The Forty Sixth Republic - online learning has killed the 'snow day'

[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

That’s not to say that there aren’t kids out there really struggling or in truly terrible circumstances, or with genuine mental health conditions. Of course there are.

I agree with noble. There are loads of kids who are having a shit time and need someone to be looking after them, keeping in touch, letting them talk it through. That's not the same as suffering from PTSD though. I am generally pretty good at knowing what various kids are going through when we're at school (they seem to tell me stuff, I must look as if I care). Most of them were worried about things, covid related, family related, finance related, etc. Very few of them have an actual medical problem that needs trained mental health professionals. Most of them need a caring adult who is looking out for them and happy to listen, and a load of friends who can have some fun and distract each other.

What Us4Them want to do is pretend the shit time isn’t happening. Schools as normal. No mitigation measures.

But gaslighting kids by pretending everything’s fine isn’t good either. They’re not stupid.

Still pissing me off, so more posting.

“The lost generation” headline. Halfon’s tweet “The four horses of the education apocalypse are galloping towards pupils: a big loss of education attainment, huge rise in mental health problems, significant safeguarding hazards and a future loss of earnings of £40,000 per pupil.” I saw some headline about how kids will need 8 extra hours in school a week to catch up. Traumatised kids suffering PTSD. School return dates need to be ‘written in blood’

What the actual fuck is going on with this hyperbolic choice of language and to what end?

@Frlrlrubert

I obviously think science is important but for those who are looking at 2/3 years of study to come out with a 1/1 or a 2/2 I think they'd be better served by a single science GCSE with the basics in or a more practical BTEC style course.

My bottoms sets are often lovely kids but being forced to sit through so many hours of stuff they don't understand I the hope that they can take in some of it demoralises them, so they act out, and it can become crowd control instead of teaching.

I also think making them do 8/9/10 GCSE when they are mostly going to get low grades is wrong. Cut it to English Lang, Maths, Cut down single GCSE science and 2 or 3 of their choice.

Wasn’t this one of the original stated aims of the Progress 8 scores? The idea being that it was supposed to reward just leaving some of the buckets empty and focusing on fewer GCSEs with higher grades, particularly with English & maths double weighted. And then they screwed it up by insisting you had to do language and lit to get the double weighting in English.

I don’t think pushing the public narrative of MH problems and trauma is helping anyone. Not least the children whose MH is being affected. We’d be much better off acknowledging that the whole situation is shit and some of the thoughts and feelings children were experiencing are a completely normal reaction to that. We need to encourage them to talk about it without labelling them and creating a tidal wave of mental health issues. Then we can focus resources on those children for whom it has caused serious problems.
As well as disadvantaged children whose home situations are causing problems, I wouldn’t be at all surprised about motivated, perfectionist, highly able children also making up a proportion of the children who are at risk of ending up with MH problems. Not least with all the people telling them how screwed their education and whole lives are going to be.

U4T and the media have quite a lot to answer for here.

I agree with whoever suggested American style continuous assessment. I'm from the states and that sort of system allows you to take all subjects right up through the end of high school, including electives that you're interested in. Did I need to learn Homeric Greek, Latin, Creative Writing, Music, Ballet etc? No, of course not. But taking modules in them in high school gave me a reason to get up in the morning and go to school. I also think that 16-17 is too early to decide which subjects to take and drop. You never know what you might like to do later in life. Maths was my worst subject but I took it throughout and now I am glad I had to, because the Get Into Teaching facebook page is full of people having to study for a GCSE equivalent maths test. (I had assumed all take it but I guess that isn't correct or maybe not all pass it.) I didn't know back then I wanted to be a teacher, I'm only making the change now at 30.

I also think university here should have a government funded optional foundation year widely available for students to take a variety of modules and be exposed to subjects they hadn't realised existed. The whole "core curriculum" thing is big back home and even though I thought it would be a drag taking topics that weren't in my major, I ended up loving some of them. I think here people end up signing on to courses where they don't understand what they are getting into and then if they don't like it, they often have to start over.

Of course this requires £££ and more teachers, and under a Tory govt.....

I wonder if U4T will switch to

'school is so bad for children's mental health due to all the pressure they put our children under'

When things go back to something resembling normal.

@FrippEnos

I wonder if U4T will switch to

'school is so bad for children's mental health due to all the pressure they put our children under'

When things go back to something resembling normal.

But of course :o

Halfon said that four horsemen thing on my local news over a week ago so either he keeps repeating it because he is pleased with it or it is the rent a quote to the media. To compare this thing to the apocalypse is really dreadful.

Three of them have no evidence and one of them is tenuous. Even The Guardian buried the details in the recent survey that said wellbeing hadn't markedly declined.

Quite a lot of exasperated MH people are appearing on telly now I ahve noticed, asking adults not to catastrophise.

One of my lovely year 12 students yesterday, when I asked how she was said "to be honest, miss, it's all a bit shit, isn't it?". Bless her.

@Piggywaspushed

Halfon said that four horsemen thing on my local news over a week ago so either he keeps repeating it because he is pleased with it or it is the rent a quote to the media. To compare this thing to the apocalypse is really dreadful.

Three of them have no evidence and one of them is tenuous. Even The Guardian buried the details in the recent survey that said wellbeing hadn't markedly declined.

Quite a lot of exasperated MH people are appearing on telly now I ahve noticed, asking adults not to catastrophise.

Towards end of the first Victorian lockdown last year, concern was expressed by MH professionals that the excessive foregrounding of such issues in the school context could lead to a masking of the real thing. Sorry, no link.

I don't know if this has proven to be the case, but while calls to beyondblue spiked, suicides were stable during 2020. This is not schools, I know.

No I agree sorry if I wasn’t clear. I absolute don’t agree with the traumatised of a whole generation thing at all. But I would say there was a marked increase in EDs and self harming for example and that you wouldn’t know necessarily as a classroom teacher - I happen to know because of part of my role but if I didn’t I would definitely have said they were the same as before and didn’t see any trauma is what I’m saying. I was just responding with whoever asked about more deprived schools of which those students very much fall into that category was all.

I don’t think I’m maybe explaining well - I totally think pushing the MH and trauma narrative as someone said above isn’t helpful. And sending everyone back to school like it was before Christmas absolutely did fuck all to solve those issues. I don’t think a while generation is scarred by lockdown.

My own kids have thrived - as have many of their friends. But we’re all middle class, financially secure, have gardens etc and aren’t the pushy end of parenting so I realise that’s fairly narrow!

We provided 10% of our school with weekly food boxes first lockdown on top of the voucher scheme. We have a lot of multi-generational living and. Fair proportion from what would be considered ‘rough’ estates. I suspect we also were just better at picking up things that may be more prevalent than we realise because we were more actively looking?

Schools opening won’t solve it - better social services/support/mental health stuff linked up is. We’ve got loads of kids living in dodgy circs - but not enough for them to be removed and there simply isn’t enough support for them. It should be us as a school that does it all - I think @TheHoneyBadger has been most eloquent about that. Totally agree. Opening schools wont fix it and the catastrophising (?) in the media etc I agree doesn’t help. No idea if I’m being clearer .... my brain is melted!

Quite a lot of exasperated MH people are appearing on telly now I ahve noticed, asking adults not to catastrophise

Totally agree. Far better response is, it’s a bit rubbish at the moment and it’s completely normal to feel sad / stressed / lonely / angry about that.

@WhenSheWasBad

Quite a lot of exasperated MH people are appearing on telly now I ahve noticed, asking adults not to catastrophise

Totally agree. Far better response is, it’s a bit rubbish at the moment and it’s completely normal to feel sad / stressed / lonely / angry about that.

Totally agree too and I think we’re better at that this time round also at my school - I also realise I’m talking about first lockdown rather than this one. I think we’ve supported our students and prepared them much better this time.

Completely agree about the catastrophising.

Having an abnormal response (being unhappy/pissed off/worried/stressed) to an abnormal situation (pandemic/school closure/exams cancelled/unknown endings) is completely normal.

A few more people need to say this out loud. Preferably, over Robert Halfon when he’s speaking.

@noblegiraffe

Still pissing me off, so more posting.

“The lost generation” headline. Halfon’s tweet “The four horses of the education apocalypse are galloping towards pupils: a big loss of education attainment, huge rise in mental health problems, significant safeguarding hazards and a future loss of earnings of £40,000 per pupil.” I saw some headline about how kids will need 8 extra hours in school a week to catch up. Traumatised kids suffering PTSD. School return dates need to be ‘written in blood’

What the actual fuck is going on with this hyperbolic choice of language and to what end?

How on earth can they calculate a loss of earnings like that- especially when all children are in (roughly) the same situation.

Also, I thought for PTSD to be diagnosed, there had to be a specific incident with an imminent threat of harm- general trauma isn't enough, so I'm pretty sure lockdown wouldn't qualify?

I think we'll all be back on the 8th, in full, and some schools will be shut again by Easter.

And yes, some people seem to think we can get through a major global incident with everyone being fine and happy and carrying on as normal.

I think if people accepted that isn't possible, they might actually feel calmer.

@Appuskidu

Completely agree about the catastrophising.

Having an abnormal response (being unhappy/pissed off/worried/stressed) to an abnormal situation (pandemic/school closure/exams cancelled/unknown endings) is completely normal.

A few more people need to say this out loud. Preferably, over Robert Halfon when he’s speaking.

It's the pathologising of everyday life.

In this respect, Covid is the new black, the very real effects disappearing into a mush of hyper-awareness, which helps no-one.

Hard lockdown for you again in Victoria, Echt?

I'm midway through a brief online training on aces and trauma informed teaching. Even in that the consensus seems to be that it is children who have had 4 or more adverse childhood experiences (aces) who are at risk of negative adaptations (eg emotionally, behaviourally etc) and leading on to lower life chances, mental health problems, addictions etc.

Those aces are things like abuse, death of a parent, violence etc. Even where there are 4 or more if there are good mitigating factors like a supportive adult in their life, good school interventions etc it can be mitigated. Conversely someone could have just one (eg death of a parent) and go down that road.

Secondary to those kind of direct family experiences are community experiences eg. violence, drugs, poverty etc in the community which are lesser in effect but can compound the aces at home.

This Covid time is a community one for most and a personal family one for those who've lost a parent but no way would what the average child has experienced be considered a trauma.

I think the hyperbole does a disservice to children with genuine mental health issues and a history of actual trauma. It also risks further directing limited funds away to them to focus on kids who are actually fine or will be when the situation improves but their parents and the media are making more noise and it's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

Half awake so too long and probably incoherent sorry. Need

Honey That sounds a lot more rational and realistic than the 'training' I once had one ACEs. Apparently even one would screw up your life forever and the list had examples like "disagreement with parents". As a staff body we had all had at least one 'ACE' according to the list. We decided the presenter was chatting shite and ignored it tbh.

Second to last paragraph - nail on the head, Honey.

@RandomGrammarPun

Hard lockdown for you again in Victoria, Echt?

Thank you.

Meh. Five days. Though was very pissed off on the Melbourne thread because if this 5 days doesn't work, there'll be more of the same. That's the bit some don't get. I forbore to tell the nasty posters it's the UK variant that's fucking us over.

As it happened I don't work on Fridays so was doing an IKEA trip (floor lamp, cushions and covers since you asked) and weekly food shop when I checked in on news and shit went sideways.

I'd already set up all my classes on Teams anyway as it's good for prodding them to look at the lesson plan, so messaged them as soon as the principal confirmed. An aspect of working part-time is the need to have hard copies of some texts at work and home, as well as electronic. I'm good to go with live lessons on Monday. I should emphasise that my situation is very privileged in that all students have their own laptop, so remote teaching/learning is as good as it can be.

Hope it will be short.

They’re just having a bit of a shit time.

Yep - I say this to my class quite a lot. This is rubbish, but for most of you it will probably be a blip in your memory (they are 7-8-9).

I've got one kid who has got trauma issues - he's had a lovely old time in both lockdowns. Parents are separated (not amicably!), but they've both worked hard to make sure their kids have had lots of fresh air and exercise and doing stuff they love. He's still traumatised from previous life experience, but he's doing alright.

Dr Jessica Taylor is very good on ACES and the narrative around their dire impact on future life: victimfocusblog.com/2019/03/15/why-you-need-to-remain-critical-of-aces-adverse-childhood-experiences/