The broom cupboard 3 - for briefly stranded republicans

[TheHoneyBadger]

First in tops up the gin supplies and turns on the tea urn.

My son is a rural Bob. He can tie flies , catch massive fish, grow anything, shoot, tickle grass snakes and adders, cook a three course meal, set
a bivvy, mend engines. He'll have to be forced through maths and English gcse with tutors and is ignored by all at school, apart from his food tech and engineering teacher. I do get angry at the ed system. It ignores so many bright kids.

I teach in London. No-one that works at my school has cows. Think many don’t have a garden 🤣🤣🤣

Has anyone else found that the year 7s seem very very young? Ours seem tiny in stature but also more runny aroundy and shouty than normal and a bit unaware of basic manners. Like they are still year 5 - to be expected given two academic years of disruption. I've had to get quite squashy with mine already. Mind, my year 8s were also a bit edgy too and my year 9s forgot everything about writing a description I taught them last year and went completely literal. What with effing JCQ changing access arrangement criteria meaning a terms admin has had to be done in five days, this week has been....mad.

I’d love a pet 🐄! Glad to hear you’re surviving dolly. When I was at school we had a Rural Science Dept inc small animals of some description, and a veg patch. (Mainly for the Bobs iirc.) Think it was a CSE, although maybe an O level!

Think it was very unusual? We were in a rural area but not ‘super rural’.

Wow phleb that sounds awesome!!!

Our Y7s seem huge in the main. Pretty well behaved so far.

I don't really think my year 7 are younger than usual, rather less knowledgeable about how schools work. I've needed to get quite shouty with 2 out of 3 classes so far, and I've only taught those ones for one lesson (computing, so it was mostly trying to sort out usernames and passwords and was quite boring tbf). I always think year 7 are very young and immature at this time of year though. I'm very mumsy towards them and jolly them along into learning the standards expected at secondary school (like deciding for yourself when to turn the page in your exercise book)

There's a school in the city I live in which has a farm.
Bumped into year 8 Bob on Friday. He was telling me all about his summer going ferreting.

My favourite ever Bob used to tell me all about his adventures going out lamping. Now, where I grew up, if you'd been out lamping that meant you'd been beating people up. So I was very relieved to discover that here lamping is a method of hunting small animals.

My school has a farm.

My teaching practice school had a farm until the foot and mouth outbreak. After that they did agriculture GCSE at a local farm but no longer had one on site. They still do horticulture GCSE I think. We used to have veg patches for the environmental science pupils, but I don't think that GCSE is still a thing, it certainly isn't at our school. The eco club have turned what used to be vegetable patches into mini wildlife areas with wildflowers for insects and a pond for frogs, etc

Loads of our kids turn up knackered at various times of year depending on what needs hunting or midwifing or harvesting.

Yes, and the ones who don't come into school at all because they are "ill" every time they're silaging.

Lamping is shit though
It means going out when all is dark, turning on your ( quad/ 4x4 etc) lights and then shooting the confused animals
No “ real” country person supports lamping

@Piggywaspushed

My school has a farm.

I think I might have attended your school @Piggywaspushed

I know of two teachers who had pet cows and alpacas, and from reading this I guess it's more common than I would have thought!

And yet lots of the more working class rural kids at my school do it. Often with dogs or ferrets rather than guns though.

This is fascinating I had no idea it was a thing these days! Never mentioned by the likes of Ofsted or Gav!!

Turkey plucking disrupts lessons at Christmas...

The rural school I worked in was full of kids who went "ferritin".
It also has an inset day when a local tradition takes place on Shrove Tuesday.

Love the quirks of schools. Perhaps that will be my edubestseller.

Loads of ours couldn't do any work during lockdown because they were needed on the farm full time while the normal farm workers stayed at home (even though they were essential workers so should have been at work).

I taught a boy quite a few years ago (I think he must be about 30 by now) who ran the family farm single handed around school for 3 months after his dad had a heart attack. He was completely and utterly exhausted, but they didn't want to tell school in case we got social services onto them. He eventually went on "early study leave" at about Christmas and only came back to sit his exams. He had been on course for As and wanted to be a vet. He came out with a mix of Cs and Ds. He's a farmer, I think he and his dad run the farm together.

Yes I can see even requiring a kid to help run a farm could be considered child abuse by some social workers. (OK that might occur in a few cases)

Struggling tonight with being a secondary school mum. We had friends round today and we were talking about starting y7. Friend's child same age but different area. Ds blurts out that he got a stage on Fri (name on board and logged in school behaviour system). He hadn't mentioned this until lunchtime on Sat. He was cross and obviously upset and humiliated by it.

They had used glue sticks and he had put his away in his pencil case. He looked away and when he looked back the next but one child was using his glue stick. He told the child to give it back and the child said he found it on the floor. Ds was then told off for talking in class and name put on board. He had not been given any warnings prior to this. Ds was then teased and called 'stage 1' boy a couple of times in the next lesson by a girl. Ds last lost a behaviour point when he was in Year 4 so this is a big deal for him. Dh (secondary teacher) says (to me) shows teacher is a bit crap as it is an over the top reaction in a y7 on a Friday on their first full week in school. I am just frustrated as ds now says teacher is strict and scary and obviously dislikes her and will be very reluctant to talk at all in her lessons. He was so keen about everything before starting. I just don't want his enthusiasm squished.

I know I need to just suck it up and not be precious but after spending all week reassuring my class that they don't need to worry about getting in trouble for not following class systems while they learn them and get used to being back it just stings a bit.

I need to stop being wet.

We used to get eggs from a kid in DH’s form and he often has kids turning up to school in a tractor! This will out me but I’ve had fleece from one of my students for spinning, and I always get DH to check what breeds his students have so I can offer to take the fleece off their hands (scandalously worth practically nothing to farmers so usually happy to let me have some for free)

squashed that sort of thing would upset my DD too. I don't think you're being wet and I think it's normal that your ds is a bit upset about it. It's entirely possible that the teacher will grow on him as he gets to know her. Quite a few secondary teachers start off very strict then ease up a bit later on. I think they've forgotten how scary it is to start secondary school and what a big change it is for these 11 year olds.

squashed sorry your son felt deflated (and worse). Hopefully it will be largely forgotten by Monday.

Is his school especially strict? My school is crazy strict but I doubt he would have had a warning for what you’ve described.

Our year 7s are a very mixed bag. Some are massive, some are tiny. Some are extremely bright, others really aren’t. On the whole they seem very sweet and extremely young.

I’m trying to be very mumsy and strict with them.