The Forty Fourth Republic - primaries sort of in, secondaries out, Gormless Gav says two weeks notice

[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

@Frlrlrubert

Can I just come in and hide by the biscuits?

Tutor phone calls today (2 hours), I am not cut out for pastoral!

Had to hand in my 'skills assessment' for our redundancy process - might have panicked and pretty much offered to teach anything going 🙈

Redundancy?! I thought (not sure why) that you are a science teacher? I would hate to do a skills assessment. It's bad enough doing a self evaluation for PM.

That poor girl and her family. Barely an adult.
And I'm assuming that as an eating disorder survivor she will come under the othering "health conditions" category.

That poor teacher’s family. 25 is so young, but yes, probably written off as ‘underlying conditions’.

@JanuaryChill

Have people seen the NEU's Recovery Plan? Weird timing because it's surely more announcement worthy than the buying of pencils....

If you click through it's supported (?) by something called Action Squared which has been involved with environmental coalition etc etc. Not had time to look further but I wouldn't imagine the right wing would be very impressed with it.

It's on my to do list - to be honest I'm a bit fed up of all the emails from them as it is never anything than impacts on my job/life. It's all very well having all these hopes and aims and ambitions, but they never come to pass.

Yeah I wouldn't bother looking then....

Tbh I was more interested in the politics behind it, now have caught the big for investigative journalism (haha)

• 🐛 or 🐜 not big

Geddit?

Redundancy? What???

Does everyone have to do a skills audit anyway every year? Your A level subjects etc. Everyone lies and downgrades themselves so we don't have to teach outside subject... No, not really. But why can't they just look at our records/application forms?

There was a Welsh 40 year old mother of 4 in the news today too

@JanuaryChill

Geddit?

Sorry if I came across a bit meh, just explaining why I haven't clicked through.
Can I also apologise for my general typos and grammar errors. I generally have a child crawling over me while typing. He's currently doing a headstand in my lap. I'm holding his ankles up with one hand and typing one handed with the other.
Parental guilt for all the screen time and ignoring during the school day

Yes an I've also seen stories about two primary kids affected - one died and one who lost both legs (MIS).

But the good news story is the 1lb something premmie who coped with E-coli AND Covid in December, and is now doing well!!

@EnemyOfEducationNo1 ignore us and do a headstand with him!

I probably glided over those two tragedies in my last post. Obviously just dreadful.

Gosh chaps, so much chat. Off the curve as always. Awful news re that young teacher.
Have never been asked to skills audit, though have periodically had to teach random courses some way off my skills set.
Luckily for me I have just been offered an opportunity to run some GCSE masterclasses, which basically means most of the dept get a load of extra frees, whereas I and a couple of other suckers teach groups of 120 online ( I have a ridiculously full tt, and all my other responsibilities come without extra frees, but must have been bad in a former life), I am rock hard but nearly shed a tear or two at that email. Luckily for me I had a 3 hr parents evening after a six period day to take my mind off it.

"Thanks for the opportunity but no"

Yeah, should have been but i am crap at confrontation, and have a guilty conscience about nothing

@RandomGrammarPun

I can't believe you have masks indoors for students, Echt, with your cases right down to almost non-existent and we still don't (only corridors)

Turns out we were misinformed: masks are optional though have to be worn travelling on public transport. One less thing to struggle with in the classroom - not that the students are arsey, just the constant reminding.

Noooooo Loshad
What would you like me to give up so I can do that?

I have become a master of non specialist teaching in recent years. I see we're advertising for English. I considered saying if they can't recruit I could do some year 7 (I do have a levels and did a term of linguistics at uni so not as ridiculous as me teaching science was) but knowing the time tabling shit bag he'd put me down for 5 lessons with 5 different year groups to give me the planning load from hell.

I just want to go up to 0.6 which means an additional 9 lessons per fortnight and I've always been incredibly jealous that the first 15 minutes is silent reading.

I'm umming and ahhing these days over whether I want to get out from under the poverty line or whether I'd rather stay skint but relatively sane.

What's year 7 English like? If it's more complicated grammar than I ever encountered even at a level (like it is in year 6) I would definitely not be up for it.

Our year 7 English would bore my bright 7 year old goddaughter. I'm not sure it's representative though - we like to treat them as if they've learned nothing.

@Loshad

Gosh chaps, so much chat. Off the curve as always. Awful news re that young teacher. Have never been asked to skills audit, though have periodically had to teach random courses some way off my skills set. Luckily for me I have just been offered an opportunity to run some GCSE masterclasses, which basically means most of the dept get a load of extra frees, whereas I and a couple of other suckers teach groups of 120 online ( I have a ridiculously full tt, and all my other responsibilities come without extra frees, but must have been bad in a former life), I am rock hard but nearly shed a tear or two at that email. Luckily for me I had a 3 hr parents evening after a six period day to take my mind off it.

I am indeed a science teacher. We're massively over budget on staffing costs, no clear plan at the moment for who needs to go, so skills audit for all (also not sure why they can pull our records). We, weirdly I know, have an 'extra' science teacher at least, and we don't know if we'll have any A level classes next year (no year 12 physics this year), our current year 11 are a bit under parr, so I'm hedging my bets even though you'd think science teachers were 'safe'.

Sorry to hear that @Frlrlrubert

Oh blimey, @Frlrlrubert - that sucks

MrsHamlet this was your trial wasn’t it? Great news!

That’s tough Frlrlrubert really sorry it looks uncertain for you.

Thanks guys, honestly it pales in comparison to people losing their lives so I'm just keeping my chin up. If it happens we can survive on DH's wage just about, and at least I probably have a good bet on finding something else what with being a shortage subject. Might be a blessing in disguise even, pretty sure my school is on its last circle of the drain at the moment.