The Sixty-Second Republic - Pop da pop pop, the beat don't stop until the break of term

[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.

I think that should work - it lists all the walk-in clinics for over 40's but some are offering for over 18's.

https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-walk-in-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-site

I tired the cancel and rebook got a date 3 days later

V sensible HoY / Politics teacher on R4’s Any Answers, “thanking” M Hancock for making her job - getting teens to keep their masks on etc - that much harder.

I've not seen a teen wearing a mask in school since May.

DD's secondary school - never got rid of masks in public areas - still has good compliance (and few outbreaks).

Nearest secondary - got rid of masks, now none worn by anyone, has many outbreaks.

Primary - a certain number of children have always chosen to wear masks, and still do so.

Currently sitting freezing my bum off watching dd ice skate. She's waited a long time for this and have had to drive a lot further than normal and over the border to do it as
A) ice rinks are still not allowed to open in wales and
B) they dug up the surface of our local rink and made it into the mass vaccination centre. There was talk of then handing back the site this aug but they now decided they are keeping it as a vaccination centre til at least next March now.

So, child has done her first 2 days of isolation accidentally at her grandparents. I'm taking her home now, but might bring her back after day 5. They've got a garden, a swimming pool etc, and are happy to have her. That's not allowed either I assume, but from a covid logic pov, I don't see the issue.

18,000 cases today.

The case figures are shocking. No foreign countries will be letting us in soon (not that I'm bothered by that).

Maths teachers, following an interesting twitter read. Do you all teach the whole course content to all students at GCSE?

I'll lay my cards out and say we don't. Bottom end foundation don't see every foundation topic. Kids that are 6 borderline miss off super tricky stuff to focus on the content they can access and learn it well. Is our school really unusual in this?

For everyone asking, I used this link www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/ and used the option to manage my booking. I booked through there originally, and when I booked I had to make both appointments at once at the same place. This will let you see if there are sooner appointments available before you proceed to cancel an existing one.

@Namechercanged

Maths teachers, following an interesting twitter read. Do you all teach the whole course content to all students at GCSE?

I'll lay my cards out and say we don't. Bottom end foundation don't see every foundation topic. Kids that are 6 borderline miss off super tricky stuff to focus on the content they can access and learn it well. Is our school really unusual in this?

Same as you - target content as appropriate. There is so much in higher and the bottom of our top sets struggle with the reeeaaallly tricky stuff.

Do you all teach the whole course content to all students at GCSE?

God no. Why spend weeks trying to get kids to do sine and cosine rule when they can barely cope with basic trig?

There's a difference between teaching kids stuff and them understanding it and being able to answer questions on it. We teach them the stuff they will be able to understand.

No foreign countries will be letting us in soon

I fear that will be the actual final nail in my holiday coffin. I should really get around to cancelling the tunnel ticket.

Maybe everyone being cross about ruined holidays - uk included might stop this insane herd immunity in kids plan?
As if the rates are high we'll all be isolating and noone can go on holiday the first 2w!
Just offer all kids the vax. Once approved for under 12.
This way is insane. They dont even know for sure how long natural immunity lasts.
Also if there is still even teating in sept but no restrictions at all all the colds will mean everyone testing and off 1-2d. We all get coughs.

Sports day last monday. Wow the gap between fit/unfit (excluding health issues).
So many y4 cant run round the field once whereas all yr r ran really fast.
It is interesting too that
The tall kids didnt all win but generally did well. So it helps a bit.
Same with eldest in year.
Even the kids i had been thinking had packed the weight on this year were in finals.
Dd1 however has been saying her throat hurts when she runs since last aug. So that came on after our posible covid last apr. Im not sure if it's asthma. She does seem exceptionally rubbish at sport otherwise.
Also she is clever enough to realise she isnt best so doesnt bother (sigh).
But im pretty sure all the kids in the finals - the boys play at least football outside school. The boy who won is sept born and relatively tall.
I dont think there was a girl out of 30 younger than apr in the final. The winner was again one of the older
ones and at least average height. (As in taller than half the kids- obviously they could be shortish but eldest).
Dc2 came second (random selection of 60 kids though) and is both tall (1 year above age) and one of eldest.) but beaten by a boy quite a lot shorter.
The boys pretty much all cut the corner off the track.
There are about 6/60 overweight kids. It's surprising as having known then since i wouldnt have expected it for almost all of them. I dont think it's lockdown though.
But obviously any at home missed not just pe 2x a week but scooting to school and playtimes.
Certainly we started drinking fruit juice in lockdown where we hadnt been at all before

Hancock gone then...

Why couldn't it have been Gav caught with his pants down.

After seeing that video I'm reconsidering my shag, marry, kill preferences.

Hancock has moved into the kill slot.

Our positive must have been on LFT as has been overturned by PCR as all kids now back in school. How does that work with reporting case numbers? So on Wednesday that would have been presumably counted as +1 but I assume they don’t then remove that later? If the PCR was also positive would it count again? I’m sure someone has thought this through but I realised I don’t know how it works!

@Namechercanged

Maths teachers, following an interesting twitter read. Do you all teach the whole course content to all students at GCSE?

I'll lay my cards out and say we don't. Bottom end foundation don't see every foundation topic. Kids that are 6 borderline miss off super tricky stuff to focus on the content they can access and learn it well. Is our school really unusual in this?

We don't. My bottom set don't see all of the foundation content because we're aiming for grades 1&2, so it's absolutely pointless attempting to teach them things like volume of a cylinder when they are having so much trouble with area of a circle. I teach them the stuff they can access using their previous knowledge, so we go deeper in some topics than others. The ones at the bottom of higher will miss out the most difficult topics so they can concentrate on the stuff they can access too. So something like definitely sohcahtoa, probably sine rule, cosine rule in one form only. Or some circle theorems but not all, etc. Again, it depends how well they're doing with a topic as to how deep we go with it. I don't think that's unusual.

They do match the LFT positives to confirmed positives to avoid double counting.

Am living in hope of a mini reshuffle.....

Ah, just seen Sajeev Javid’s got it. No need for any more ministerial moves ....

Oh, The Saj.

I’m glad it’s not Gove.

Oh, what did I post that was offensive? Can't remember.

Our positive must have been on LFT as has been overturned by PCR

Everything crossed for that with ours too. If not I'm going to have to combine PPA over 3 weeks to get 2 days at home, which would mean doing the final 3 weeks full time in class, which I don't think my mental health can take!