The Sixty-fourth Republic - good luck to those still gliding towards the holidays especially after euro final

[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.

We are still waiting advice on chairs and masks but keep the windows open. You don’t have to upload LFT results during the holidays.Do not sit on the chairs and do wear a mask.

Are you not working tomorrow either? If you are you should GO TO SLEEP! Easier said than done sometimes but worth trying for. I just have to be awake to wake ds up and boss him into the shower and clothes and out of the door on time.

@TheHoneyBadger Your life is fascinating! In terms of holidays I would recommend Westward Ho! (still love the fact a place has an exclamation mark after it). We took a punt on it last year and the kids loved it so much we’re going again this year. Quite town but the beaches are fab and excellent for body boarding/surfing. Also you can drive to excellent parks/walks and the Takher (?) Trail which was a super bike ride.

So today I have one lesson (Yr 10) and then whole school picnic followed by watching a film with my form. Tomorrow I have a whole morning with my form for ‘party time’. I lose 2 periods of gained time just to supervise my form dossing about. They’re not even my real form. We have vertical tutors usually so they’ve been m temporary form this year and they fucking annoy me (Yr 8).

My dh has a.lesson observation today. Wtf.

That’s awful Squashed. I’ve also heard lots of schools have had the Ofsted call this week. I have no words.

I'm exhausted after the trip and got to find time for my performance management which feels like a bloody joke.

www.theguardian.com/travel/swimming-holidays

Ring local or any TIO and ask the question, they’ll know national sources of info.

It's because you're so interesting, Honey - not that the other Republicans aren't - but you've done so many strange and wonderful things. It would be one of those "going out" where you suddenly realise 6 hours have passed and you'd not noticed.

Being informed, curious and proactive somehow seems to be taken as an act of aggression by some of my slt.

I recognise that mindset in management and not just in education. It’s at least partially a defence mechanism.

So true. I did a data course earlier this year - in my own time and paid for myself - and mentioned it in my interview.
It was met with something akin to derision - why would you do that?
Because I like learning about my job.

The Pembrokeshire coast, Honey? There are places where you can swim out to rocks and then dive off into deep clear water (I just mean plunge dive, I don’t dive dive). There are stations at Tenby, Pembroke and other smaller places, and decent bus services in summer. I drive there now but often leave the car where I’m staying and do circular walks using buses. There are also some genuinely stunning sandy beaches.

I've got 2 lessons today, both year 10, I don't think there will be many kids in. We're going to attempt some construction maths art so I've got stuff to go on my walls in September. There won't be many kids in though.

I once spent most of a very hot second half of the summer term with naughty Y9s doing tree surveys, estimating the heights of trees using various practical methods (many of which involved falling over), making sundials with sticks, basically anything that involved going outside. When it started raining we went indoors and created all the charts and graphs, worked out the average lengths, widths and areas of different types of leaf and created wallpaper patterns using leaf and blossom motifs and various transformations. Some of the wallpapers were stunning, I’d have had them on my wall.
I could only manage this because I worked in two departments so no one noticed what I was doing. Also we had wonderful grounds.

I sent DS back to bed, his legs aren’t so bad now but he’s still feeling sick and generally unwell!

Poor ds, JanFeb. I hope he's feeling better soon.

@borntobequiet

I once spent most of a very hot second half of the summer term with naughty Y9s doing tree surveys, estimating the heights of trees using various practical methods (many of which involved falling over), making sundials with sticks, basically anything that involved going outside. When it started raining we went indoors and created all the charts and graphs, worked out the average lengths, widths and areas of different types of leaf and created wallpaper patterns using leaf and blossom motifs and various transformations. Some of the wallpapers were stunning, I’d have had them on my wall. I could only manage this because I worked in two departments so no one noticed what I was doing. Also we had wonderful grounds.

I wish I could do that, but unfortunately that sort of thing is frowned upon. It would be great for them though.

It would have been frowned on MsAD if they’d clocked it! I had asked the dep. Maths HOD for suggestions and he had suggested a car survey which would have been hot, boring and potentially dangerous, so I decided on this instead, my reasoning being we had implicit permission to go outside. Luckily I had really good TA who was completely on board and we had a great time.

We had lots of discussion about areas of leaves and eventually categorised them as rectangles btw.

Just found out we’re keeping our ‘zones’ next year as it reduces corridor congestion. This year has killed me teaching in 9 different rooms.

Oh wow mother. Is there going to be access to labs and other specialist rooms?

I wonder whether other schools will do likewise. I know we’re not.

We’ve also apparently shelved our plans for allowing Y7 to move around school from 19th, due to our rising number of cases.

We're staying as we are until we break up. Very pointedly will be wearing masks in the playground and so on at drop off/pick up. Parents have stopped bothering.

Next year is all guns blazing as normal. Let's hope it's not all covid guns blazing still at that point.

I can't believe that no one is mentioning the fact that in primary, it's often adults taking out bubbles, but if we'd been vaccinated as a priority with other personal care bods, it wouldn't be such an issue. Something like 300,000 primary school children off at the moment.

@JanFebAnyMonth

Oh wow mother. Is there going to be access to labs and other specialist rooms?

I wonder whether other schools will do likewise. I know we’re not.

We’ve also apparently shelved our plans for allowing Y7 to move around school from 19th, due to our rising number of cases.

That question was asked in the chat bar but not answered.

My kids school have Ofsted in today… and half the school out 🙄🤣🤦‍♀️

I think we'd have half the staff out if Ofsted tried to come in at this point. I'm working in the staff room today, there have already been 6 members of staff in tears. Yay!

Pembrokeshire is a good idea Born - I will look into that.

You'd be surprised MrsH. I seem to be very good at quietly learning people's whole life stories without saying much about my own. And you've been to some really interesting places so I could happily just listen. I got engrossed in Jan's life story and her family background when we met up.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to collect people's stories in documentaries or something. I'd love to interview fascinating middle aged women and counter the 'invisibleness' a bit. I think people just assume we're boring and have always been so.

Non work day today. Tomorrow I only have one lesson and the kids already started watching a film with their main teacher last lesson so no chance they'll expect to do any work in this, their last lesson. I guess I'll just finish the film she started.

Have had a conversation about my directed time and followed it up with a polite email outlining the number of meetings etc and what 0.4 amounts to etc. Big girl pants are up and I can cope with the seething annoyance I felt coming off of the member of slt when we talked about it.