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

Interesting blog, Gravity, and great post Honey especially about directing limited funds in the wrong direction.

What is really annoying me is that the media headlines are being written by people who don’t give the shiniest shit about kids’ mental health. Where were they when hundreds of thousands of kids were forced to isolate with inadequate remote education provision from Sept to Dec as covid ran riot through schools? We all know there was radio silence on that one.

The only reason this is in the news now is because it is being used by anti-lockdown campaigners to push an agenda.

If they cared about kids’ mental health they wouldn’t be quite so keen to amp up the fear. We know that certain things to do with mental health can be ‘catching’ (for want of a better word) and there are reporting guidelines around this.

If they cared about kids’ mental health this entire narrative wouldn’t be about schools. It wouldn’t be ‘lockdown is the cause and re-opening schools (and everything else because we can’t open anything else till schools are open) is the cure’. We know that CAMHs is severely underfunded and waiting lists are dire, but where are the headlines around that?

They are using kids to argue against lockdown in a twisted and emotive, but also counter-productive way and it is sickening.

@noblegiraffe

Interesting blog, Gravity, and great post Honey especially about directing limited funds in the wrong direction.

What is really annoying me is that the media headlines are being written by people who don’t give the shiniest shit about kids’ mental health. Where were they when hundreds of thousands of kids were forced to isolate with inadequate remote education provision from Sept to Dec as covid ran riot through schools? We all know there was radio silence on that one.

The only reason this is in the news now is because it is being used by anti-lockdown campaigners to push an agenda.

If they cared about kids’ mental health they wouldn’t be quite so keen to amp up the fear. We know that certain things to do with mental health can be ‘catching’ (for want of a better word) and there are reporting guidelines around this.

If they cared about kids’ mental health this entire narrative wouldn’t be about schools. It wouldn’t be ‘lockdown is the cause and re-opening schools (and everything else because we can’t open anything else till schools are open) is the cure’. We know that CAMHs is severely underfunded and waiting lists are dire, but where are the headlines around that?

They are using kids to argue against lockdown in a twisted and emotive, but also counter-productive way and it is sickening.

100% agree and this should be a thread in its own right.

@TheHoneyBadger

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

I've had similar training I think.

Although I'm sure I've read research that suggests the death of a parent is the single factor most likely to negatively impact a child's life chances. But I think the research pointed out that the death of a parent is likely to have multiple negative impacts e.g. reducing income, negatively impacting the other parent's mental health, and so.

@noblegiraffe

Interesting blog, Gravity, and great post Honey especially about directing limited funds in the wrong direction.

What is really annoying me is that the media headlines are being written by people who don’t give the shiniest shit about kids’ mental health. Where were they when hundreds of thousands of kids were forced to isolate with inadequate remote education provision from Sept to Dec as covid ran riot through schools? We all know there was radio silence on that one.

The only reason this is in the news now is because it is being used by anti-lockdown campaigners to push an agenda.

If they cared about kids’ mental health they wouldn’t be quite so keen to amp up the fear. We know that certain things to do with mental health can be ‘catching’ (for want of a better word) and there are reporting guidelines around this.

If they cared about kids’ mental health this entire narrative wouldn’t be about schools. It wouldn’t be ‘lockdown is the cause and re-opening schools (and everything else because we can’t open anything else till schools are open) is the cure’. We know that CAMHs is severely underfunded and waiting lists are dire, but where are the headlines around that?

They are using kids to argue against lockdown in a twisted and emotive, but also counter-productive way and it is sickening.

100% agree.

Teen mental health has been a problem long before Covid, and it's increasingly difficult to access CAMHS. But no-one is outraged about that. School may help some teens cope, but teachers are not MH professionals- if they truly cared about mental health, they'd be talking about how underfunded the relevant services are.

It's just using children to push an agenda which is awful.

Halfon keeps retweeting Us For Them, too.

If ED are on the rise then we need to look at all the factors, not just educational. And, surely, we need to look at parenting/ support for parents, if ED are on the rise whilst the kids are at home? In my experience, schools are generally absolutely crap at working with EDs.

I don't know any peer who had an eating disorder (and they were RIFE in the early nineties) whose severity wouldn't have been ameliorated if they hadn't had school/daily pressure (in the way that it is).

Oh my gosh, that was terrible syntax, but you know what I mean.

Eating disorders can sometimes be a response to a lack of control in other areas of life, so controlling eating is like taking charge of something and seeing an impact, when everything else is chaotic. Seeing an increase during a pandemic when we can’t make plans for anything without expecting that everything can change at the drop of a hat is not unexpected. It should be planned for and funded appropriately.

I’m also wondering about the screen time aspect here - ED can spread and there are awful, awful websites out there that encourage this. Children spending more time online means more potential exposure.

Halfon keeps retweeting Us For Them, too.

I know, completely captured. He keeps banging for schools to re-open with no acknowledgement of how it won’t guarantee a consistent education or solution to the problems he’s highlighting.

My niece has an ED which developed over lockdown 1. She's doing better at the minute, but obviously not fully recovered and hasn't been seen by cahms at all yet. When she's talked to her mum about it, the biggest trigger wasn't lockdown, it was bullying by some horrible boys at school who called her fat for quite a while before lockdown 1. So actually, it has started before lockdown, it was just not noticeable when she went back because she had lost so much weight. I do also think her parents need to take some responsibility for not tackling the problem before she went back to school, it was obvious she wasn't eating properly.

Halfon is being truly vile about this. Is he shagging someone in Us4Them?!

Sending all kids back ASAP won’t be a sudden ‘fix it’ for all mental health problems-they just either won’t ever mention them again or will just blame the teachers!

I think any attempt to increase the school day, remove the school holidays or have mass testing in the name of ‘Catch Up’ will be far more damaging to children’s mental health than anything to do with the current school closures.

Do I want to lead PSHE at my school? I mean, I've been PSHE lead before, but not during such 'difficult' times for this stuff. Will it do my nut in?

There's a good petition doing the rounds calling for more funding to tackle eating disorders.

I think that's the way to go.

Sign that, circulate it, rather than allowing the U4T people to dominate the narrative.

There's a CAHMS professional on AMA at the moment and her second post (I think) asks posters to join campaigns to increase funding for child and adolescent mental health services.

It's pretty grim right now. But we can't let people like U4T either drive the narrative or push us into a kind of denial about how grim it is.

I mean, we all know pressures on us have increased. And it's going to be worse for people in extremely vulnerable situations - including children.

So I guess I think that now is the time to come together and push for non-superficial solutions.

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot

Do I want to lead PSHE at my school? I mean, I've been PSHE lead before, but not during such 'difficult' times for this stuff. Will it do my nut in?

I think it'll be interesting. There will be lots of in-line support to help you decide what is worth doing or not doing. It'll probably be less frustrating being in the driving seat, rather than the recipient of someone else's PSHE planning. Especially if you know you are best-qualified for the role.

Plus, it's all going to be trial-and-error. No-one is going to know which approaches will work best. No-one. Getting back to normal as fast as possible? Keeping things low-key? Addressing various things head-in? Looking to see if there are particular issues that affected your particular school community?

Who knows? No-one knows.

And that means it will be interesting and there are probably a couple of publishable articles in it, too.

I struggle with eating enough and I’ve found lockdown hard.

The absolute worst thing is Tiktok that’s as an adult. Lord knows how it affects teenagers.

Yep. The CAHMS person on AMA raised the issue of increased screen-time and teen social contagion. It's obviously the same fit adults.

for you.

Same for adults.

I've signed the petition to help fund support for eating disorders. Trying to get better funding for mental health problems is definitely the way forward. Schools are part of spotting that a teen needs help, but we can't be the actual help because we aren't trained for that. We need someone to refer them to, who is well enough funded to cope with the influx of children who need help. Not all children need the professionals, but the ones who do, they need that help now, not a year down the line because of waiting lists.

@Desmosgirl

teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/60257430b6ea493e338a6e55

Regular under NC to share this with maths people. Will revert to normal shortly!

Thank you. This will be perfect for after half term .

I did a Desmos class with Y7 today, used the pacing, pausing and anonymising. One of my lovely keen beans went to look up the mathematician he'd been anonymised to!

Nice thread:

twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1360219174476406788?s=20

I think social media is awful for eating disorders- tiktok, instagram, tumblr etc- there are all people on these platforms who really push disordered eating and "thinspo". Spending a lot of time at home, with nothing to do but go on line, it makes sense that more teens will get drawn into this kind of thing- and often when one friend gets sucked in, they can pull others in too.

It's really really tricky stuff, but opening schools won't solve the problem.

I also wonder if more parents are just noticing these issues in their teens because it's much harder to hide when you're at home all day.

The graph from that thread, the latest ONS graphs are quite spectacular.

Secondary kids are now one of the least infected groups. What a huge impact schools open with no mitigation measures had on them.

Secondary kids are now one of the least infected groups

Wow it’s almost as if they were catching it at school

I’ve clearly been running on adrenaline. So tired.

Me too.

Got my first prescription for anti depressants today. I don't know if I want to take them.

Right, just finished.

Knackered.

Have an interview on Weds 24th. Me plus panel of 4 and doesn't mention if it is remote or in head's teeny tiny office!

@GuyFawkesDay I've been taking mine (again... always seem to start then stop) for the last 14 days alongside propranolol. The problem is for me is that they make me feel more anxious etc for a good few weeks before I feel better. Think I'm still in the anxious phase but hoping over the next week to start coming out of it. Good luck!