The Forty Seventh Republic! Happy Valentines and get some half term rest

[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

Dh turned the hot water off without telling me so ran a freezing bath, only realised once it was full. Hoping everyone's Wednesday is going better than mine!

MrsHamlet That would have been my response too. It does them good to know failure happens and you aren’t shocked by the possibility. I also discuss how life continues even if they fail and ultimately most people are more bothered about themselves than worrying about other people’s grades. Yes, there is a moment of embarrassment when you are asked how you did but grades are not everything and they can retake the exam even if it is easier to pass them the first time. This is a conversation with the over-achievers though. They get so anxious and it’s often about upsetting their families.

This is a conversation with the over-achievers though. They get so anxious and it’s often about upsetting their families.
In the first year of the current GCSE, a parent at parents' evening shouted at me when I said I wasn't prepared to say that his daughter would get a grade 9 because no one yet knew what that would look like. It was November of year 10.
He got up and started waving his arms and yelling about how I unprofessional I was whilst she sat and cried.
She did get 2 9s and was strong armed into applying to Oxford. She didn't get in. I wonder how that conversation went.

Ds was in the first year of new GCSEs and at an independent school. The English dept didn't predict anything higher than a 5 and the maths dept a 7 (but kept referring back to "Yes, you would have been an A/A* in old money..." Parents' Evening was hilarious. (And the children didn't need higher predictions for other sixth forms. They all stayed put.)

They did all (top set) do better than that, obviously, in case that was unclear!

Blimey Random I thought I was overly cautious!!

It just made me laugh. I knew my ds would do better than that but couldn't have put a pin in it for anyone really, in a first year of a new spec. (Results that year were bonkers, though, weren't they? Some schools appealed every grade and they all went up 2!)

Ooh, could whoever recommended the book on control/coper syndrome and mental health please remind me of the title?

I’d be a bit worried about a maths dept in a private school not predicting higher than a 7 - they should understand the stats!

Haha. Maybe it was a top down approach. They took igcse alongside, too. But they did all get 8/9/A*.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

No, I think I probably got distracted and forgot.

thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/weathering-storm

Right, I’m going to do some work. Try not to derail the thread while I’m gone.

Good article, Rafa, goes back to what we were discussing before about confusing ‘having a shit time because of a pandemic’ with ‘having a mental health condition’.

I do think some parents who are terrified about lost learning seriously overestimate how much learning goes on in a classroom. So much time spent faffing.

And started teaching A level in the Jan of year 11 in an effort to try to get 100% uptake for A level!

Did it work??

Well, I don't know enough of ds's peers to know how many would have taken maths A level anyway, but he had a few friends who took combos like two art A levels plus maths. And they had three maths A level groups compared to one lit (but that's no different to the state sector, is it? A friend teaches English at a v large school sixth form - they have one Lit group compared to 6 maths and 4 history).

We have two Lang and 2 lit groups, and 4 maths and 1 further maths. I think history and Geog have 2 groups too.
We're trading on a very good reputation for maths which is no longer the case... I don't think it'll be very long before the numbers drop, to be honest.

That's good - 4 groups altogether. I don't currently work in a school with sixth form, but, anecdotally and locally, we've noticed a massive hike in history candidates at the expense of English. Parents think it's more rigorous and it's also likely to be the one hums subject they allow alongside two sciences (the worst ratio I heard of, chatting to colleagues in other schools, was 16 ELit candidates vs 110 history in one school )

Yikes!
I've got a top set 11 this year and about 40% of them have been brainwashed into thinking about one or Englishes.
I had a mixed ability group last year and 5 of them are doing English. I think I might get 3 from my mixed group.
Our history has gone up but we have lots who do both. It's interesting.

My book order for DDs has been dispatched! I ended up taking half of them off and putting them in the "save for later" section of amazon because I ended up with over 40 books on the list and decided that I had gotten a little OTT! I decided I'd see what she thought of the ones I'd picked and if she liked them I'd get more in that series.
I did find two that I ordered called :

The Day I Fell Into a Fairytale and The Boy who Grew Dragons ...
They looked great so I shall see what she thinks of them!

DH was very impressed at the level of book related support from the MN staffroom!

I did English Language, History and Sociology.

I've spent the morning sorting out banking apps and credit card activation (only got it as it is the last tip my credit score account tells me I could take to improve my credit rating. Credit rating is actually really good already, it's my measly salary that prevents mortgage access). Which has helped me feel productive - this is procrastination action really because I have school work and housework to do but don't fancy either of those.

I thought it was Tuesday and am a bit gutted to discover it's Wednesday already.

Ophelia

The boy who grew dragons is GREAT. My DS loved it.

Daily Mail at it again, this is the sort of thing my thread was about before it was sunk. No coincidence that these are two of the top stories today.

How many teaching hours were missed when millions of kids were isolating before Christmas? Tumbleweed.

Interestingly, noble I’ve started a thread re doom mongering and it’s not raised any interest. It really does seem the interest is not there for how we actually close the disadvantage gap 🤷🏻‍♀️

@SmileEachDay

Ophelia

The boy who grew dragons is GREAT. My DS loved it.

Ah amazing;

Those two books popped up as linked to stuff I'd looked at. I thought I would go for them because they both had boys in, and literally everything id bought was girls and I thought it wasn't very balanced. As it goes my DD isn't a girly girl anyway so I don't think she'd notice but it didn't feel overly feminist looking at my list and realising every single book was about girls and/ or fairies!!

@SmileEachDay

Hey, monkey, how is DS?