The Sixty Third Republic - as we glide into staycations the DfE whip up anti-school media storm

[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.

Had to roll out the cool picture books this afternoon. Journey, Quest and Return.

Love, love, love these books.

We used some of the images for a writing thing a few weeks ago, but didn't show them the full stories.

mother!

Hope yr (Y12 dd?) is OK, whatever the PCR result cant.

born, have heard it said before (possibly by you?!) that coaching improves teaching. Tell us more. I know nothing about sport!

I think am going to add SM influencer to my CV. Yesterday I learnt of the Emergency iSAGE type thingy from Parents United, usually where I glean things from if not here. I started that thread about it last night.... which has been interesting. (At least my MH hasn’t been questioned yet, but that’s probably coz I’ve stayed mainly aloof from the pile on!)

This morning what do I see on Parents United? A post about the emergency iSAGE meeting, saying

“This was posted on Mumsnet
“JOHN SNOW MEMORANDUM
EMERGENCY SUMMIT AGAINST MASS INFECTION
THURSDAY 8th JULY, 10:00 am

We are holding .... (etc)”

Nailed it!!

She's (finished) Y13, thank you Jan.

Had first vaccine dose abut 10 days ago...at least with vaccine + possible infection she'll hopefully have some immunity to go off to uni with in September / October.

Speaking of which, had anyone seen this?
www.tes.com/news/covid-schools-ventilation-classrooms-government-measure-air-quality-classrooms

DfE running a pilot project to “look at the options” for improving ventilation in schools. Wonder when that’s due to report then.....

Oh no Cant! I hope your DD is ok.

My class were all over the place today. Almost half stayed up to watch the match, and it showed. I admitted defeat in the afternoon and let them do some sketching instead of my planned lesson.

If they started on at you, Jan, I'd be forced to leap in and defend you and then your thread would really go downhill.

Cant, hope your DD is ok. It must be a bit of a shock.

A kid got excluded for behaviour in my lesson today. I came home and had a nap.

Cant, hope your DD is ok. It must be a bit of a shock.

I may have left my desk in a bit of a state, i have to admit....just dumped and ran.

Had to roll out the cool picture books this afternoon. Journey, Quest and Return.

Are Quest and Return part of a trilogy? I only know Journey but enjoyed when my class used it for writing.

Jan it may have been from me!

Coaching improved my teaching by (among other things):
Improving my communication skills. Directing people to use their bodies in very specific ways, especially in situations that that might put them in (slight) danger, makes one very particular in the use of words, tone, body language and so on, as well as breaking down complex instructions into their components.
Making me reflect on subject knowledge and delivery. I came to my sport later in life and so it wasn’t ingrained in the way Maths was. I realised that I relied on many standard tricks and tropes from my own education that were of little benefit to the people I taught in the classroom, so I ditched them, and became more imaginative and ready to use a wider range of examples and situations for contextualising my teaching.
Improving my confidence. I realised that though the markers of success in teaching and coaching were different, they were there and visible. I began to focus more on incremental successes rather than identifying failure. This improved the learners’ confidence as well.

Have to agree. I was a scuba diving instructor before being a teacher and it definitely helped my teaching. Very important information to teach due to obvious safety issues and in quite a condensed period of time so really important to be able to connect - so like born says tons of different examples, analogies, hooks etc. It was also interesting because people were rendered very vulnerable - even if they were super bright, competent, usually in control businessmen for example they were suddenly taken back to being a novice, a bit scared and very out of their comfort zone so I guess it taught me a lot about explicitly teaching knowledge and skills whilst implicitly dealing with their psychology and helping them cope with vulnerability.

Also some people would have phobias they were overcoming so something that usually took ten minutes with 99% of students could become a huge challenge to overcome and require a lot of creative thinking and different ways of approaching things.

It was lovely though to be able to take people from complete novice/terrified to competent and hopefully passionate over just 4 or 5 days with a raft of things you've taught them to comfortably do that they could not do before.

I managed to get a head start on the payscale when I started teaching thanks to that and a spell working with adolescents in a behaviour unit. I would be such a better diving instructor if I went back to it now though.

I cancelled our planned French holiday last week. It was for the first two weeks of the school holidays. Partner didn't want to go, said it was immoral etc etc. Today I get home and he's announced that after seeing the news today, he's booked a channel tunnel ticket for 4 nights, coming back at 11pm the night before I go back to school in Sept. I booked child into a sports camp so I could work those days - he's getting his mother down to take child to sports camps.

I'm being ungrateful by being annoyed about that, yes? Can't think of anything worse in 'wind up week' than rushing back up the M20.

That’s very interesting, both of you!.

Also some people would have phobias they were overcoming so something that usually took ten minutes with 99% of students could become a huge challenge to overcome and require a lot of creative thinking and different ways of approaching things.

Par for the course if teaching Maths to adults who have always struggled with it!

Do any of you work at the schools allowing the kids to sleep in until 10.30 on Monday to be able to watch the football?

Will not happen at my school.

In what way did he think it was immoral previously rule?

@borntobequiet

Also some people would have phobias they were overcoming so something that usually took ten minutes with 99% of students could become a huge challenge to overcome and require a lot of creative thinking and different ways of approaching things.

Par for the course if teaching Maths to adults who have always struggled with it!

Yep. The vulnerability too! It's a good way of learning that a huge part of learning is confidence and willingness to take risks rather than solely ability.

Travelling for fun in a pandemic isn't 'right'. Apparently he's listened to what I've been saying about really missing Europe, and has booked this.

Meanwhile I'd decided to go to visit my best friend (alone for a few days) who lives in Scandinavia. Won't be able to do that now.

Oh meh... I'm just irritated by everything at the minute.

allowing the kids to sleep in until 10.30

None of the kids will do that. The parents might want to though.

I'd be annoyed Rule - that's a lot of unilateral decision taking without much consideration. I'd be tempted to rebook something for me and dc at the beginning of the holidays and let him have his long weekend solo or with dc.

No definitely won't be letting kids come to school late here. Probably give them 1hr 40 detentions on the last day of term instead

I sometimes think our kids can be really rowdy at inappropriate times sometimes because they're never allowed to be rowdy or really blow off steam at appropriate times. 40 min lunch break to 'manage behaviour' as prime example.

Do I want a “job” (internal vacancy, would increase my hours by c.40%, which is ideal) as admin to the (completely rehashed) pastoral team? I could do it, and the hours are just what I’ve been looking for. However, I don’t particularly want to do admin and I definitely don’t want to be seen purely as Associate staff. Also I do think it’s ridiculous that I’d need to fill in a whole application form again AND write a letter of application of 1-2 sides of A4! When there’ll only be a handful of applicant at best, all of whom they know already. (Transparency etc, I know.)

It is only a year’s contract so I wouldn’t be stuck with it forever if I didn’t want to be.

Not sure if anyone else in school will be interested. I want to be able to get it but at the same time point out that I’m only doing it for the money. Possibly not a good line in an interview, what do you think? 🤭

At least it’s prompted me to chase up that possible Catch Up work in literacy I angled for.

Ex has just managed to conclude that it’s “all my fault” and “typical”, when I pointed out that the paltry child maintenance he pays is supposed to be a commitment, for his children, rather than something he can duck out of because he’s had a big window replaced this month. He wouldn’t even have told me - it’s a week late already - had I not raised the subject.

🤬

Jan I'd take the job. It ticks a lot of boxes, you need the cash and you know the school. Could always lead to something else and you may find bits of it you do enjoy.

Yes you may be right. But it isn’t like they’re offering it to me on a plate, I have to jump they the hoops first, and may not get it!

Tell us where he lives and we could sort that window out for him, Jan