The Fifty Seventh Republic - the joy of bank holiday marking

[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 once had an Ofsted inspector give me outstanding across the board. It astonished and annoyed SLT in equal measure. I hadn’t done one thing they deemed essential for outstanding.

It certainly appears to represent a change in policy regarding schools.

It's because they now want us to not go on holiday. If they change the message to 'unvaccinated children will bring back variants', then we'll avoid going away.

I did some obs today - well, that's not why I was in the classroom. I went in to look at specific kids, not the teaching. But OMG, something has to be done about the teaching. The behaviour for learning is shocking, and these teachers are letting them get away with it. Now going to try and do something by stealth to improve one of the teachers efforts by having him in my class tomorrow to see 'specific children' while I stamp all over shit behaviour. Then I'll talk to him about how I'm managing one of my specific children, and whether or not he could use some of the same strategies.

I thought my class had shocking behaviour for learning (they do), but I shut it down constantly. He was just letting it slide. So was the other teacher, who actually allowed misconceptions to slide, had the wrong powerpoint, skipped past a retrieval game that would have raised the misconception earlier because he hadn't read the PPT properly.

Just aaagh.

Rule did you watch the same lessons as me?

I'm getting so fed up with people getting away with being shit at their job.

Kahoot is becoming an acceptable every lesson activity where I am. This is not OK.

I was only in each lesson for 10 - 15 mins. One was fine (good really), the other two were properly meh. The children weren't even trying to listen. Was almost embarrassing, I had to leave.

I wish I could come and observe rule - I could do with some help with cracking down...it's just endless

Hope you won’t mind noble, but I’ve posted yr theory about 100s of cases perhaps in schools in the autumn on the Data thread, to see what they say (I can probably already guess...,) I didn’t namecheck you.

It's like splat a rat!

@MrsHamlet

It's like splat a rat!

Constant. They just seem tired to be honest - like they've given up trying to get them quiet before they start talking.

I was talking in one of the classes from a seat at the back, when a girl turned around and just started talking AT me. I stopped and gave her the daggers and just said 'That's rude, don't interrupt me'. She cried. Ha.

Read this...
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/06/new-concerns-indian-covid-variant-clusters-found-across-england-ongoing-risk-high?fbclid=IwAR3pkPXv4hD13rxkOXQJ2-dTKQxL65orLmWBYsfnggyytgQF0kYwW_6Qdt0

Read that earlier, Jan. Dh (shielder) said "oh, well I've had one week post full vaccination of feeling safe..."

I had my first vaccine dose this evening! Let the antibodies commence...

Really feel for those at that school: those testing positive, those self isolating and the staff now having to juggle everything.

Finally, Chloe! How do you feel? Which one did you get?

A positive from that article, Jan is "The documents reveal 15 cases of B16172 were found in one London care home where residents had their second doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in the week prior to the outbreak. Four of the cases were hospitalised with non-severe illness, and there were no deaths."

In a care home that has to be pretty promising.

Poor MrDangling ..... (hmm maybe not that name!)

My observation went well, hurrah. Needed it to as my lovely HoF has had a shocking year and it was nice for him to get some positive news.

Kids are tired. Lacking all kinds of resilience, particularly with each other. And we are so tired we are running out of patience to deal with it I think too.

I know more than once this week the voice in the back of my head has been saying "I have no more fucks to give, sorry!"

Well yes but surely a week was too soon for the vaccines to have had an effect noble?

Second dose though, Jan, so they'd have had protection from the first. V small sample, but the death rates in care homes have been horrendous.

Oo @ArnottsUnderpass did you feel like you might want to tell any one to F off to the far side of F and then to F off some more ??

Ah yes ok

@JanFebAnyMonth

Well yes but surely a week was too soon for the vaccines to have had an effect noble?

Could be the first dose was sufficient to fight it off at least a bit. I thought it was 7 days to peak effectiveness with the second dose though?

I had a splat-a-rat class last year with multiple Bobs and a lot of low level, annoying disruption. It was exhausting, but my goodness I learnt about behaviour management!

My year partner last year was much more experienced than me (20-odd years in rather than my 4 or 5) so was able to offer some really helpful strategies when I was tearing my hair out. Hopefully your colleagues will take on board your advice, Rule and Herc. I know I really appreciated the support from my colleague.

Well done @ArnottsUnderpass!

Of anyone has any pearls of wisdom for splat a rat classes please send them my way. NQT - so please state the really obvious stuff.

I can get them quiet. But the second someone asks for help - I go over to help and the rest of the class start chatting and going off task. I wouldn’t mind if they were quietly chatting about the work, but they are blatantly off task.

It’s mixed ability so some really do need the support.

I thought that bit was promising, too, Noble.

Jan...🤣