The Forty Third Republic - Lockdown learning continues - when is half term?

[Staffdontblowitnow]

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

Counting one's blessings does become pretty bloody tiresome though.

Had an email sent to teachers this week with helpful grids reminding us of our children's assessment data for reading, writing and maths in t2 compared to their end of year targets. Apparently, these are to help us keep focused on the key children who are not on track. None of these children from my class are actually in school. In order to meet the targets they gave us in Sep, I'd have to get the better progress scores (comparing with our baseline assessments on return) than I ever have previously. I got the best progress data for the school in ks2 for both years I have worked there. WTAF!

@SquashedFlyBiscuits that sounds crazy!

I’m just focusing on each day and getting through that or to the weekend and where we will go for our long walk. I can’t think about long term or what is happening too much as then it feels too overwhelming. I feel like I can manage each day or week though so am doing that instead of counting blessings I think!

Wtaf indeed. Try laughing loudly if they ever try it in person. ...oh you're serious?

It actually looks like a nice day today as January days go. I may go for a decent walk and get errands done. We have a village free stuff page and I have a couple of bits to pick up. I could also do with putting up pics of things I want to give away. We do contactless handovers but it was very busy in the first lockdown when being stuck at home seemed to inspire everyone to have a clear out. People also started leaving boxes of courgette or rhubarb out with help yourself signs.

When you spend too much time on mn you forget how graciously and generously most people have dealt with this year. Once again we're getting lots of emails thanking us for how hard we're working and expressing gratitude for the blend of lessons we're providing (no one seems to want all live lessons but like having some) and the support we've offered. We've dished out loads more laptops and dongles and the villagers have also set up a group collecting unused laptops to give to families in need.

The girls who came to my online drop in clinic yesterday were sweet and grateful for help and some just wanted to say hi.

The level of entitlement and spite on the forum really doesn't match my lived experience.

Yes, it definitely does is good to focus on the positive and grateful responses we get as we know they represent far more people who feel the same way but don't have the time to put pen to paper or assume they'll be bothering us.

Yesterday, I got two gorgeous emails from students with enthusiastic responses to the subject and one from a very grateful parent (in a specific way). Makes it all worth it. We're actually very easily pleased, aren't we?

I enjoyed myself rather too much being Noble 's sidekick

I had a brief loss of internet and a brief panic it wouldn't be brief

Trying to summon up the oompf to get properly dressed and leave the house and get stuff done.

Apparently we 'only' have 680 cases per 100,000 here as of January 17th. Down from 860 ish in the previous seven days.

My dad has gone for his first vaccine dose today. 75 with copd and prostrate cancer. It's at a community centre and they are queuing round the block apparently. Really weird as my mum had hers 2 weeks ago at the gp and she isn't even vulnerable. Wondering if they're giving Pfizer to the cev hence needing special refrigeration equipment and doing a mass batch in one go? My mum didn't even ask what she had but I'm guessing the Oxford one.

@chocolateisavegetable

I enjoyed myself rather too much being Noble 's sidekick

🤜 🤛 fistbump to my partner in crime!

Arse. Home have locked down. I’m never going to get back, am I?

My parents had their jabs yesterday. I was surprised as they are still late 60s. Didn't know they'd got that far. I wish we knew more about the effectiveness of this single jab business

Argh bloody migrains - sorry for opening with a rant. I haven't had them for years then 3 in as many weeks! I've turned the blue right down on my monitors so hoping that helps.

Loving the wacom btw. Looks like it does the same as an x pen. Have used it in lessons to annotate ppts too. Loads going cheap on ebay at the mo.

to all struggling for whatever reason.

Sorry to hear that, Rafa. I sometimes feel like I'm never going to see my parents again and they're at least in the same country, just very far away.

My mum is getting vaccinated today, but my dad isn't, because despite being more vulnerable in health terms, he is younger. It's very frustrating.

One of my students has suddenly started getting migraines too. I recommended tinted glasses- I bought some from amazon and they do seem to relieve eye strain a bit.

Migraines are the work of the devil. I I have special coated glasses to help now. Other things that help are:

• sitting as far as possible from the screen
• being upright
• drinking enough water
• take spatone daily (iron)

Get your eyes tested if you haven't had them done in a while. The increase in screen time may mean they need a little help.

They’re hitting it early and compliance is usually excellent so hopefully the single digit number of cases will be 0 soon. Doesn’t help with the closure of borders that happened the other week though.

Schools have shut for the first time they opened up fully last June. One of the cases is in a school pupil and the more I think about it the more mad it is that the level for protection in our schools with a zero covid policy is virtually the same as in U.K. schools when there were thousands of cases here at the end of term. There’s no bubbles obviously and inter school stuff still happened but a bubble with hundreds of people in it isn’t really a bubble is it?

Rafals - Guernsey?

You're not wrong there Rafals. And, it must be very hard with family in another country at the moment.

But the bubbles, certainly st secondary, were never really bubbles anyway!

Rafals may not want to say as it's a bit outing, Guernsey is a small place. My lovely friend who is no longer with us came from there.

True. sorry Rafals.

Well, no. If you have 1000 pupils in a secondary (and many are, of course, much larger), the bubble is immediately around 750 families - add in very basic and local mixing, like popping in to the Co-op and that's something like 5-6 large villages' worth of people all connected by one vector. It's a huge amount of mixing, isn't it?

Yes, Enemy.

There’s a lot of us about, January. When I started my current job the woman who trained me has close friend who live at the end of the road from the house where I grew up.

Bubbles of 300 was always ridiculous, especially with mixing outside and no effective mitigation inside.

Genuine question asked by a retired teacher friend today: Why do schools need two weeks to reopen?

I had to admit that I hadn't really considered this, apart from 'to get our heads round it'! And that that was just Gav ad libbing anyway.

Then I thought of these things but am not sure any of them really need a fortnight:

• to tell parents so kids actually arrive
• for site staff to reopen closed buildings etc
• for caterers to order and receive supplies
• for RAs (whole school and for CEV staff/students to be reviewed)
• so teachers can revise short term lesson plans etc

Am sure there are more, but would it be fair to say it could be done in less than a fortnight? I mean, things might not be done perfectly, but it is important to get kids back into schools.

When we partially reopened in June we had several weeks. In September we had a few weeks in July and then poor school leaders working over the summer holidays.

Whether we'd also be looking at entirely new ways of working, eg rotas, masks everywhere, is another matter. But tbh I can't think of any such measures which haven't been tried by some schools already - at least if you confine it to things the DfE have a small chance of agreeing, nothing really sensible like SD in classrooms etc.

Tell me I'm wrong.....

Sorry, hope I don't sound like an U4T infiltrator!

I think the two weeks is a response to every other decision being the night before.

It will be the two weeks of the Easter holidays.

Maybe mass testing pupils?

I know last time with re-opening there were worries about flushing the water systems, something about Legionnaire’s disease. No idea if that’s still an issue.

I think it’s a knee-jerk reaction to complaints about how everything with schools has been done at no notice. Clearly for teachers a week would be more than we are used to so two seems overkill.