. They also won't take up vulnerable places at school, although we have plenty of space for them if they wanted to take us up on the offer. There are currently only 13 pupils in school from our roll of 1500, so there's really, truly plenty of space for them if they can get there (which they might not be able to tbf, as the school buses obviously aren't running)

All those months of having social compassion, the need for education, 'but who will think of the poor?' etc MNsplained to us all ; have a look at some attitudes on the FSM threads.

Ye Gods.

My school are still doing the vouchers I think, and I know dd's school are doing it as vouchers. My sister gets vouchers for her kids too. I really do think that's a far better way of providing food for FSM. Unless they could provide microwave ready meals, but that doesn't offer the kids any choice. Crap ingredients like that would be useless for families like my sister's, where she's disabled so struggles to cook one meal a day from frozen/convenience ingredients, let alone having to chop half a bloody pepper to use with some other random ingredients.

@MrsHamlet

Me: submit it in turnitin Work appears in teams Me: submit it in turnitin Them: it's not there Me: are you in the uk site? Them: it's not there Me: are you in the uk site? Them: I don't know what you mean Me: does it say uk? Them: it doesn't say that Me: then you're in the wrong bloody website and that's why it doesn't work you drongo.

This has been me for two lessons today.

Trying to get a kid to click on class notebook. Turned out they weren’t even on Teams.

@Piggywaspushed

All those months of having social compassion, the need for education, 'but who will think of the poor?' etc MNsplained to us all ; have a look at some attitudes on the FSM threads.

Ye Gods.

All those vulnerable kids who needed schools to be open and needed a hot meal at lunchtime because it might be their only hot meal of the day (coincidentally meaning that the poster's kid can be in school and get a hot lunch) abandoned when it is just their food that is shit.

I can't believe those food parcels. I keep looking at them and thinking what on earth I would do if it were my kids that was supposed to feed.

awesome have a look at this from Castell Howell

If you're in a live Teams lesson and you've got a kid who wouldn't shut up in the classroom who now won't shut up in chat, what can you do to stop them posting crap while in the lesson, and delete their messages? I couldn't see any options.

@noblegiraffe

If you're in a live Teams lesson and you've got a kid who wouldn't shut up in the classroom who now won't shut up in chat, what can you do to stop them posting crap while in the lesson, and delete their messages? I couldn't see any options.

We just kick them out then on call phone their parents. It's annoying though.

We throw them out of the lesson and phone home.

We've had to ban a couple of year 11 from teams. They're doing precisely nothing now.

We are still doing vouchers too, and I think it's a much better way.

Completely agree that the parents who were talking about poor and vulnerable children are now showing their true colours. The vulnerable are only useful to them when they want to make an argument- they don't actually give a damn.

Obviously they all needed a lot of reminders in first few lessons but once it's down to one or two kids, the above applies.

Is our resident Teams expert around tonight?
I'm hoping to set up a meeting in Teams for staff, without having to type in every one of their names (we are not in any team together). Is this possible? I've had training meetings on teams and I'm assuming they weren't done one name at a time, but possibly..?

@RandomGrammarPun

We throw them out of the lesson and phone home.

I suspect at least one of them is in school as vulnerable.

Bugger, I was hoping for a technological solution!

Well, you might be able to. I have to get our IT team to set me up as the owner of a new team and then add them one by one. But there must be a way...

Why not just email the staff a link to the meeting? Start one from your calendar and send it out?

Or create a whole staff team. It will be worth the pain long term!

Good thinking, batherc
Why didn't I think of that?!