The Forty Second Republic - Lockdown 3 online learning struggles continue

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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

Yes thanks but tea's a bit late.

Wish I could discuss the safeguarding thing with someone before am back in on Monday (have changed my rota day to allow a science technician to test people on Monday!). But will survive. As I said, it's really not a shocking thing, relative to stuff that often gets disclosed.

What do you do reading age with?

Science books were a nightmare when I was teaching it. Not a foundation book to be found anywhere and totally inaccessible for a lot of our students. Also very little information or explanation and no... hooks or links to things that would give them a way into understanding itms? Also very very few tasks and no scaffolding or building on prior knowledge very explicitly.

You'd have a lesson say on something like ionic bonding and a double page spread with five small but dense paragraphs (that assumed pre existing knowledge and skills that my low set ones (and I) didn't have and then 3 questions/tasks that the kids couldn't access. Exam board books that were more like giant knowledge organisers than teaching and learning tools.

Obviously it was worse for a non specialist like myself but nothing available for low ability, literacy problems etc and an assumption that kids were top set maths and seemingly no understanding of what kids cover in maths and when. You'd suddenly them using standard form and wanting the kids to compare the size of atoms and planets without even explaining the form they'd expressed those sizes in. Fun with kids who are bottom set maths.

@JanuaryChill

Yes thanks but tea's a bit late.

Wish I could discuss the safeguarding thing with someone before am back in on Monday (have changed my rota day to allow a science technician to test people on Monday!). But will survive. As I said, it's really not a shocking thing, relative to stuff that often gets disclosed.

Do you use My Concern at your school?

Safeguarding disclosures can side swipe us, because we all have different backgrounds and issues. Take care of yourself January.

The maths needed in the science curriculum is often 2+ years ahead of the equivalent maths curriculum. I'm constantly surprised. Science A levels also seem to assume everyone takes A Level maths alongside them. Probably a fair assumption for physics, not biology and chemistry.

We use Salford for Reading age, but I’m in with the littlies-I’m not sure what age it goes upto.

We use access reading tests. They give lots of interesting raw scores as well as a reading age.

Aeons ago I did some writing for OUP - they had very specific guidance about page layout and content based on the target audience. So if you did the main book, you had to do it one way; the extension book was that plus a bit; the access book was that minus a bit. It was really interesting.

We've just started using myconcern for all staff, but I couldn't get it to work this morning so ended up emailing. Why?

I think one of things that's making me gasp is that I nearly didn't report it at all, it was fragments of overheard conversation, combined with something which would have raised eyebrows in my youth but definitely not now.

Also it's my DD's year (though not girls she knows well, the other band) and I know they now see me as a snitch, or whatever the current word is! Although to be fair they did no more than give me a sidelong glance in the afternoon and at one point remind one another not to speak too loudly....

It would be helpful if you could somehow get feedback on a concern you raised - whether you were right to raise it and what the consequences would be. I KNOW why this isn't possible (1 raising a concern is always right; 2 they won't be able to tell you much if anything, and yes I know there's a right to check that something's being acted on), but it's like a skill which never gets developed beyond entry stage unless you're directly involved in pastoral work.

Anyway, it was the right thing to do. Will shut up now.

Our Safeguarding Lead would take a phone call at any time over the weekend if we wanted to discuss something. They say their role is to take worries away from us as well as safeguard the students.

And, within reason, we are allowed to know follow up to stuff we've reported. To close the loop that we know concerns have been followed through.

I wish ours would. She just tells us she's very busy.

Remind me are you primary random? I can imagine it's rather different there.

I would not choose to speak over the weekend to either our DSL (nice ish but not very inspiring) or his deputy (scary and I had an indirect run-in with her once over something she said to my daughter which I complained about!).

It's really nice to be able to post here though, thanks all.

No, secondary. All concerns have to be passed on verbally and followed up with email. We're not allowed to just email.

I hope you don't worry too much over the weekend.

Obviously, there are loads of things we're not allowed to know, but we always get a head around the door and a "this is in hand" afterwards.

I was a late entrant to the profession in a school with a rigid hierarchy of teachers - the longest serving got the best groups. I also had a mixed background so ended up once teaching Maths, Science and ICT to Y9. Some poor kids had me for 5 lessons out of 6...
Anyway, the setting in Maths was rigorous, that in Science was largely determined by who you sat next to and copied off in tests, and ICT was mixed ability. I was surprised to find some of my bottom set Maths (excuse the capital M, but I think subject titles without capitals are an abomination) in Set 2 Science. They weren’t coping, their only strategy being to hide - they weren’t interested at all, or they might have done better. In contrast, one boy considered more or less a write off otherwise absolutely shone in anything computer related. He pretty much came up with the idea of a relational database all by himself one day. He was an almost totally visual learner (and I think learning styles are nonsense generally). Interestingly, we had a very strong ICT dept, run by a sociologist with support from me (Maths) and an Art teacher.
Sorry, I know I ramble on a bit. The above was really supposed to focus on setting...

I wouldn't choose to speak to our DSL over a weekend, or ever really, as she's only DSL in name as far as I can see, the deputies do the main part if the role. The 3 deputies are great though, so any of them would be happy to talk through worries with staff at any time.

Passing on concerns is always right. Never doubt yourself. We're always told that it's far better to pass on a non-serious incident than it is to fail to pass on a serious one. So err on the side of caution. I seem to pass something on every week with some of my kids, they seem to open up to me for some reason (I assume it's because they think I care, which I do)

I hate having to pass stuff on to our safeguarding person for silly reasons. She's not a teacher and keeps you loitering outside her office for ages (I know she probably has good reasons but time is precious to me) the just talks endlessly reprising what she has already said and sort of doesn't let you get much of a word in after the initial report. I always end up feeling like a fool as it will be stuff that "we are aware of that and handling it" blah blah blah.
I then follow up with an email which gets an "acknowledged, thanks".
Then nothing more is ever said.
Always feels really unfinished, hanging, needing closure almost.

Re science, I was told once that the new double science requires so much new vocabulary in terms of key words that it's equivalent to an MFL GCSE. I have no idea if that's true but it feels believable! Especially for students who don't already have a wide vocabulary.

I don't love the current science curriculum at all. I think it tests fact recall and ability to apply facts, and a bit of data interpretation and applied maths. I think it's fully possible to get a high grade without really understanding the scientific method or being able to take an idea from concept to hypothesis to conclusion. And it doesn't teach any research skills at all.

I think some of the fact learning is important, because without the background, you can't come up with new ideas. However, I don't think science gcse sets kids up well for careers in STEM. And I don't think there's much benefit to having to memorise so much physiology, for example.

Oh, also we do all safeguarding via my concern, although often follow up in person or via email, be doing a my concern very much feels like it has disappeared into the ether!

Interesting born. I think for many people the learning style business is fairly irrelevant as they have decent enough affinity with several.

Did you ever do that test where you end up with a shape? I can't explain it well but it had projecting corners out to each learning style showing strengths/weaknesses and or how balanced it was. Most would be fairly balanced but maybe a couple of areas of extra preference. Ergo could learn in any style really but have ideal styles and preferences.

I think it would be pertinent in someone like the student you describe who'd have a really extreme shape with one corner way out from centre and the others all very short. An extreme case compounded by his weaknesses (or undeveloped skills) correlating with the exact styles most relied upon in school.

In science with the young ones aside from the modules and throughout I tried to do a lot of scientific method and reasoning with them and I guess again could sneak in a bit of my background in comparative epistemology and get them engaged in critical thinking and the difference between anecdotal and objective views etc.

Year 9s I taught,when gcse starts, just seemed really turned off and it just felt like trying to make information stick in their heads when they have no tree to hang it on or make it have meaning. Shame we couldn't do more philosophy of science or history of ideas and human endeavour.

Teaching science is hard in my opinion

Philosophy of science and history of ideas sounds so much more interesting to me than the "facts" of science (which are necessarily abbreviated and arbitrarily chosen).

I wonder if they teach courses like that in US High Schools? I imagine so, along the same lines as splitting up arithmetic, algebra etc in mathematics.

We have te written our ks3 curriculum to focus on working scientifically it was almost project but very practical based. The pandemic made us go back to the old one as we were not in the labs.

@RandomGrammarPun

Philosophy of science and history of ideas sounds so much more interesting to me than the "facts" of science (which are necessarily abbreviated and arbitrarily chosen).

I wonder if they teach courses like that in US High Schools? I imagine so, along the same lines as splitting up arithmetic, algebra etc in mathematics.

I always wonder about the way US schools compartmentalise the areas of maths. Does it make it easier to teach? Encourage deeper understanding? How do they show the way different "subjects" are connected? Based on how our kids find it incredible that they use graphs and standard form in science and needing correct vocabulary (English) in maths, I'd be really interested to find out how/if US teachers do it.

Sky news have a report about children missing from education in lockdown focusing on Skegness.

One school has a staff voluntary wage reduction scheme to help their pupils. This government is really disgusting that this is even a thing.

What?