The Fifty-third Republic - Ides of March Part 2

[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

I've never watched it either but gather it's Good.

Spent quite a bit of this morning (on my day off) dealing with library emails as my boss is still off and no one else will do it. I kind of don't mind, but don't think it's right.

It looks like we're about to move from teaching HoYs to non-teaching ones (working with a teacher Head of Phase or some such). Is this always a bad thing, if so is it a bad thing from everyone's point of view, not just teaching staff's?

I need my bubble to burst again if I'm to have the faintest hope of watching any of it before the weekend!

Just doing my LFT. Where does it say that you can just do nostrils and not the throat?

The instruction booklet says throat then nostrils. Nothing about just nose.

Page 4 general guidance and warnings has the bit about not eating/drinking for 30 minutes and also you can do both nostrils if you can’t do throat.

Different types of kit though, aren't there, some seem to say just nostrils, some only to do that if you can't do throat?

I don’t want to ask what led to them putting ‘use a separate kit for each person’ in the instructions.

@JanFebAnyMonth

Noble, you're such an old softy....

Oh god I really am. I’d be a useless union firebrand.

I had to remind myself that he’s a paid social media influencer.

@noblegiraffe

Page 4 general guidance and warnings has the bit about not eating/drinking for 30 minutes and also you can do both nostrils if you can’t do throat.

Ah right. Thanks. I will do that next time - just did the throat one again and it was hideous.

Different types of kit though

Aren’t all schools getting the same? The booklet doesn’t have anything about type of kit on it, looks generic.

The ones I have from school are slightly different to the post kits. Not by much but differently packaged swabs and different instructions, ones glossy and one isn't.

Sorry for the most boring post on MN ever, discussing swab packaging

Ha ha herc.

I thought from things I'd read on the Cv board there were st least two makes of kit.... although as that twitter thread I posted is only discussing Innova maybe not.

It's just that whilst some posters are adamant that their instructions say throat and nose (as do mine), others are equally adamant about nose only.

I have NO idea any more.

Maybe we should create a Staffroom thread asking people to post what their instructions say.

That would be boring.

And invite lots of accounts of gagging.

Could even get banned! 😨

Seeing lots of comments about y7s being all over the place this year and I'm a bit worried about my ds who is y6 at the moment. Wondered if you could advise me. What are the key things I need to make sure he is sorted with? Thinking English, Maths and general secondary survival.

It looks like we're about to move from teaching HoYs to non-teaching ones (working with a teacher Head of Phase or some such). Is this always a bad thing, if so is it a bad thing from everyone's point of view, not just teaching staff's?

Ime it's a bad thing. Not from the budget's point of view as they can be employed at a wage way lower than a teacher but higher than a ta and you don't have to give a teacher any non contact time - keep them at the front of the class and hire someone cheaper to do the other stuff.

As a teacher I find it a nightmare of lack of understanding and silly crazy stuff like getting ratty when you don't answer an email in the middle of period 1 because you don't even get to see your emails till lunch break (which is so short you shouldn't bet on it then either).

It may be that it was particularly problematic where I am or even just for me - I found the whole give them sweets, be their friend and do nothing to actually address their behaviour IN THE CLASSROOM particularly frustrating. The pastoral and relationship building side has to also have a firm hand in making clear what is expected in terms of behaviour for learning and showing respect and consideration for others.

I personally also found that they thought their job was to just forward every issue to classroom teachers rather than deal with any of it themselves. They weren't paid loads but but paid enough to not think their job is to hit forward and cc 'all teachers of x' on any issue parents got in touch with them about and consider their job done.

I'm a cynical old hag though. To me it was doing things on the cheap and you could tell. We had a couple of years of hell with it and then they started putting them in a central space with someone actually actively line managing them in a central space so I think it did finally sink in it wasn't working and they were hiding in their offices and entertaining their favourite kids.

I'm personally a fan of HOY being senior respected/known teachers who are able to understand things from a classroom/teaching perspective rather than a let's sit in an office and be pals and I'll feed you sweets and excuse your behaviour because I want you to like me and my job to be easy and your parents to think I'm nice. It's a balancing of pastoral, caring, supporting but with behaviour for learning and achieving potential as a central focus because that's kind of what we send them to school for.

@SquashedFlyBiscuits

Seeing lots of comments about y7s being all over the place this year and I'm a bit worried about my ds who is y6 at the moment. Wondered if you could advise me. What are the key things I need to make sure he is sorted with? Thinking English, Maths and general secondary survival.

Critical thinking - being able to explain an opinion and consider different points of view - independent thinking and processing rather than needing to be spoon fed everything. Writing to express that. Literally what's your opinion about x? How could you explain that? What arguments would you use to try and prove your point or persuade someone to agree with you? What might other people say?

Humanities here so obviously my view is skewed towards that.

Sleep is not forthcoming which is shite when you know you have to be up in 4 hours to wrestle a teenager out of bed and into school uniform 🙈

I need a stay up all night, hang with girlfriends, watch the sunrise type day sometime very soon. I cannot just be mum and miss for this long.

Please god let us be allowed to fly this summer 🙏

@SquashedFlyBiscuits

Seeing lots of comments about y7s being all over the place this year and I'm a bit worried about my ds who is y6 at the moment. Wondered if you could advise me. What are the key things I need to make sure he is sorted with? Thinking English, Maths and general secondary survival.

This may seem a bit left field but if you could make sure your DS can use an actual mouse (double click and move around properly, can turn on a laptop/desktop and sign out not shutdown, can open documents from files and save a document to a file area. If he can practise navigating using a mouse and actually sending an email from outlook rather than an app on a tablet that is even better! So many year 7s now come having never used a laptop or desktop computer and as a lot of their subjects will have electronic resources to use and homework to complete in file locations, having those skills is so useful, otherwise the first few weeks can be very stressful for the Year 7s (they’ve gone backwards in digital skills but of course, Gove said that would never happen )

We have a mix on teaching and non teaching heads of year and I actually think having non-teaching heads of year is better. It means they are available to deal with issues as they arise, and I've always found them supportive and helpful. Our teaching heads of year don't really get enough time to do the job and that can be an issue - they're the ones more likely to push issues back to teachers due to lack of time (IME).

In terms of Y7, I'd say mine are pretty OK but they lack a bit of social maturity - there are lots of really petty fallings out, an inability to handle conflict without "you're not my friend anymore" type stuff.

In terms of academics, I think they're OK, but our sets felt pretty random at the start of the year due to students not doing Sats. So I would say speak up ASAP about this if you feel it's wrong.

Morning all, no side effects so far. Keeping fingers crossed it stays that way.

Back to teaching Yr 13 remotely ...

Million and one emails from my Yr 11 asking if they were to ‘redo’ assessments when they would have to be in for ...

Gah!

On HOYs, I agree with everything honey said. All of ours are teachers bar one and she does not get it. It was the first time we'd offered it up to non teaching staff and it's not happened again!

Right. Still blinking tired. Let's try this again. I think I need the gorgeous Rege telling me tomorrow will be a good day (cbeebies bedtime story on mother's day!). Something to keep me going.

Our kits came with glossy and non glossy booklets and we were told to ignore the non glossy one. So I think they just updated the booklet and not all schools have supplied/handed out the glossy one as it doesn't fit in the packaging (and there is not noticeable difference as noble said a while back)

I have never seen ne that says just nose.

the annoying BBC infographic says nose or throat.

ps as ex HOY , I would say teaching HOYs every time, with non teaching support for admin and on call stuff/ answering phone. Our HOY support do think they are above admin though and tend to be over familiar with kids and boss teachers about. I think they would be even worse if there wasn't a teaching HOY.

Our HOYs also do quite public facing stuff such as Open Days and awards ceremonies and important meetings, and academic support, such as careers guidance type stuff.

Current year 7s are very confident, just as independent as usual, fine with maths and reading, weaker than usual on writing. Social interactions no better or worse than usual - but every time there is a lockdown they get worse at taking their turn in conversation and talk over the teacher Alll. The. Time. It really shows how much undivided attention many of them get at home...

And, yes, IT skills so woeful that they lost a lot of learning time in lockdown just because they can't save anything, use email, use Word. So, so bad. And nobody knows apart from teachers just how bad their IT skills are. I think parents, the govt and the media still think they're the "tech generation." They really ain't. Massive, massive step backwards over the last 8 or so years.

have never seen ne that says just nose.

Do your booklets not have this red box on page 4? And on page 11, the bit about swabbing kids definitely says you can do both nostrils instead.