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

Similar here honey - we seem to have more 'vulnerable' i.e badly behaved and not doing any work in than key worker at the minute. Most of them are just treating it as an excuse to socialise

I agree Jan but don't assume that the teachers are any happier about it!

January I always asked parents to put phone on speaker before I spoke to the kids. Definitely 141!

Didn’t Ofsted say the opposite last week??

What. The actual. Fuck. Gav.

He has no idea what he’s doing.

@TheHoneyBadger

Madness at school. Numbers have gone up and some of the worst behaved boys all in together for no reason other than mum was keen to see the back of them.

I wasn't prepared for that change of pace.

This shouldn't be allowed. A member of my tutor group's mum asked if she could come in because she is doing no work. I was fairly discouraging!

@Appuskidu

Didn’t Ofsted say the opposite last week??

I'm pretty sure they did.

I guess the DfE can't imagine a school where lots of people have crap internet and one laptop between three kids.

Gav talks shit and does a shit job and nobody challenges him, as usual.

If I talked shit and did a shit job, I’d be on capability proceedings. Why isn’t he?

Head has just said that we are not having close contacts in school- which I am really relieved about.

A member of staff has tested positive for Covid, 3rd since the start of term. I know he has been involved in administering lateral flow tests too.

Really poor behaviour from a couple of boys with instant kicking off at requests but I worry there's a racial element where I'm dealing with some boys attitude to white women and not dealing with that well myself and probably making it worse. I wish there were more open discussions about this and it wasn't a fearful conversation.

Managed to find an interesting article by an Africa American female teacher talking about the respect and treatment she gets from black boys in the classroom and what she observes happening between white women teachers and black boys. But just a short article that touches on the dynamics.

If anyone can point me in the direction of good information or tools I'd be grateful and hopefully I haven't caused any offence in talking about it.

@SansaSnark

Head has just said that we are not having close contacts in school- which I am really relieved about.

A member of staff has tested positive for Covid, 3rd since the start of term. I know he has been involved in administering lateral flow tests too.

That's great! Pleased for you

@SansaSnark

Head has just said that we are not having close contacts in school- which I am really relieved about.

A member of staff has tested positive for Covid, 3rd since the start of term. I know he has been involved in administering lateral flow tests too.

That’s good. Presume you’re secondary? I

You could read about Tony Sewell's studies about black boys and education honey but it is a bit discredited now. Interesting though.

Just checked numbers. 700 per 100000 in nearest town. Hard to believe numbers over 100 were considered high not long ago.

Gavin won't have read the head of research at Ofsted's report on effective remote teaching then? Shared by the Dfe..

I made my year 11s do an Oak lesson today. Feedback ranged from 'really helpful ' to ' a bit easy' and 'rather longwinded' so I'll go with the really helpful one!

@Appuskidu Yes, secondary. It's really reassured me.

Also, the member of staff was picked up by a LFT which shows they are working to an extent!

@Piggywaspushed

Gavin won't have read the head of research at Ofsted's report on effective remote teaching then? Shared by the Dfe..

I made my year 11s do an Oak lesson today. Feedback ranged from 'really helpful ' to ' a bit easy' and 'rather longwinded' so I'll go with the really helpful one!

We are allowed to do oak lessons along side other things- SLT's view is that a mix of activities is beneficial in terms of engagement, and different things will suit different students.

I used an Oak lesson today too.

Science - we've been doing an investigation, and this week in school would have been observing results and writing up - but only the first bit. So, I took some pics of the plants i'm killing in different places, then set them a lesson on plant adaptation from Oak.

We've started doing specific group teaching for SEND now, so that's another chunk of my day used up. I'd rather spend my time on planning core subjects properly. I know science counts, but meh.

I'm so sorry herdy that sounds awful for your dh, and you too of course.

@Piggywaspushed

I keep getting pestered for exam entries form my exam officer. Literally hold your horses love!!! How in the blazes should I know whether I can/ should enter students for AS or not??

I'm afraid I'm going to have to start pestering our Heads of Dept too about exam entries soon... Annoyingly, the exam boards are sticking with the usual entry date (21st February, which is also at the end of our half-term, so in reality a week earlier....) and also charging us full fees still with a vague promise of a partial refund later on.... The 21st Feb date is only provisional entries, you can withdraw with full refund for at least a month afterwards (exact date depending on board) so I always advise anyone not sure to enter now and withdraw later on . (Much cheaper than not entering in February and having to do a late entry which has extortionate fees!) Got to do the termly census first though - was hoping the DfE might cancel it (as they did last summer term) but no such luck!

Thanks for the background... I did know that but am in a bit of a panic!

I can imagine that school. I teach in it. A lot of them have decent enough internet for what they would normally use it for, but nowhere near good enough for every member of the family to be in video calls. And no way of improving their internet because they already have the best package available in their villages, and fibre optic connections don't reach that far. Oh, and by the way, all 5 kids are sharing one laptop and one phone. We do have a fair number of pretty affluent families, but our catchment is really, really mixed.

Sorry to hear the news about your brother @JanuaryChill

Today, I set my year group the task of drawing a diagram of the digestive system. One child submitted a drawing of a castle. Sums online learning up for me really!

Anyone fancy talking to the BBC?

twitter.com/UsEngland/status/1351218911090511874?s=20

It's not even about being affluent. In rural and semi-rural areas, the broadband can just be totally crap however much you're prepared and able to pay.