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

I think you should type up the reply you'd like to send tonight but DON'T do it by clicking on reply

There’s a Mumsnet thread in the waiting ‘HELP! How do I retrieve an email sent by accident asking a parent who the fuck they think they are???!!’

noble

Thanks for all the help with the pen. I'm trying it out on a live lesson with year 12 tomorrow morning so could do with knowing how to use it. Magic you all say, so I shall trust the magic. At least it's year 12, they're quite forgiving of any tech mishaps.

I'm snip and sketching each question for the pdf. I'm sure there must be a better way but I don't know it, so I'll have to figure it out later

@MrsHamlet

I find I speak to people like they're dogs sometimes. Put that down. Pick that up. Sit. Quiet. Email it by 3pm.

Not so much "who's a lovely boy then"

Yes but I'm talking about colleagues MrsH - not kids. I've always been determined I won't be a teacher who ends up talking to adults like they're kids but sometimes that seems to be what they want/need

Honey I'm afraid I do it to some colleagues too. I have some who seem to need very clear instructions with no room for confusion.

MrsAD have you tried it in one note? I dump snips of questions in there and then I can write on them in there.

@MrsHamlet

I find I speak to people like they're dogs sometimes. Put that down. Pick that up. Sit. Quiet. Email it by 3pm.

Not so much "who's a lovely boy then"

I do that too. Dh occasionally mentions that other people put pleasantries around the instructions. The kids at school sometimes ask if I think they're dogs, to which I reply "who's a good boy? Do you want a treat? Then sit down and do as you're told!"

Honeybadger unfortunately I speak to my dh all the time like that too

for you Choc and Ange.

My veneer of politeness with certain pushy parents is wearing rather thin now. I get that it's tough. I get that it's frustrating when the tech plays up or the child just isn't getting it. I sympathise, really I do. But until they clone me I don't have the capacity to respond instantly to every message.

OneNote is the best for writing maths I think. Infinite scroll down, it’s like having a rolly whiteboard.

I really like one note. It's become a bit of an obsession.

Oh and the best thing by far about OneNote is that you don’t have to save anything at all ever. It auto syncs to the cloud, from laptop to iPad and everything. No searching for and opening files.

Noble, if you go to manage team (not in the meeting, in the general team settings). There should be a list of kids and you can mute all of them or just one. Then they can't type in chat. They can still talk if you allow them to unmute but if you disallow that they won't be able to interact.

I did it accidentally to my lovelies so it definitely works.

@noblegiraffe annoyingly you can’t stop them posting to chat once chucked out but I think you prevent them editing and deleting their own comments within your team. We’ve advised this so they can’t post rubbish and then delete. Anything posted stays and then we have evidence to discipline. I can tell you how if that is helpful at all?

Ok, thanks for that. I'll investigate one note tomorrow then. I do love a rolly whiteboard for writing maths. Other subjects got rid of their rolling boards while we installed bigger ones (and got rid of the smart boards that everyone else seems to like)

@EvilEdnasEnemiesOfEducation

Noble, if you go to manage team (not in the meeting, in the general team settings). There should be a list of kids and you can mute all of them or just one. Then they can't type in chat. They can still talk if you allow them to unmute but if you disallow that they won't be able to interact.

I did it accidentally to my lovelies so it definitely works.

Does it stop them writing in chat though? I thought it just stopped them unmuting themselves to speak/make noise? I would LOVE it if it blocked chat but I’m not sure it does...

We had a parent quite cross today that her dd had been working really hard at home and yet teachers had marked her as not having engaged with the home learning. Dd had never submitted a single piece of work despite clear instructions on various ways she could do it from all subjects. Mum appeared to think we could just psychically link to the child's laptop and was pretty pissed off about how stressful it was that we hadn't acknowledged how hard her dd was working.

I think she had responses from several of us offering to talk her dd through how to submit work etc. All calmly offering our time.

I think a lot of people need calmly talking away from the edge at the minute as many are on a hair trigger ready to blow.

I'm so tired. Is there a point where you get more than one day ahead of yourself?!

I always am Dolly but then you've got the kids and colleagues who are three days behind you dragging you backwards. Just keep swimming.

I think mute does block chat if you mute them on the team. We've had it done accidentally to some of ours after another issue.

@MsAwesomeDragon
Can I ask for help with using the xp pen? I'm using the deco 01 tablet, but while I can use it as a mouse I have no idea how to make that show up as writing How can I write on a ppt, or a pdf, etc?
I can use mine on word when I’ve clicked the “draw” tab at the top of Word (where you find files and insert).
Then it just works.
When I’m presenting a power point I just draw on it and it does it by magic.

I had the same issue - turns out my version of windows is too old, so at some point I'm going to swap laptops w DS (or just do marking after hours on his)

Our chat is blocked. I mute them all, if they keep unmuting themselves, I boot them out. No time for fuckery.

@HercwasanEnemyofEducation

I think mute does block chat if you mute them on the team. We've had it done accidentally to some of ours after another issue.

Ha! off to investigate that tomorrow. My poor classes are the Teams guinea pigs in my school!!!

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot

Our chat is blocked. I mute them all, if they keep unmuting themselves, I boot them out. No time for fuckery.

I know how to stop them unmuting completely, either individually or as a whole class - we use the chat a lot in our school (secondary) for them to engage with the lesson. You know things like you've got 30 seconds to work out the answer, have it ready in the chat, when I count down and say go you press send etc... or for them to ask us questions etc...

They aren't allowed to use the chat bit where you can just send individual messages type chat, but they can use the chat part within the teams meetings. I know how to change my meeting before the meeting so they can't access it at all also, but what I'd really like is the ability to just 'ban' someone from the chat when we're in a meeting or when I've chucked them out instantaneously by clicking the three dots next to their name if that makes sense. I've trawled support sites but thought it couldn't be done!!

On another note have any of you use the live events rather than meetings for assemblies etc.?

One would hope Microsoft or whoever would be using all the extra money they'll surely be getting from puttingfees up soon I expect and share price going up etc to employ loads of developers to respond to the many educator requests and questions they must be getting at present....
??

For teams...

If you set up the meeting and add the 'channel' they can post from outside the meeting. If you just invite via email addresses (you do this from calendar rather than from the team, doing from the team adds the channel automatically), they can't.

Muting mine doesn't stop them typing in chat here. Kicking them out does though (once we realised channels were bad, mmmkay)

You can also stop them unmuting by changing the meeting settings so 'allow participants to unmute' is switched off, you can do this when you set up the meeting (though I can't find it on my Mac app), or in settings once you've started the meeting.