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

Hey cat Feel like I haven't seen you in a while but it may be me being inattentive.

🙂 I've been hibernating & lurking.

Very relieved the Easter break is upon us.

The boys school I have experience of is very traditional, with a large number of female teachers, several of whom are in SLT roles. You absolutely do not aim ‘bantz’ at female staff.
There is plenty of pastoral support if boys need it but if a behaviour line is drawn and repeatedly stepped over then they are on their way to exclusion. I know this then makes them another school’s problem, but from the point of view of a parent it makes for an excellent atmosphere for the boys who do want to learn.
DS came home in Yr7 and said his PHSE teacher (female) had “ripped apart Disney for its sexism, Mum, she is as bad as you!”
Similar no nonsense attitudes from other teachers further up the school. When a young female teacher was verbally abused by a father at Parent’s Evening, action was taken immediately.

I know anecdotally that other all boys schools can be bear pits but the reputation of this particular one is and always has been outstanding.

I thought I'd hate the Clanchy and avoided it for a while but it is actually very good

We tolerate too much in the classroom these days.

Yep, I'm not going to anymore. It's not fair on the other kids. When we get back after Easter we also have the return of all our sheilding staff. Two of them don't have class responsibilities, so you know... they are getting the call. We are doing the Bobs themselves a disservice by putting up with their shit, and the other children a massive disservice, by trying to keep them in. These Bobs need help, and by pretending it's not happening, or accepting it, they aren't going to get that help. I'm flagging it up all over the place.

It's making me not like children at the moment. I was watching my class line up on Monday at the end of the day. It was a shambles of a mockery. Without me policing the line, about 8 kids managed to get hurt or cry or angry in the 3 minutes it took for the line up to happen. What the fuck is going on with them? Why are they hurting people all the time? Why are they so destructive? How come any of them think it's OK to rip a book up? Or draw on a wall? I get that they are all in a bit of a mental pickle at the moment, but really? This is crowd control, not teaching.

Do I even want to work with children any more at all? Or is it just these children? Can't work it out.

@Piggywaspushed

I thought I'd hate the Clanchy and avoided it for a while but it is actually very good

Snap!

I've been thinking about why.

So many books are quite forceful with their opinions, I think. And it gets a bit much, really.
KC's pretty forceful - she definitely has her views - but there's more room for nuance.

I think, overwhelmingly, the book made me realise how much I miss nuance. It's under-rated. Like salt in food. You realise that its power lies precisely in its quality of being a barely-there, barely-noticeable, presence, the power of which lies exactly in its power to be over-looked. And you realise how important it is when its gone.

I found many are the big I am tone and pretty dishonest about the reality of the classroom despite their market being teachers. It's a long time since I read a teacher book though and I went the other way and read a great deal about the harms of education and the likes of Holt and Gallo and others. That came after that experience of walking out of the temporary contract job after receiving condoned sexually aggressive abuse and deciding hell if it's not good enough for me to be in a state classroom it's not good enough for ds either.

He was having his interest in learning crushed by school at that point because (the since made to retire) shit headteacher had decided the best way to deal with some issues with writing picked up on by ofsted was to get a shouty male, lifelong year 6 teacher to teach year 2 and treat them like they were in year 6.

Did anyone read 'teaching as a subversive activity'? I sometimes feel like an undercover agent behind enemy lines trying to educate kids despite the school system rather than because of it.

The lurkers will love that post

I do wonder if we're in for some pretty strange times in education.

It's always been a locus for proxy-wars in society, and the site of competing, conflicting demands.

But the pandemic has possibly multiplied that by 100.

Plus, politically, we're in a very strange place. I think we're looking at a sizeable demographic of people who want a number of quite profound changes in society and culture but have no leverage to effect those changes through Parliament.

There are a number of terrains dissent will therefore play out - and one of those terrains is education, I think.

I'm finding the issue of sexual violence in schools really interesting.

It's making me think very hard about how hard it is to be a female teacher. I'm seeing very little in the way of nuanced thinking about the material realities of being a female teacher.

I also suspect this is all going to end with - primarily female - teachers being tasked with (miraculously) sorting all this out with a few PSHE lessons.

Which is laughably dire as a solution.

Well, this thread is my safe space, HoneyBadger.

I like it because there's a bit of diversity of opinion here.

And that comes from the fact that we talk about our material reality in the classroom - which throws up the contradictory nature of the experience.

And we can talk here about the stresses involved when we run up against the conflicts between and within competing ideals, systems, and ideologies. Which we often experience - in extremely real terms - as stress.

It's ridiculous to pretend it doesn't exist.

And we have to be able to talk about it. Even if there isn't an immediate solution.

And sod the lurkers.

Teachers - many of whom are women (hmmm) - are a very-over-patrolled group. We are punished all the time for not conforming to people's (contradictory!!!) fantasies and projections of what we should be.

So 💐 @TheHoneyBadger
And
💐@RuleWithAWoodenFoo.t

I had images of daleks chanting, 'subversive teacher! subversive teacher!' and pointing their guns at me.

PS Being punished for not conforming to people's fantasies of what they think you should be is quite a gendered form of violence.

I'm always stunned at the lack of self-awareness demonstrated by those who do it to teachers.

To be fair, @HoneyBadger, my UCL tutor very firmly said that all teachers end up being subversive. 🤷‍♀️

"Being punished for not conforming to people's fantasies of what they think you should be"

How many of us on the main boards have been told, "I hope you don't teach my child," when we have related tales of things we have witnessed or had to deal with? It's usually something minor, like not having been pro-active enough in locating an un-named jumper. In Primary, I think there is this vision of a mumsy Mary Poppins type, who can perform miracles in a humorous and gentle way, whilst at the same time severely disciplining other people's children, although never the poster's own.

I think all the litter left behind in various places yesterday is a sign of a culture shift, too. That is what our school playing field increasingly looks like after lunch. Arguably, we don't have enough bins and live in the plastic bottle/have to drink constantly generation but they really do just sprinkle litter everywhere.

Yup.

That was in response to @CarolineHendricks.

Suspect you could write a proper essay about the litter situation, Piggy.

Meanwhile ... as Noble highlighted up-thread ... blimey, just blimey ... Pimlico.

Spot on callme forever now imagined as Caroline! The I hope you don't teach my child/ I hope you aren't really teacher has been used a lot during covid.

The head at Pimlico has had to climb down now. Where was he shipped in from does anyone know?

Interesting : PPE from Oxford, various postgrad qualifications from LSE. Lots of leadership roles (I suspect Teach First?) All MATS. Never stayed anywhere long. This may stall his stellar ambitions.

Hang on.. it looks like he went straight into senior management?? Is that even possible??

uk.linkedin.com/in/daniel-smith-a6409578

Fallen down a rabbithole now but the nepotism! All the SLT have been at the same schools as each other!

😁 @Piggywaspushed.

That was me, last night.

It's all sickening Piggy, don't look!

I'm sat around unsure what to do with myself as the guy from China wanted to meet today and I suggested a time and he clarified he'd put his wrong availability and that was the hour he was teaching (heavy timetable lol) so I replied with an alternative time to which he didn't respond but would be about half an hour from now if he took me up on it.

Therefore, just in case, I've sorted my hair and put some make-up on. I'm not expecting the call will happen but it would be just my luck if it did and I had bed hair and a greasy face.

@Piggywaspushed, Meh! Carolina/Angelina/Hendricks. I answer to anything these days.

Interesting : PPE from Oxford, various postgrad qualifications from LSE. Lots of leadership roles (I suspect Teach First?) All MATS. Never stayed anywhere long. This may stall his stellar ambitions.

Same as Oak Academy really (not knocking Oak) - when me and a mate looked at the teachers involved, it was all MATs, Teach First, 'Principal' at 26 etc. Meh. I wouldn't be able to work for a Head who only had 4 or 5 years experience, I just wouldn't. It was bad enough working for an inexperienced Head who had roughly the same experience as me.

This brings me back to the whole 'Am I just too jaded for this shit these days?'