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

Thanks @MrsHamlet, I thought that. Hope you are doing ok. I have been idly looking at posts in your part of the world, don't really want to uproot my primary age children, but would like to get them in to my alma mater single sex grammar. Decisions.

I've been collecting cuddles from my beloved friend's little girls. The eldest asked me yesterday if I was allowed to have a sleepover because of "stupid covid" and then told me it doesn't make sense that I can go to school but not to her house. She's 8.
I've put on hold the job hunt. I was looking overseas but I can't move now, with everything going on. I'll just have to grin and bear the useless colleagues.

I can’t post anything today but

Coats coats coats Coats Coats COATS COOOAAAATTTTSSS.

Argh.

Coats.

Coats?
And hoodies?

8 year olds are amazing. And wise. Hope you can grin and bear school for now. Overseas sounds exciting, though! I just feel like there's an awful lot of waiting at the moment. I want to be doing.

@Timeturnerplease

Today 6 children were just awful - think making noises (loud groans, screams, squeals etc), the whole time

Hats off to you for surviving six of these! I have two, but primary so with them ALLLL day.

X is undiagnosed as of yet but definitely high functioning Aspergers, and so freakishly intelligent that he doesn’t need to listen to an input, which makes it worse as he’s bored (he’s Year 3 but could easily cope in Year 5).

Y is an attention seeking girl who mimics X’s random noises then swears blind that it was X when called out on it. She also does a variety of other disruptive things completely deliberately, which gives me the rage.

When one or the other of those two is not in class, the ENTIRE class mood changes and suddenly everyone can focus again.

So again, hats off to you dealing with six of them. I’d be in a mental institution by now!

Yerp - that, x 6, all day, no TA other than the 1-1 (who needs to stay with the child for safety reasons)

Not always I should add - this has ramped up into ridiculous since this time last week. It's tiredness combined with all the changes. I'm fairly well known for dealing well with autism - used to do stuff for county advisory stuff - but this is beyond any prior experience just in its quantity. Circs obviously not helping.

1 - diagnosis, EHCP, 1-1 funding, waiting for special school place (year 4 working in year R/1, barely verbal)
2 - no diagnosis, very much in his own head, working a year behind, makes most of the noise, mum and dad in denial, won't let us do referrals (although I completed the forms last night, because I'm not letting this slide for him)
3 - no diagnosis, high functioning, super clever, VERY highly strung, frustrated by others breathing too loudly, and everything else that people dare to do around him
4 - the 7 year old Bob, no diagnosis, shouts and yells, walks out constantly, runs around the school, CAMHS waiting list
5 - super clever, no diagnosis (probably won't 'need' one), no idea of social conventions, lots of arguments with others, talks over me the whole time, rocks and hums when working
6 - Nepali child, has always been grouped with EAL children, which has disguised the other issues, constant noise.

No hoodies, they'd get confiscated. Only coats.

Coats. That's my job now. Carefully handcrafted, individualised requests to remove coats, repeated at regular intervals, along with the assurance that it is not, in fact, FREEZING. Perhaps if you are cold you might consider your blazer? Or a jumper? No, jumpers do not make you gay.

Honey, I did vaguely know 2 days a week of a Careers person was more than many schools have, but had forgotten, apologies. How do other places manage it, do you have a dedicated Careers person at all?
Rule that all sounds ridiculously hard.

Jumpers make you warm.

We've given up on any policing of coats in the library, but we are our own little kingdom these days

We've had a COAT EDICT.

It is the hill we are all going to die on.

Are you me? We've also had a coat edict from people who spend their days in nice warm offices

There have been a lot of complaints from parents

But it's not cold, MrsH! It really isn't! It's actually quite warm and stuffy because the windows don't open properly

No, you don't need to be dressed for the Arctic. Yes I can see that you're now sporting a nice little off-the-shoulder coaty number. No, that isn't allowed you need to take your arms out of it.

Ah. I teach in one room where the ventilation is so good that the curtains flap when the windows are closed. It's bloody freezing.

It might help if "no coats on indoors" didn't translate to "no coats at all". We're going to have a lot of wet teenagers today.

We have the opposite issue re: coats.
Apparently, because it was sunny one day last week, that means it's summer and therefore some of them don't need to wear coats outside at all from now on.
Even when it's pissing down with rain.

Coats, hoodies, woolly sock , hoods, gloves, practical plimsolls with all of the above and mini skirts.

Honestly this specific generation of schoolkids are going to think they can do whatever the hell they want.

As we know one of my room has no windows and it is really warm.

When I was a teenager -in a genuinely cold part of the UK- no one wore coats ever. It was considered really soft. Either it's because youse are all English, or kids are just so lacking in toughness and a thermostat these days!

I need to adjust your voice in my head to accommodate yr Scots accent piggy

I genuinely couldn’t care less what students are wearing. I’ve never noticed it impact on learning at all.
I can fully believe that some idiot SLT with nothing better to do than make people’s lives unbearable are adding coat edicts and uniform checks to all the other miseries they heap on children, staff and parents alike.

@JanFebAnyMonth

I need to adjust your voice in my head to accommodate yr Scots accent piggy

I just had to do that too :)

My kids can't decide how hot or cold it is. I have some pulling off jumpers/hoodies, all red-faced and begging me to open the fire door to let in a new blast of air. Some are pulling their cardigans round them tighter and looking at me with pained faces.

It's the same at breaktime: some are in shorts and polos, others huddled by the door desperate for the end of break.

@Piggywaspushed

Coats, hoodies, woolly sock , hoods, gloves, practical plimsolls with all of the above and mini skirts.

Honestly this specific generation of schoolkids are going to think they can do whatever the hell they want.

As we know one of my room has no windows and it is really warm.

When I was a teenager -in a genuinely cold part of the UK- no one wore coats ever. It was considered really soft. Either it's because youse are all English, or kids are just so lacking in toughness and a thermostat these days!

Do we teach at the same school?

Honestly we have now got leather jackets in class, hoodies, beanies, fingerless gloves, striped tights (they’re thicker apparently) but yet the skirts skim the arse cheek? 🤔

Kids are doing whatever the fuck they want.

Our new directive is DON’T TELL THE PUPILS WHAT WILL BE ON THEIR FAKE EXAMS.

Oh god the fake exams.
We had an agreement in the dept about what we'd say about one of the papers. Someone senior broke it and now we've got kids and their parents complaining about why this class have been told this thing but that class haven't. Good question, people.

Are you allowed to call them exams? We're not (not that it impacts me much except with my DD). Assessments.

I don't hugely care about uniform born but I do care that they wear bulky coats and gloves and so can't write! I care that they are overheating and then complaining their masks make them too hot!

I also care that they are entitled brats!

Och aye the noo!