The Fifty-second Republic - Beware of Education’s ides of March

[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 non-staff as it attracts the wrong sort of crowd.

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 do wear a mask.

Hello, I hope its OK to join. Have just joined mumsnet again (after leaving). I've been a frequent name changer as I'm too cowardly to face the AIBU threads. I have just been on and come to the safe place of the staffroom.

Just waiting for my accurate pregnancy test LFT results.

Reading the comments about the buffet has amused me.

Also, I have a shorter summer (just over 4 weeks this year) and 2 weeks in October. It would have been fine, but DC and I were in different counties so had to find a job in the same county for childcare reasons.

A jumbled first post, apologies!

P.S, I am a primary school teacher.
I have huge respect for secondary staff. I hope it all goes ok tomorrow. I'd rather be serving the school dinners than testing children.

Custard with your cornflake tart anyone?

LOL appu.

Sadly though, I do have those Bobs who I try to shield by sitting them somewhere 'safe'. that is quite upsetting really.

Hi buffet : great user name!!

Definitely not my Bob!!!

"Whaddya want me to sit there for? I ain't fucking done nuffing"

@MrsHamlet

Definitely not my Bob!!!

"Whaddya want me to sit there for? I ain't fucking done nuffing"

Hi buffet

We have been given permission to sit non masked kids together at the back. How long until they realise and groups of mates stop wearing them?

Hi waves across the staffroom

We had a tin of sweets in the staffroom last week. I'm guessing this tips dangerously over the edge to buffet territory.

As long as you didn't have any chairs in the immediate vicinity...

Welcome, buffet- make yourself at home.

We have been given permission to sit non masked kids together at the back. How long until they realise and groups of mates stop wearing them?
We had this once with ties - come without your tie and you have to spend the whole day in your form rook with your form teacher. Then Bob liked me and didn't much like his lessons. It took three days of his silent protest before that rule was abandoned 🤣

@MrsHamlet and @HercwasanEnemyofEducation that's the stuff of nightmares presumably thought up by someone who did not have to actually carry it out!

No such instructions at my school thankfully.

Feeling a bit jittery about the coming week in all honesty (which is unusual for me). Think a few of my team will need quite a lot of support and reassurance.

Plus, it's hitting me that we need to make sure we collect and keep any evidence for student grades (obviously, we have previous mock results but the papers were returned to the students). Luckily, the papers my Y13s sat before Xmas are still in my office -phew!

Recent Y11 mocks are on forms so got those.

Thinking of starting an evidence file for each student to store any future papers/examples of classwork.

Entirely expected fripp

I don't think I'm exaggerating or dramatising but parents don't want to know reality.

I haven't worked at particularly terrible schools and I think the kinds of kids I've mentioned and their impact on their peers learning is fairly common. Not every class obviously.

I think people are blissfully naive about what secondary comprehensive means. I think they'd like to believe that the rapists, the child abusers, the violent, the disengaged, the psychopaths and the severely mentally ill or personality disordered all just appear post 18 out of nowhere in society.

It's massively frowned upon to allude to society's problems being visible in kids and to suggest that we should intervene before 'kids' problems and anti social behaviour become societal problems and cjs issues.

School is the most mixed together, lumped in, all walks of life and all issues shoved in a room together situation you will ever see or experience. I can understand why parents would want to believe otherwise.

I have a file for each student with their assessments in - they're meant to keep them but I got them off them in October and put them in my filing cabinet. I'm clearly able to see the future or a control freak

Tie head also introduced clip on ties because he got annoyed that they wore them half mast. Turns out there are loads of fun places you can clip a tie!

Having massive mummy guilt over lack of pushing online reading books from school. And not really doing the spellings.

At the same time he seems to be reading really well when I do ask him. He just had no interest! Unless Lego ninjago or Guinness book of records.

Wishing all loads of luck for tomorrow, and a small .

Ds1 has said he's not looking forward to loads of work so go easy on 'em

Evening All. I have a cheery graphic for you from Facebook. It beggars belief that people see this but can't see the correlation between it and schools tomorrow...

Solidarity, everyone, for tomorrow. It's going to be...odd to be all back in.

We do our LFTs on Monday and Thursday evening. Again, no idea what they do with the info we send to school each time.

Roll on Easter hols.

Honey and all,

Dunno how you stayed sane on that thread. Qudos. Respect.

Welcome buffet!

Btw we do Sunday and weds eve, but can do next morning instead. Not many can fit it in though.

As part timer I find it odd as I spend all weds in before getting a test. Doesn't feel right!

I've had a v nasty chest bug. (Pcr was negative). The bbc had an article about next winter and flu etc being bad. Great.

@TheHoneyBadger

Yuk. Made the mistake of checking my emails. Rude email from the teacher who had a go at me in front of people at the beginning of our meeting last week. I asked her to clarify where something was as I couldn't find it and got, 'It takes seconds!' as a response. That's very outing if she or any of my colleagues happen to be on here but how is that necessary?

Did you reply?

What about “It takes seconds-for you. Rather longer for someone new to the department. I’d appreciate the support if you can spare the time.”

To the point and almost PA?

Feeling the dread tonight. This must be the first weekend in forever I haven’t done anything for school. I can’t face it. Roll on tomorrow.

Is it really bad that after doing my first home lft I'm really tempted to post a 'can you see a line 🤞' thread? 😂

@Frlrlrubert

Is it really bad that after doing my first home lft I'm really tempted to post a 'can you see a line 🤞' thread? 😂

That would be MN at its best, I'd say!

@Frlrlrubert

Is it really bad that after doing my first home lft I'm really tempted to post a 'can you see a line 🤞' thread? 😂

Takes me back! You can only do it if you post multiple photos, including one of the inverse!

@Frlrlrubert

Is it really bad that after doing my first home lft I'm really tempted to post a 'can you see a line 🤞' thread? 😂

To be frank, a pregnancy test might be more use at detecting Covid than these LFTs.

Anyone tried weeing on their LFT?

Thanks for all the welcomes.
No matter how much you discuss things at home or how many times partner / spouse see you live it, no one will ever understand how crazy schools are at the moment. It's good to have found 'my people' on here.