The Sixtieth Republic - One half term to go - just need to survive Sports Day and Activities Week!

[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 for school staff to let off steam.

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. Finally, upload your covid test results twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays.

And don’t forget the water cycle!

A lockdown this end would stop it. Not much point them flying over if they can’t stay anywhere. A significant amount of vaccine failure with the delta variant might be an issue at home. But it might just mean they have to quarantine when they get home.

Current plan is that anyone double vaccinated won’t have any restrictions when travelling home from July. There were some mutterings from government about minor changes to the plan yesterday. So far they’ve been completely data led and absolutely honest (almost) so it does suggest they might see some issues. Hopefully it will stay minor.

I used to be able to draw a passable outline map of Japan with the key motor industry areas on it. Thanks Mrs Burrow.

And tectonic plates.

Hello! Sorry I’m a bit late to the party...

I know all about glaciation in the Alps, thanks to Miss Swann.
And also about how she was nearly assaulted when hitch-hiking across Africa in the 60s.

I loved learning geography, did it to A level and wanted to do a degree too. But it's so boring to teach. I have no idea how my geography teachers made it interesting.

Where's GuyFawkes when you need her?

If I know my way around a volcano but can't reliably even put my hometown on a map then what am I bad at?

I love oxbow lakes

We do a whole school walk too, it's only about five miles but the kids hate it and attendance is always about 80% on that day as vast numbers of students are suddenly unwell!

What the fudge is a whole school walk?

@noblegiraffe

Where's GuyFawkes when you need her?

If I know my way around a volcano but can't reliably even put my hometown on a map then what am I bad at?

I don't know what it is you're bad at, but I'm bad at the same thing. I did geology GCSE so I'm a mine of information about volcanoes, tectonic plates, earthquakes, rock formations, etc but have no idea where places are. Actually, that's a lie, I have a reasonable grasp of where things are in Australia and India, but that's only because I travelled around those places in my gap year(s), so I needed to study the maps to get to the right places. And I can read a map, because I was a Brownie and a Guide so went on lots of camps and hikes.

I only know where MrsH lives. Because it's close(ish) to me. And mistress is North of the border, so she feels pretty close to me too (because I don't know how far north of the border she is). The rest of you are a blur of South.

Geography was all miracle rice and crop rotation when I did it. Seems more interesting now.

Have you actually looked at the green list? It's very small and unrealistic and doesn't take into account that most of those countries don't want us anyway. China is on there

When I worked in Science one of the Physicists would wind the Biology teachers up saying all they do is colouring in.

Ds is gutted about Egypt too. I don't know whether to hold onto my tiny tiny hope that it might change or to stamp it out now to avoid further disappointment. My flight hasn't been cancelled yet.

Crikey, I didn’t know activities week was still a thing in secondaries. It was around when I was in secondary, in the late 90s/early 00s. All I remember of it is trips to theme parks and group bike rides to a pub (I grew up in a VERY flat county).

Now I think about it from a teacher’s point of view, it sounds bloody awful.

It's going to be grim this year. Each department having to come up with half days worth of activities to do. After TAGS and exams for the rest of the school year groups, we are all WTF! SLT wanted to run trips out and asked for volunteers for which I think about 6 teachers put their hands up. The rest wore the expression of ' I am doing TAGS and so working for the exam board for free and now you want me to plan and run and school trip!'

Yep. 11 countries that you can’t get into unless you areresident there or are fully vaccinated (Iceland & Israel) and Portugal.

I feel like people might have been better prepared if the government had pointed out there’s a reason why those countries have extremely low levels of Covid rather than wanging on about summer holidays.

I am doing TAGS and so working for the exam board for free and now you want me to plan and run and school trip!

And I assume you’d have to sign up for track and trace at any venue you visit. Imagine if you then ended up having to SI due to a positive case there. I wonder what your SLT’s response to that would be?

Ah yes Staff but you clearly haven’t been doing ‘enough for the year group who has been the most let down year group ever’

Our school walk is 14 miles.

The clue is in the title, whoever asked...

The whole school - minus sixth form altho some opt to do it - starting times staggered by year group - walks 7 miles cross country and then returns.

It’s a logistical wonder with staff assigned to - loosely - walk with each year group, marshals (staff who don’t want to walk/ sixth formers), First Aid points, deals with various primaries to use their loos / their field for lunch.

Altho I did do quite a lot of shouting at Y10s who were endangering crops and / or their mates last time iirc....

Oh and they get sponsored, to pay for things like new chairs for the school library (!)

A lovely atmosphere, I think.

Jan That sounds truly awful! Never heard if this being a thing, is it a certain area that does it? I think I'll take sports day over that.

That sounds lovely, Jan, because I like walking. I can imagine the mardy faces on some though.
It’s crafty things or team building stuff I can’t stand, because I’m bad at both.

And if I had my time again, I’d be a geographer.

I chose Geography for GCSE and we used to have have a double every Friday afternoon. Our teacher used to teach us for an hour and then out on a slide show for the other hour. Can you imagine what the MN massive would say to that now?! Still managed to get an A* and all I remember is that there are rivers in the UK with little stepping stones so salmon can ‘jump’ over them. I also remember that we had to learn the names of all the states in the US and our Geography ‘field trip’ was being dumped in the centre of Birmingham, told to analyse the footfall/traffic/urban demographic and then we walked back to school. Sure the teachers went off to get pissed.

I remember when I first started teaching and spending ages teaching my Year 4 class about tectonic plates, mountains, earthquakes, etc. and then one of the boys turned round and asked:
"Is Yorkshire in Manchester?"
and a girl said:
"Don't be silly - Manchester's in England and England's in London!"

I can see why people question the relevancy of the curriculum.

We do a whole school walk - but it's 4 miles, not 14... and even then a significant proportion of year 7 cry because they've never walked that far