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 have just walked out to my kitchen then back in here. I have got 3 devices all propped up, one balanced on a cushion, extension lead to plug in the iPad that won't work unless plugged in. Headphones. Bits of paper and pens. Heat pack as my back and head are killing me. My feet are frozen, my internet is gasping. FML.

Sending love to you all x

I'm not quitting. It's not unmanageable and currently I don't feel unsafe. I'm not sure what it would take to make me quit mid year and miss my six weeks of summer pay

I probably should quit doing full time work for 0.4 pay but I am sort of my own worst enemy with that. My desire to increase my hours has been put on hold for now though!

My shining light is that when this is all over hopefully the job will feel so much more manageable than it has done in the past thanks to the stark contrast of this years madness running around zones and having no breaks and trying to teach kids at home and in school. I intend to be way more chilled when all this is over.

I'm massively concerned about the catch up stuff. We're going to have so many kids who have done nothing. We need money for TA class support, NOT for teacher led sessions, in my opinion. That way we get more on the spot adult support in every lesson - things can be consolidated across subjects. From a primary perspective.

Also CAMHS is going to need some massive funding - loads of 'small-ly' broken children - social skills, anxiety. Not the big issues, but the small ones.

I am having a painfully long email exchange with a student on how to submit work on classroom rather than sending me screen shots of a separately opened google document. To get each bit of information I need as to what he has been doing it on and why he's screenshotting rather than sharing etc has been torturous. Once I knew what the problem was and what he didn't understand I could start giving step by step instructions.

Every response he sends is typed in the subject line

I admire your optimism but cynic in me says dream on - they don't even deal with the huge issues let alone the smaller ones sadly. Can't see that changing.

Oh. My. God.

The government has said no free school meals during Feb half term.

Why do they keep doing this?!

Someone activate Marcus Rashford. Again.

They are entirely incapable of reading the room noble.

It's one week. What dicks.

@TheHoneyBadger
Thanks - I don't think they or I get notified if a comment goes in there though. I was hoping for something that would definitely flag my attention with an audible notification or some such.

It should email you/them every time the other sends a message that way. If it isn't, you may need to change your notification settings. Then you could see if you can add a sound to your email notification. If you wanted to do it that way, that is.

@noblegiraffe

Oh. My. God.

The government has said no free school meals during Feb half term.

Why do they keep doing this?!

Someone activate Marcus Rashford. Again.

I wish it would stop saying "Schools..." and start saying "School catering companies..." because you know the Government/media will find some way to switch this back on us.

Oh god then I'd have constant pinging telling me that someone called so and so's Mum and didn't leave a message could they call them back please etc. Thanks Iam. Think I just need to discipline myself to making that page one of my constant glance overs during lesson time as well. I could just open a google meet with my camera and mic off that they can join if they want help and speak to get my attention. However I think we're meant to record all of our google meets for safeguarding - I guess it doesn't matter if I'm recording hours of silence though.

What I don't want to do is make them too passive so they don't even try to figure stuff out and are immediately 'miss' ing like they do in class. A bit of trying is just what they need.

@noblegiraffe

Oh. My. God.

The government has said no free school meals during Feb half term.

Why do they keep doing this?!

Someone activate Marcus Rashford. Again.

honest to god - there will be a U turn by this evenings reports

Every response he sends is typed in the subject line
Your student is my senco

MrsH - at first I kept thinking why does he keep sending me blank messages until I realised ahh the subject line is the message! It is so much easier to just call someone but safeguarding is in the middle so marathon length email chain it is.

So much for me not working today. I'm rubbish!

Also CAMHS is going to need some massive funding - loads of 'small-ly' broken children - social skills, anxiety. Not the big issues, but the small ones.
I think you're right there. We always have kids needing camhs support, but there will be a lot more of them now. Mine might possibly be one who needs it. She's happy at the minute, enjoying life at home and working at her own pace with no behaviour problems. The problem will be going back to school, where she's expected to speak to people. She's always been incredibly shy, verging on selective mute, but never quite bad enough for us to need external help. She might need external help after lockdown though, because she won't have spoken to anyone outside her own circle of immediate family and her choice of friends (on facetime) for so long. I'm not sure how she'll cope with talking at school, or at health appointments, etc, and she's old enough now that people expect her to speak for herself rather than relying on me to speak for her.

Every response he sends is typed in the subject line
I have a family of those. They all do it and I teach 3 of them. It drives me bonkers, but I put up with it.

We are worried about some social development with our 6 year old.

We took her friend for a walk with us on Sunday, there was some silly issue that blew up into a 20 minute strop and scream situation from mine. Then walking across the park with the same child the other day, the other child did the same. They haven't had the back and forth in each other's houses enough for play dates - when they have to sort out their own issues a bit more. They are all going to be getting dreadfully offended by nothing - complete late of social resilience. Girls already have this issue, but it will be compounded.

I'm really out of the loop with young children and what this is like for them. I teach secondary and I own a teenager. Teenager is not without his challenges but can continue his friendships via yelling at each other on games on the ps4 or calling each other and doing their work together helping each other.

Appreciate it's different with younger ones and it must require a lot from you. I was genuinely surprised when primary schools closed. I didn't see that coming. That's when it hit home things must have be going really really wrong with covid numbers and hospitals for them to u turn on that one.

@PussyCatInChristmasStockings

Saw this comment on another site and thought you'd all appreciate the tone:

Gavin Williamson would be out of his depth in a petri dish.

love that

Well, my child missed a chunk of reception year - where you start developing friendships. She went back in June, but lots of them didn't - my child loved it, small class, made friends. Worked for her. Then back into normal class in September, breakfast and afterschool club with different younger children, and now in school 2 days a week with a different crowd of younger children again. Can't be good really.

We offered to buy the school some books on a standing order - the first set I bought was a year group appropriate level. The teacher said 'thanks, but they aren't anywhere near that' (my child is, obv!). So, a whole year group who are way behind in reading. Like, WAY behind.

I say behind as if I think it is actually 'behind' - what we mean is 'if the gov keeps holding children and schools to these ridiculous standards, these children will be called behind'.

Totally get what you mean. Behind only in the sense of an arbitrarily drawn line in the sand.

Though at age I can really see where the inequity would come in between kids of parents like yourself who will keep up reading and phonics type skills and numeracy at home and those who won't. Then there's the impact of schools having to try and make up for that whilst kids who are on track do what? I guess prepare to differentiate across and even vaster gulf than every

At secondary it will be behaviour - I already saw it last term after the two weeks school was closed to our year 8s. Those who had done fuck all of the remote learning at home were quite proud of themselves and disrupting lessons where they didn't get what we were doing but refused to engage with me trying to help them and explain because they don't get it and they're not going to try and that's that. So instead of it being a catch up issue it becomes shitty behaviour and everyone's learning being impacted on.

They're not new behaviour problems in the sense these are the kids who had behaviour issues anyway and were under engaged already but it has amped up that behaviour and disengagement to the point where they're going to be hard to keep in the classroom.

Full of typos sorry. Well done if you managed to decipher that.

I also went down the mind-wander of whether sports are going to suffer. By which I mean things like Olympic disciplines - have young gymnasts and swimmers just missed some 'formative' years of skills learning/body development? Will there be a 2 year gap of handy-bendy type sports skills?

Though, and I'm aware lurkers will be horrified, how we keep some of our kids in the classroom already I don't know and I don't think I can hand on heart say that being kept in the classroom really benefits them and it certainly doesn't benefit the other students and their ability to learn.

At some point we need to work out what the hell we do with these kids imo because it's just not fair on everyone else to be held back and stuck being an audience during their learning time to kids who consistently disrupt and at best are relatively contained but certainly not there to try and learn. It's like we have to pretend these kids don't exist and aren't wasting not only their own chance at an education but also hampering other peoples chances.

I appreciate this is the teaching equivalent of suggesting eugenics or something but there has to be an alternative to dealing with them and trying to help their life chances without damaging other people's.

I say behind as if I think it is actually 'behind' - what we mean is 'if the gov keeps holding children and schools to these ridiculous standards, these children will be called behind'.

Yes, we need the govt to recognise that it isn't fair to have the same expectations of children and to dial down the pressure to perform in SATS and move ARE a bit.

When our lot went back in Sept (year 3) we had some who had leapt on with reading and maths, but lots of behaviour issues. Minor stuff but annoying, they couldn't stop themselves from calling out during input, talking at the wrong time. Lots of fiddling about, not following instructions, low-level irritation. We had just about sat on it by Christmas but now, who knows?

My secondary age teenager is hard to read. Teenagers are their own breed anyway, but I do see signs of lack of socialisation and self-esteem issues.