Sixty Seventh Republic - under temporary guardianship

[Hercisback]

In the absence of staff and her fabulous thread titles and witty openers here is a 67th thread. The broom cupboard is overflowing so time for another Republic. Hopefully we hear from staff soon.

Stolen from thread 66.
'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.'

She said on twitter she's agnostic. Ignorant, certainly.

Not in my current school. It's very bitchy and bullying. Problem is I am very rural and jobs like phase leader are very rare. I have no interest in going for slt in primaries - It's hellish. There's more scope for moving in secondaries. I like the pastoral side.

My ideal job would be in secondary teaching ks2 level maths and English to those at that level or in an all through school managing ks2/3. I'd have a long commute though- unless I go to my kuds secondary the next nearest is about an hour away. I'm stymied with other primaries because 60% of them are the same trust as I am now and another 30% are on I whistleblew and left! Joys of rural living!

I'm not entirely sure what to make of that article, Jan. I want to file it under 'things that never happened'.

Do you not think it sounds credible Noble?

Then we have this, Harries and Zahawi obvs a bit worried about rates in schools now:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59088284

Omg.

Do you not think it sounds credible Noble?

Tbh, no. If I'm going to call out the ridiculous Molly Kingsley for her imagined piece where unvaccinated kids are called 'dirties' and shunned, then I guess the same will have to go in the other direction.

Anonymous author doesn't help.

I bet your experience of both primary and secondary and ks2 maths and literacy experience would make you a great secondary senco or the like Phleb. It would be great if we had ks2 literacy and numeracy specialists in secondary actually running proper intervention classes for the kids who hadn't mastered that key stage but are just shoved onwards.

I think my ideal jobs/roles/responsibilities don't exist either really. I'm busy trying to plan for making a cpd video today. Confidence is struggling a bit though.

I read that article and was a bit surprised by the apparent reaction. My DD was the only one in her class to get the vaccine (12yo) and some were complaining that they couldn't get it!

@phlebasconsidered that is shit. I can't believe you had to go back to m2 from m6. I was one of the lucky ones where UPS happened automatically I don't remember doing anything extra . For Performance management we get to choose an extra target for being UPS, I didn't bother 3 is enough!

You can see why they’re pushing people to LFT before returning to school can’t you? But that’s probably all they’ll do

@TheHoneyBadger I don’t know why not … it’s a riveting read 😜

@noblegiraffe wow!!! That is ridiculous and STILL they won’t do anything about schools. My school is going to end up getting properly hit with covid this half term I reckon. Why wouldn’t you offer boosters to teachers eligible? I’m lucky in that I qualify and just had mine but surely that is now sensible.

And as it gets colder and everyone wants to shut windows I can’t see that improving!

We're going to be told to shut windows to save on heating bills I'm sure. Schools can't afford the energy price hike.

Damn! So if I'd waited a year I'd be starting on five grand more.

Feeling incredibly stressed today at the thought of Monday and all that may await this term. Ofsted due any time too. Yay.

Damn! So if I'd waited a year I'd be starting on five grand more.

Sucks doesn’t it!?

Didn't Katharine Birbalsingh also tweet that Michaela weren't using knowledge organisers much anymore?

Yep, she did!

Should serve to those types of SLT who hear something and jump on the bandwagon demanding their whole school adopts a particular fad, without the critical thinking needed for each year group/subject or what value it would actually add.

I can guarantee that these always lead to added teacher workload though.

Our SLT have swallowed the "learning maps are awesome" pill about 8 years too late. I am fighting hard against it and getting nowhere.

Not ready for Monday at all here either. Half term from hell looming for various reasons.

Someone trying to argue that vax has no effect on catching covid.
Doesnt seem reflected in those ons graphs! Where it's much higher in unvaccinated. I think gov messaging which is - be careful you can still get it, is being confused for you have just as much chance of catching it. Though i have to say a lot of people do seem to be getting it despite vax ie whole families which should be less likely.
Frankly insane sending kids back with rates so high.

The amount of things kids were meant to stick in their books at the start of this year was insane - our values/behaviour can't use our acronym as it's outing sheet, our literacy marking decoder, their learning map, their knowledge organiser for that topic... please!

It's like when they wanted you to get them to write the title, date and learning objectives down at the start of every lesson (I think I heard someone at inset say they wanted us to go back to this but I decided to forget) - how much time is wasted? How much are you making life miserable for the kids who are really slow writers and only have so much energy for writing each lesson and just spent half of it 'copying off the board', do you know that not everyone can read things off a board - am I meant to be printing off friggin' LO's in 5 different colours as well now and faffing around with glue before we even get started? etc. Oh but then we've gotta do the recall q's/starter task as a read from the board and write in your books task too. For some kids who struggle with literacy that would be half their lesson gone ffs.

Can you not actually trust us that we remember and revisit and remind the LOs and the broader context of prior and future lessons and structure our lessons and lesson sequences in ways that make that all explicit and repeated and therefore don't require us to waste a chunk of the lesson having them copy LOs of the board every time?

I'm ranty, sorry. I find copying LOs of the board to be mindless and useless for learning and purely a tick box eg. if ofsted say did they know the LO - yes look they copied it down! As if that means anything. Getting kids to copy off the board is time wasting.

Herc I have a training day Monday thankfully.

The trainee was literally doing the above last year. Like literally 5 minutes for them to arrive and sit down then title and date, then 5 minutes plus writing down LOs and waiting about for the slowest writer to be finished, then putting up the starter slide and again waiting for the slowest person to be done and at some point 15-20 minutes in actually starting the lesson. It was painful to watch let alone be on the receiving end of.

Writing LOs off the board wouldn't work for my SEN class so I have somehow started creating them all in PECS, printing them off and cutting and gluing them into books sometimes before the start of the lesson I'm not convinced it's a great use of my time, but the books look lovely

I still have to have LOs on the board in case SLT drop in.

I barely even have a title on my board.

“Solving Equations”
“More Solving Equations”
“Even More Solving Equations”

I always have an objective. Probably not for the lesson I'm doing now, though.

I abandoned LO's about 4 years ago now just title and date. But agree indices, indices 2, indices 3 😂.
So have Covid not out of isolation until Wednesday- should I set cover for absent days? Today is the first day my brain hasn't been foggy and now thinking I should set something. Legs still 'wobbly' walking around and tired.

I'd assume that my hod would do it but I'd remind him just in case. He needs to work harder though 😂