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.'

@Sureitwillbegrand Depends on lots of factors. Mostly how well you are feeling. Would you normally set cover at this level of ill or not? That would be my benchmark unless HOD was an arse. In which case, they can sort it.

😂 - yeah I think I was hoping to feel better by now might just do bare bones cover for Monday and see how I go.

noble those graphs are sobering. Especially since I have the unenviable task of meeting with my HT next week to request non-classroom working from 28 weeks pregnant, and I don't think I've got a hope in hell of getting him to agree to it.

A genius way to hopefully end the ‘original sin’ edutwitter debate this half term

the grain of truth is too close to the bone though!

Look after YOURSELF Sure!

Hobnobs that sounds horrid. Excuse my ignorance but how’s it meant to work for teachers?

My father's GPs surgery absolutely refuses to see anyone face to face without them having proof of a negative LFT. Why the f*ck are we expected to be indoors, in a poorly ventilated space, surrounded by maskless, unvaccinated teenagers? Actually, I know why - it's because the government thinks all teachers are workshy lefties, so doesn't give a toss about us. That and wanting to prioritise businesses.

And breathe.

Original sin was a big thing at my school, but my school was a 1960s Catholic convent and it went alongside all sorts of other nonsense such as the Virgin Birth, crushes on priests, miracles and having to learn in horrible detail about the grisly deaths by torture of the women our school houses were named after (mine was crushed to death with stones).
Anyone with a notion that children are tainted by original sin, operating outside religious dogma, urgently needs a course of intensive psychotherapy.

Anyone with a notion that children are tainted by original sin, operating outside religious dogma, urgently needs a course of intensive psychotherapy.

Agreed and I have real issues with children/young people with SEND and the interpretation of this. Real issues.

What’s KB actually using the concept to argue?

JCVI minutes on child vaxx finally published (inc an Extraordinary Meeting with the DfE).

What’s KB actually using the concept to argue?

As I’ve not been following the discussion I’m just talking off the top of my head, but my guess is the necessity for rigid systems of discipline and habit to counteract regressing to the natural state of being bad.

It’s a pernicious belief that taints relationships, an example being that if my mother with my children. They were very good children and always brought home glowing reports. DM’s response was a severe “no backsliding” - though she loved them dearly. There was no praise.
Seeing this made me realise a lot of what was wrong in my own upbringing.

What’s KB actually using the concept to argue?
I've not followed the whole threads, but at root I thought it was as simple as her saying that kids are kids, so need teaching how to behave appropriately.
I don't think there's anything particular controversial in the idea of adults promoting appropriate behaviour so children learn how to behave respectfully, but I think KB presented it as a my way vs the progressive view that children are born perfect and are instinctively good.

KB also called other people in education, including heads, dim witted if they 'misconstrued' her point or 'didn't understand it'. She very much upset Simon Smith who took issue with her co opting religious terms to make her ideological points.

I think there are quite worrying signs of what she will be like as 'equalities commissioner' in her treatment of adults who disagree with her (very fixed) mindset.

I think the issue is that at the start, Katharine was responding to a Twitter post that was saying ‘Kids are born bad’ and ‘need to be morally educated not just conditioned’ and she replied “Exactly. Original Sin”.
She has been a bit gaslighty in her subsequent tweets to say that was not what she meant at all.

I tried to track back to her first tweet. Who is Pascal Triangle and why were they saying this in the first place?

Oh, lovely : anti covid measures; anti lockdown, anti masks, Laurence Fox fan , climate change denier. KB needs to watch the company she courts...

I do find it how astonishing anti child she can sometimes sound... this is the Tweet it began with:

*I just read a tweet saying that kids are born good, wanting a sustainable world and it wasn’t a joke.Flushed face

Seriously, have these people ever met a kid?*

jan different schools are doing it different ways. Some are getting a cover supervisor in and streaming the lessons live, some getting a supply teacher in with the pregnant teacher planning and resourcing all lessons, others are getting maternity cover teachers to start early and the pregnant teacher is doing department admin or doing intervention etc via Teams. My plan is to offer to do any of the above (including doing all marking and analysis for year 10 & 11 mocks). We shall see...

It’s almost as though she sees children as a different species, or as larvae/pupae before their transformation to morally competent adults, and that transformation has to be directed and monitored.
Whereas most of us know that children are (immature) people, and science and common sense tells us that people tend to be good rather than bad - it’s how societies coalesce and function. In benign circumstances, goodness is the norm.

Oh, lovely : anti covid measures; anti lockdown, anti masks, Laurence Fox fan , climate change denier. KB needs to watch the company she courts...

Quite

Only good once taught correctly how to be good it seems!

I mean, we all get what she meant but the outgoing inequalities people are very pissed off at her tone. Why don't these people just stay serene and beatific? I just don't think you appoint someone as combative as her to such a sensitive role. She thinks she knows it all and has zero self reflection.

Is that still going on? I assumed it would die down after we reached the ‘everyone who disagrees with me is a progressive lefty who thinks children can do no wrong’ stage of the argument.

I hadn't seen that piggy.
I find her tweets frustrating at times because on several issues I agree with her and I think her work has started discussions in education that needed to happen. On other occasions I find myself wondering if she's enjoying the controversy and platforms given by right wing groups/organisations and has been lapping up the notoriety a little.

Yup, she definitely is. She needs media training for her new, very important role.

We are back to the whole household isolating here (Wales) if someone has symptoms or a positive pcr (I assume triggered by a lft)...until they get a negative result themselves. Then they can carry on as normal.
Seems a little more sensible but the HT will be tearing their hair out as it must mean a higher likelihood of staff having to be off getting a test if anyone in their family is symptomatic whereas up til now they only missed time if they were.

HT is a firm disbeliever of illness and staff absence.

@DrMadelineMaxwell

We are back to the whole household isolating here (Wales) if someone has symptoms or a positive pcr (I assume triggered by a lft)...until they get a negative result themselves. Then they can carry on as normal. Seems a little more sensible but the HT will be tearing their hair out as it must mean a higher likelihood of staff having to be off getting a test if anyone in their family is symptomatic whereas up til now they only missed time if they were.

HT is a firm disbeliever of illness and staff absence.

Bloody sensible policy. No doubt England will adopt it after Christmas when things have reached a real critical level of shitness.