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

I once witnessed him conducting his affair in the British Library.

How distasteful!

Urgh that thread! Had to stop reading before I murdered something!

Can't believe they showed an oak video I'm an observation! We're going slow but that means doing lots of recapping and then building so a unit that would take a week is taking 2.

He seems to have activated some of our mortal enemies and called them to arms .

I don't understand his original tweet or why he uses us as an example. What other 'eg' could he have used?

I once got locked in the British Library. Not with Peston.

It is beginning to annoy me that casually done TecaherTapp surveys of not necessarily representative teachers are being used as official, reliable data.

Should they not be clearer who is using our responses, how and why?

I'm absolutely gobsmacked at the Oak video in an observation!!! I didn't even think they were worth using very often in full lockdown! I have since directed individuals who are isolating towards Oak a couple of times, but generally try to avoid it unless it's a last resort.

Who is still waiting for their first?

Me! Still only 42+ in my area who can book.

On the plus side, most of our teachers and TAs have had their first (I’m certainly not the youngest, but the two 28 year olds and the 32 year old teachers all got theirs randomly for conditions that they didn’t even realise they had).

Do I have to fill in some kind of separate booking form when it’s my turn do you know, because of being pregnant?

Who is using Teacher Tapp as reliable data?
It's definitely a bias sample of teachers but is big so probably somewhat representative.

I don't mind videos in lessons if they add to the learning. Oak wasn't really designed for classroom use was it?

We aren't going slow at anything. Should we be?

Small kids in masks on Sewing Bee and no one is kicking off about child abuse.

The ONS herc.

We're not going slow either. Far from it

I often use short video clips to support lessons but wouldn't dream of delegating the whole lesson delivery to the screen! I didn't even like using Oak much during lockdown - some were ok but others just weren't appropriate or had too many errors in. I can't imagine what your colleague is thinking if he's still using them now!

Oh - it wasn't a formal observation. It was me in his classroom watching specific kids for behaviour ready for next year/leaving the SEND resource in our school. He was nervous about what was going on, rightly so. Then I saw other children in another class who were just fucking about, shouting out and so on.

The guy with the Oak vid is hard going. He's wasting so much time in the school day - letting the kids mill about eating their snacks for 15 minutes before break, letting them mill around the room and chat in the last 15 minutes before home time. Why isn't he reading a class book? Or listening to 1-1 readers? If he wants an easy 15 minutes there are other ways.

He's got a significant behaviour kid in there who is having a lovely old year - no kicking off at all (until I had to cover in there and actually expected him to do some work). Of course he is, he's blithering around in the room doing fuck all the whole bloody time. No expectation that he'll learn anything. Colouring, drawing, ipad.

It's infuriated me.

I think we're doing sports day, but no parents. So, a win.

piggy shouldn’t you have been concentrating on the old 📚, not on who was smooching??😂 Altho I guess that must have been the basis of his MO.

I've just been trying to work out why my foot is so painful - then I remembered kicking the photocopier really hard earlier. Bastard machine.

Aching all over and can't sleep. Literally my bones are aching. Rule how are you feeling?

Luckily not due in work tomorrow. My arm also really hurts this time when it wasn't bad last time. Unpredictable reactions. Have a headache that I'm keeping an eye on as apparently if you get one that won't go away and keeps getting worse or you become very short of breath you need to call 111. Presumably they're thinking brain and lung embolisms with the blood clot reaction.

Horrible being really tired but not able to sleep. Glad that's the last dose I have to have for now at least.

I've given up and am watching videos on the cold war ready for September when we start using this topic with ks4. Interesting how cynical history makes you when you realise the real strings behind seemingly 'progressive' moves. I hadn't considered connections between the cold war and giving colonies independence.

Hope you got some rest honey
The lead doctor at the trial said they'd all been so convinced by the lack of reaction in the trial participants that they'd be the same with the official vaccine. Several of them went the same day for theirs and were then off sick.
The science of this fascinates me.

I hope you're ok Honey. Which vaccine have you had?

Yeshope you’re OK honey, albeit tired. Think you had AZ, iirc?

I didn’t sleep last night, but I’ve got my second dose tomorrow!

Rule I think you're on to something with the wasting time. Lots of my colleagues are doing filler activities, cahoot, phone games etc and I get frustrated because I know the majority of my lesson time is productive. Double frustrated that no one seems to be picking them up for it.

Anyone else struggling with y11? Ours have finished most of their "assessments" now so it is just time filling. They're fed up and so are we. We could get them to produce more evidence but I think we all know it won't carry much weight and would just be more wasted time. They don't want to learn any more maths, they're in the group that will pass but not go on to study maths further. I feel for them, it must be so boring!

honey missed the jab news, hope you start to feel better soon.

Harriet, I'm finally getting my jab #1 at the weekend too. I've planned a really easy teaching day for the Monday in case of feeling a bit rough as several of our staff felt shocking the day after the jab.

And leaving full instructions too in case I am so rough I dont make it in.

Posted on indian variant thread, of interest:

*re Erewash they closed the whole school for a week, not just individual bubbles, set up PCR testing in the school grounds and asked all pupils and staff plus their households and any other people part of their bubbles to attend for a PCR. Other local schools asked for any siblings to be kept off until this was complete. Lots of local kids clubs and service providers have asked people linked to the school not to attend/use services until they had a negative test.

Of course people could ignore the requests - but there does seem to have been a decent attempt to stop this spreading further. But now we wait - probably for a fortnight or so - to see how successful it had been. The immediate school test numbers are what has sent our rates rocketing, and I'm expecting to see that dropping off over the next couple of days, but will it then pick up again due to further transmission in the community*

Rule how are you feeling?

Totally fine - arm more sore than last time, but I still got up at 5.45 and went swimming this morning. No sense no feeling. Took paracetamol last night just in case and rubbed ibuprofen gel onto my arm before I went to bed. Pfizer too - was expecting to be ill-er. Maybe it's still to come.

Lots of my colleagues are doing filler activities

I understand the temptation to get to the line this year, and draw a line under it! I'm already thinking a lot about next year - we don't know where we are next year, but I'm phase lead of LKS2, so don't expect to move anywhere I'm concerned about.