The Fifty-first republic - twice weekly tests and wear masks at all time till Easter

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

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.

Do not give the staffroom password to others 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. Do not sit on the chairs and wear a mask.

There's an amusing article in TES about mask anarchy.

Apparently we are taking a 'hard line'....

I'm just south of Birmingham, so yeah, I suppose there are quite a few unis. The person coming out as I was going in looked like an NQT.

I said to DH beforehand it'll be more about experience and cost than anything I actually said in the interview. Though I don't feel I represented myself all that well, I'm pretty sure they won't pick me.

It was weird not teaching, I went through a lesson plan I'd prepared but I really felt like I wasn't getting much back so it was quite hard. I hate telling people things they already know, so feel proper daft having to say 'in this bit I'd do targeted questioning' and suchlike.

@Piggywaspushed

I love the way jan keeps writing me references!

I am fine now. I covered by telling them I had had to pause for a few moments because someone had come in the room. Which was true so now DS also found me weeping over The Battle Hymn of the Republic. That's OK because he cried about Boxer.

If you didn't cry about Boxer are you even human?

Boxer.
Piggy.
Private peaceful.
Lennie.
Stand up Miss Jean Louise....
The end of mockingbird
The end of the Crucible

All of them. Every time.

Oh I cry at anything and everything. Even bits of Ackley Bridge which I now see as very much curate's egg, some parts and characters are dire but some are quite wonderful. My DC have banned me from commenting every time a safeguarding rule is breached, but even they can see it's the weirdest secondary school ever in terms of it's staff structure and other things!

I’m tearing up about people talking about tearing up at Boxer.

War Poetry does it for me, every time.

I nearly cried at the fact I’m delivering the same intervention 5 times a day from next week. But they were tears of boredom.

I might rage cry if I read one more essay where the student confidently parrots the bloody CGP guide...

Even thinking about Private Peaceful is enough to set me off.

Re masks we’re saying they have to wear them in classroom unless exempt and going to treat like other uniform breeches I think..... might all change though!

Have you read "ways to live forever"? I sobbed... year 7 also sobbed.

I cried buckets the other week reading about the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster on wikipedia, because that teacher, Christa McAuliffe, was on board. Reading about how they'd wanted to send a teacher into space because it would improve public engagement and catch the imagination.

Here they'd probably moan about how the teacher jumped the queue and a supermarket worker should have gone into space or something.

Should we add a sobbing session to our party on the hill/trip to Egypt to eat cheese/ dancing on tables event? 😩😿

I use the speech Reagan gave after the challenger disaster with year 12 for language. That gets me every time too.

I can't read the end of Kensuke's Kingdom - have to get a child to read it. I just cry otherwise, which means they laugh.. .and that's not the point.

I read as optional for schools, not individual kids.

Jan I think the next generation had the crystal maze

I was in The Crucible when I was 17 mrsH. I had to speak that final line .

Can I also add the firing squad in Corelli to the weeping list.

A boy I taught (now a PE teacher) shouted at me because he read it on a train and cried in public!

@Piggywaspushed

I was in The Crucible when I was 17 mrsH. I had to speak that final line .

Oh god. I've got a lump in my throat thinking about it. And death of a salesman too.

I teach a lesson every year about Challenger (because of the overflow error that caused the malfunction) and I feel very sad each time.

Do what now Chloe?

What's the last line of the Crucible? I went to see it at the theatre as a school trip, I remember nothing.

@EnemyOfEducationNo1

Hugs Piggy.

Can I ask other secondary bods - what are your schools doing about the fact that Gibbs wanker said masks are not compulsory - so you can do absolutely nothing about kids who refuse to wear masks....?

I guess I find out what our school is doing at our virtual staff meeting tomorrow afternoon. Gibbs is a dangerous idiot for saying that

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot

What's the last line of the Crucible? I went to see it at the theatre as a school trip, I remember nothing.

I think Piggy should tell us. I'll get tissues.

Oh God, Private Peaceful. I once tried to read Mid-Term Break to a class. Once. Never again.

And last year I read Goodnight Mister Tom to DS as a bedtime story. I must have read it 10+ times as a child so I sort of thought I'd be immune...no. I sobbed. Even now every now and then I catch sight of the book and get a massive pang thinking "why did Zach have to die?". I did Remains of the Day for A-level and I'm glad I never had to teach it because I find almost every page just so moving.

I used to teach a level creative writing and one of my students wrote the most incredible collection of poetry which was a journey through life from birth to death. I was marking them on a train and went from laughing about his teenage boy frantically doing teenage boy things to a huge gulp and a sob as the last poem had him slipping away, all in about ten minutes.
People stared.