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.

*us included!

I’ll be interested to know from you secondary folk how the mask uptake is looking this week. No choice in primary as no kids are wearing masks, but I know, as a pupil, I wouldn’t want to sit next to someone not wearing a mask for 1//2/6 hours. Do they have any say over who they sit with?

I was thinking about what some here report ie seating the "unmasked" together st the back.

So - generalisation, but - that's a little posse of deprived, special needs students from chaotic families, altogether at the back of every classroom? Fab policy!

I guess whether it's a problem will depend on the level of mask wearing though.

I’ll be interested to know from you secondary folk how the mask uptake is looking this week.

We aren’t opening today (training and prep) but our Head had already told us that students will not be forced to wear masks (because she is fairly spineless and doesn’t want to deal with parental complaints).

Hope 1st day back in is going ok for those that are on.

Up to Christmas we had very few students not in masks, there were exempt students but that was in single figures. Lots had to be told to pull them over their noses though.

I’m in college full time teaching already! Did my test this morning - was fine.

High mask uptake in lessons though some sneaky removal when they were working on computers.

Just feels crazy that I’m here with 20 17 year olds in a small room with zero social distancing. Even between staff SD is pretty much impossible. And I don’t like teaching in a mask (though obviously I will).

Just taught a class of 30 KW. All masked up except for one exempt student. Had to remind a couple not to remove mask to answer a question. Other than that, fine.

Yr 7/8

Meeting going ahead with hod apparently. For once I've dressed smartly, put on makeup and am wearing smart shoes with a low heel.

I 'think' (it may wear off) I'm sick of making myself smaller, less threatening, less less less.

I've also made notes of what I see the issues I raised in my email as (this is apparently the purpose of our meeting) and will take notes and ask for specifics during meeting.

I used to have a wonderful black lab who was so friendly and keen to play that she would go flat on her belly and make herself as small as possible to reassure even the tiniest dogs that she wasn't a threat and please please play with her.

I suddenly see I do the same and it really doesn't benefit me.

Good luck Honey. Sounds like you're set. Definitely make notes! And if it's getting unpleasant, say you need to adjourn to another day and get out.

Good luck, honey

I said no face to face... got into school to be told to teach KW/V as well as remote classes...5 minutes before lesson began. Humph.

Good luck Honey!

That’s crap, having that unexpectedly dropped on you *Monkey^, how was it?

Hope your meeting is ok, Honey. Definitely make notes, people get nervous when you write down what they are saying.

I’m so hungry. It’s not yet lunchtime and I’ve had half my lunch already.

Apparently, we have a few parents who are very much no tests + no mask.

I am worrying for the pupils who sit next to mask exempt people. I mean, why should they have to really??

They will keep LFTs going for as long as they can use them to 'prove' there are no cases in schools and what are we whining about.

It was ok @noblegiraffe as v few kw/v but the lesson was wholly remote focused so meh...

@Piggywaspushed

They will keep LFTs going for as long as they can use them to 'prove' there are no cases in schools and what are we whining about.

Yep-they’ll keep going with the LFD tests till they’ve used them all up. As far as I know, they paid Dom a lot of money for this little project and we wouldn’t want to stop paying his wages .

I don’t know anyone that’s got a positive result and we’ve been doing them for months! Are schools safe or are the tests just totally useless!?

With the schools testing up till now they’ve had about 3,000 positives for 2 million tests.

So yeah, they’re not great at picking up cases.

Clearly a total pile of cack. On the plus side, it's made certain people I know more sceptical of the govt's response to schools, the more we get 100% negatives every week.

Hope your meeting went/ goes ok @TheHoneyBadger

Interesting thread here :

twitter.com/mikercameron/status/1368488722862325763

Particularly love it when US teacher pipes up, misses the whole point and tells him he is wrong, and then a GP tells him off.

Thinking of you Honey .

Did my first home test, 2 things to note:

• at no point* does it tell you to take the test strip out of its package. This is not helpful when you've got the "extraction tube", all ready to drip drops from, in one hand, and realise you have nowhere to drip into....

• when it says to close the extraction tube cap after you've squeezed the liquid into it, do not close it tightly! When you come to put your swab into it, it will be almost impossible to open again.....

Anyway, I got a negative. I realised if I'd got a positive I wouldn't have entirely believed it, which isn't very helpful.

• Ah. Now I see that it does include the instruction to unpack the test strip, it's at the top of a page and I missed it. As you were!

Hope everyone's day is going ok. Fucked my interview today right up- I don't think I'm a crap teacher, but I'm crap at teaching interviews.

Back in school tomorrow and rumours suggest perhaps a better chance of a job in September than I previously thought, so I might have to go and beg my head.