The Fifty-Eight Republic - Do no masks mean that Sports Day will take place?

[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

Checking in.

@DanglingMod

Anyone's school made a decision to keep masks yet? Ours is yet to decide but is taking staff voice. Several students asked me yesterday if they could keep wearing them even if as a school we drop them.

We’ve taken the decision in our team to continue to wear them for now at least. One colleague has had no vaccine and deserves to continue to be protected by the rest of us and if we have to continue to wear them in shops it makes no sense to wear them in a far far riskier environment. We’ve been wearing them since September in the classroom.

@singsingbluesilver

Utterly hate sports day. It is the day when a 100 kids who like PE get to show off to 1100 disinterested kids.

I wait for the day when the maths whizzes, historians, artists etc get the chance to do the same. In what other field does the whole school come to a standstill to watch kids participate in one subject? If I want to watch kids who are good at drama I go in my own time to a production. I want to see the art work our talented kids have done - I do it after school.

This in spades! At primary, Sports Day has been a mixture of things requiring a range of skills and everyone counted. There were challenges that required logical and physical responses and a wide array of sport-related things so there was something somewhere for everyone to do reasonably well in. Everyone wanted to be involved. At secondary, it become races, races and more races and forced participation for all. We had the equipment for more: table tennis, javelins, a climbing wall, badminton, basketball etc. but none of it was ever used.

@DanglingMod

Anyone's school made a decision to keep masks yet? Ours is yet to decide but is taking staff voice. Several students asked me yesterday if they could keep wearing them even if as a school we drop them.

We’ve taken the decision in our team to continue to wear them for now at least. One colleague has had no vaccine and deserves to continue to be protected by the rest of us and if we have to continue to wear them in shops it makes no sense to wear them in a far far riskier environment. We’ve been wearing them since September in the classroom.

Thanks for the new thread staff!
I hate sports day with a scorching passion. Luckily "because I'm maths" I haven't had to supervise/run anything for the last few years - I am the all-important lady who totals the scores. As a student I really hated it, especially as I hadn't yet discovered sports bras
Great news about monkey's DS and honey second jab news.
What a pain in the arse about your car 13
Hope you're ok harriet, some of the safeguarding stuff we hear as teachers are truly awful. I'm glad you're getting support at work.

Thanks for the new thread staff!
I hate sports day with a scorching passion. Luckily "because I'm maths" I haven't had to supervise/run anything for the last few years - I am the all-important lady who totals the scores. As a student I really hated it, especially as I hadn't yet discovered sports bras
Great news about monkey's DS and honey second jab news.
What a pain in the arse about your car 13
Hope you're ok harriet, some of the safeguarding stuff we hear as teachers are truly awful. I'm glad you're getting support at work.

Thanks for the new thread staff!
I hate sports day with a scorching passion. Luckily "because I'm maths" I haven't had to supervise/run anything for the last few years - I am the all-important lady who totals the scores. As a student I really hated it, especially as I hadn't yet discovered sports bras
Great news about monkey's DS and honey second jab news.
What a pain in the arse about your car 13
Hope you're ok harriet, some of the safeguarding stuff we hear as teachers are truly awful. I'm glad you're getting support at work.

DH's school is keeping masks probably : Indian variant and rising cases.

I don't mind sports day in itself and typically spend the day talking to students. I usually have an agreement with my group that there's give and take
What really annoys me is when I'm doing my duty properly, there's always colleagues who've decided they will let the students do what they like, go for walks, go in groups to the toilets and generally refuse to take any responsibility for their groups. It will come as no surprise to you that these are usually the lazy/'cool' teachers who are selective in their application of school rules as well.

We do interhouse sports instead of sports day. The team sports are throughout the day and then everyone has P5 off to watch the races and hear the final points tally. Rome always wins though. We tried to get different interhouse events going throughout the year for different subjects but it didn't really take off.

Typically we haven't been told what's happening with masks yet.

I have a new year 9 who I suspect hasn't been in any school for a while, that's something to look forward to tomorrow.

The acting head stopped me on the way out to tell me to book whatever cover I need if my new school want to do any induction days, which is nice of him, I think.

Found you. No sports days etc happening here. I just want to crawl through to getting the last assessment done. And moderated. And probably moderated again.

That’s good piggy

My hatred for sports day is so virulent that it needed posting 3 times

That's good @Frlrlrubert. My old hellish place refused to let me have the time to attend an induction when I switched schools. They were such arseholes. My HOF had said yes. SLT refused it

The acting head stopped me on the way out to tell me to book whatever cover I need if my new school want to do any induction days, which is nice of him, I think

That is really good of him Frlrlrubert

Thanks for the advice earlier regarding last date of employment. You guys are absolute stars.

MN is randomly posting some things three times all over the boards this afternoon.

Hope I haven’t hassled our Head of Y11 too much by emailing her - as a parent - last night asking could we at least know WHEN we are going to find out what happens in the last week of this term (assessments finish on 21st) and what in the first two weeks of next term. We’ve just been vaguely told it’ll be a mixture of f2f and online. The week leading up to 25th June is sixth form induction week and DD’s been told her taster day is the Wed. Again it’s not clear whether they have stuff to do on the other days or whether they’re just splitting them across 5 days or what.

MN is randomly posting some things three times all over the boards this afternoon.
Glad it's not just me

Yes, it's very glitchy today!

I loathed sports day too. Still do. Enforced competition disguised as fun. Ugh.

Thanks Staff!

Late to the Staffroom as usual! Let me grab a cuppa and have a catch up!

Luckily "because I'm maths" I haven't had to supervise/run anything for the last few years - I am the all-important lady who totals the scores.

They passed that over the computing at my school and I have a fancy pants spreadsheet that I use to total the scores for each event and link it to PowerPoint for ‘up to date’ results!

I secretly love sports day at my school. Because I do the scoring, I don’t have to supervise forms and just get to sit at my table as kids run scores to me! (And we often used to finish at 2pm pre Covid which meant a quick drink in the pub )

One colleague has had no vaccine and deserves to continue to be protected by the rest of us and if we have to continue to wear them in shops it makes no sense to wear them in a far far riskier environment.

That’s so good to hear! We definitely have way more then one staff member unvaccinated and people like me only vaccinated for the first time in the last couple of days, so I too am nervous about Monday.

We did away with sports day years ago, thankfully.

@JanFebAnyMonth

We did away with sports day years ago, thankfully.

I wish we had. It's the worst day of the year. Although, at least we've changed it so each yeargroup has one period of sports day and they only have to watch their own year race/throw/jump. It used to be dire when we all had to watch everyone!!!!

I too love sports day now that I've got myself the scoring job! No class to supervise, an umbrella if it's sunny, mug of tea on the table and Bob's your uncle