The Fifty-fourth Republic - Easter holidays anyone?

[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

What’s this about on Teacher Tapp?

I didn't do history GCSE, and most of the KS3 stuff seemed to be about ww2. Dd1 did history GCSE and loved it, particularly the medicine through the ages topic I think. I don't know a huge amount about many historical periods, but I seem to know quite a bit about the Romans (maybe because I've always lived pretty close to Hadrian's wall, so we've done a lot of primary school trips and family days out to Roman ruins).

Oh intrigue noble !!

I went to school with some Plymouth Brethren families and have taught a few.

Huge restrictions on what you can say, teach or do. No to DVDs. No Macbeth or Crucible. No dancing or singing...

My biggest gripe about the Cold War is the massive generalisations they make about when it ended and something else they all say which irritates because it is so plainly biased. Can't remember what now. Something very sweeping about Communism.

Are there different types of brethren? There are a few brethren families at my school but we're a very long way from Plymouth!!!! I don't think there have ever been any restrictions on what they've been taught either, but I'm not sure about that as I don't do anything that would need to be restricted in maths. I think they may have been withdrawn from sex education and perhaps re as well. The JW children always seem to have had more restrictions than the brethren children.

See it used to be no computers but in the school photos now there are computers in the classroom so that surprised me. They're aiming at an increasingly student led approach but should imagine where they're allowed to lead to is fairly restricted (the brethren school).

I had a fab Russian student in my class one year and we would have fantastic conversations about the merits of communism v capitalism and the flaws of each system whilst the other kids looked confused and gobsmacked and I tried to translate it to their level This was when I was teaching Science and was in a very low ability year 9 group so I can understand their confusion.

I've probably disillusioned the head of the school I'm emailing with by telling him I have an anthropology degree not history. I've gone on to say why it has been more useful to me than a narrow history degree potentially looking at a narrow region of the world or period of time and how it informs my lessons but we'll see.

It sounds like they sell the classes and use a teacher's biography as part of the sales pitch in order to fill the places so not sure if the non historian bit will be a deal breaker or if he'll go along with me in how good it is for teaching international students history within cultural constructs.

There are different brethren as I recall and one in particular had a scandal and some kind of break offs from there (long time since I last researched it). They have their own school network around the country and world and whilst there are restrictions they want properly qualified teachers and don't make restrictions on your faith only that you will uphold their values. Also much talk of diversity and understanding of other religions etc - seems to have moved on since the last time I visited. I don't think they had computers when I went about 5 or 6 years ago.

I seem to recall they're not allowed to take part in HE therefore they have to recruit outsiders as teachers.

Only one sort. I guess you might not notice in maths. JWs only withdrew from assembly and RS / sex ed. PBs much more restrictive. The ones I taught the girls didn't cut hair and wore head coverings and longer skirts . The family I went to school with were a bit more liberal in terms of clothes and hair but no school disco, no plays, no dancing and no music .

I went to a Quaker primary school. Pacifism and singing so all good. ( bizarrely When a Knight Won his Spurs which is definitely not a pacifist anthem).

I also taught a family whose father was a US evangelical Christian. V difficult about witchcraft Halloween, Macbeth, The Crucible. Much more aggressive about it. Lovely children. Girl is now Head of Maths at a Christian school!

The Plymouth bit of the name is pretty much a pilgrims reference. They aren't all from Plymouth!

The brethren girls here don't cut their hair and wear longer skirts but no head coverings. They ALL did maths A Level, not sure whether that was just because they all happened to be good at maths though. The last one I taught was going to uni, so they didn't seem to be following any rules about HE. She was going to study maths, and must be in 2nd/3rd year now. I'd never even heard of brethren until I taught her A Level, which is bizarre because I'd taught her brother for 5 years but it was never mentioned. Probably because it's just not relevant in a maths lesson, so I never needed to know. I don't think there are any younger children in those few families at the minute, so it'll be a while before I teach any more.

Yes, the US religious conservatives can be really conservative. Halloween and Macbeth is definitely a problem. Even though Halloween is much bigger over there than it is here. And I don’t think it’s just evangelicals. IME US Catholics tend to be much more trad/conservative than in U.K. (except JRM obv) which tends towards liberal catholic.

The JW kids used to leave me a copy of the lighthouse on my desk sometimes. When I taught religion from a neutral position eg. saying I don't know, what do you think, these people think x, these people think y etc I think they genuinely took that as oh bless her she doesn't know the answers, I'll enlighten her with some reading material. Had one guy who was very earnestly worried about me.

On the less harmless end of the spectrum I had a girl coming to me for support in the FE college I worked at because her Mum was going to throw her out because she didn't go to temple anymore and her fellow believers were telling her she should ex-communicate her. History of abuse in the family and mental illness in both mother and daughter which is how the mother fell in with them.

The girl was 17 and deliberately, honestly it seemed totally deliberate, all communications with ss or cahms etc were stalled, lost, delayed etc because when she turned 18 she wouldn't be their problem anymore.

Greg Rutherford grew up as a JW. His autobiography is v interesting.

The one JW child I've actually taught (rather than just coming into contact with through activities days) always seemed very embarrassed by it. He never mentioned it other than to politely request not to have Christmas stuff at Christmas. So the last week of Christmas term we'd always do winter maths activities instead of Christmas maths activities. Then that family (and quite a lot of the congregation) went abroad for 6 months doing missionary work. They expected all teachers to provide 6 months of school work for them to take with them. They were disappointed, as the head correctly said none of us could provide that and if they insisted on taking their children out of school for that long he would have to deregister than and he hoped very much that they enjoyed their homeschooling/missionary experience. They did come back to us, but with big gaps in their knowledge, having actually done no school work at all because we hadn't provided any.

@noblegiraffe

What’s this about on Teacher Tapp?

They were probably going to say become a teacher and get a Covid vaccination straight away, until they realised...err...

@noblegiraffe, it's a bit unfair to blame the Donner party. They were mislead by a man called Hastings who persuaded them to take a short cut which was actually longer than the established route. It snowed heavily the night in late October that they tried to cross the pass near Truckee, and that was that. (I may be becoming boring here )

Was it the DfE Blog that promoted VAK?

I've just had to give ds a haircut with very specific instructions as to what he wanted and didn't want. Nice he has so much faith in me but I'm not a hairdresser. He seems pleased with it. He now has basically a mop on top, then short back and sides with some 'blending' in between.

Another lockdown skill.

I just found that out after reading the Wikipedia page, Station! The brief mention in my history textbook basically implied they were idiots who left late and didn't look at the weather forecast.

Herc that doesn't sound like an idea to get people into teaching though. Has the VAK thing been taken down?

What with also having to take down the guidance about masks continuing after Easter it sounds like the DfE are having a bit of a mare.

They'd put it out as a 'quiz' on one of their get into teaching blogs but doesn't really make sense to be that from the TT comment. I don't know if it's gone, blooming hope so.

Ah the learning styles blog has disappeared since Tuesday. If you Google "get into teaching learning styles" a hit shows but you can't open it.

What's VAK?