Sixty-Eighth Republic - still under temporary guardianship…

[MrsHerculePoirot]

In the absence of staff and her fabulous thread titles and witty openers here is a 68th thread. The broom cupboard is overflowing so time for another Republic. Hopefully we hear from staff soon.

Stolen from previous threads…
'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.'

That is bloody ironic.

Same ad us not being afforded any protection like masks whilst everyone else in society was.

T&T just said to me that I would have to do a PCR in the next 90 days if I got told I was a close contact. Said I was a teacher and he said 'oh... well...'

Fed up now. Have got work I could be doing (and that will need to be done to go back on Monday in any useful sort of way), but can't focus on anything properly. Must go to bed at 9 instead of midnight tonight.

www.pnas.org/content/118/46/e2112605118

• Japanese study of flu transmission in primary schools concludes that vaccines and mask wearing were the most effective mitigations, not reducing class size and definitely not hand washing!

The Anti-Vaxxers got us today. They’d got wind of our vaccine day and early this morning (as in before 6am) they had glued nasty huge mdf boards up the school entrance on the pathway with despicable images and slogans of death.

They didn’t count on teachers getting in to school eary like we usually do though and we were able to remove it before any kids arrived. Got glue stuck to my hands though and it has ruined our pathway. Criminal damage that we will now have to pay for

definitely not hand washing

I haven't bothered with that since September. Just before break and before lunch like normal.

Can't believe the anti-vaxx stuff. I just don't get it - it's personal choice, someone else's choice on this doesn't impact on them. Other than positively.

A student in my class raised this exact point today in a wonderfully articulate way, relating it to an example in the text we were reading. Just as Head was showing a family around. Good lad.

dangling!

Secondary folk - what's the tiktok challenge causing teacher abuse? Twitter shouty about it.

I am not on Twitter, but I do use tiktok
Hadn't heard, but a search says there's a slap a teacher challenge? What came up for me did not involve any actual slapping, just some silly videos. Anyone slaps me I'm calling the police. My first instinct might be to do it back, which would obviously not be good for my employment!

Taking photos of staff or nicking them from their sm profiles and photos hopping them onto inappropriate videos on Tiktok.

Quite a few teachers have been "done" at our place that we know of (probably more). Twitter is going mad about phones in school; we are really strict on that but they are screen grabbing from priate sm/school website and sm/remote learning videos etc.

Sounds lovely.

I have a question about friendship issues in schools. Does anyone have any examples of when things like friendship circles or whatever have actually worked to help a child have friends/a more usual time in school?

I see lots of posts on here where advice given to issues with kids is 'what are the school doing about it?' I have no positive experience. If a kid is unkind, mean, 'weird', extremely shy, they mostly have a difficult time with friendship at school. This has been the same for 40 years and probably forever. I'm not sure that adult intervention, especially with teenagers, can help. I get if a child is non NT, there are strategies for learning social norms and so on.

It might not help you make friends, but having a place to go to at lunch, or even a table in the canteen where you know there will be a teacher or PSA to keep an eye on things can help, surely? Can reduce loneliness and keep you occupied in otherwise long lunch breaks.

I think with teenagers you can get the point where you’re quite blunt about it. Eg if you treat people like x, then this could be the result. Sometimes mediation type work can help between friends - supporting them in listening, empathising, communicating.

I suspect that some of our students are in fact non NT but without diagnosis so often teaching social cues will help with them.

Maybe because I’m in a fairly large secondary there is nearly always someone else in the year group to fit as a friend that sometimes we can help facilitate that. Even if it’s just one other person. Or we can give students somewhere safe to be, usually other students there and they form a little gang.

I think the best fix I've seen is just making sure there's a space in school like a quiet room or hub where awkward kids can go at lunchtime - that was at a primary school. It just meant if kids had no friends there was somewhere they could be and there'd be a member of staff about. It had a cheesy name that I forget.

Ah yes, we have 'the nest'. My school is really good at this stuff - all the 'things' are in place. Just not sure of the real impact longer term.

@DanglingMod

Taking photos of staff or nicking them from their sm profiles and photos hopping them onto inappropriate videos on Tiktok.

Quite a few teachers have been "done" at our place that we know of (probably more). Twitter is going mad about phones in school; we are really strict on that but they are screen grabbing from priate sm/school website and sm/remote learning videos etc.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10191415/Education-chiefs-demand-TikTok-action-stop-pupils-posting-abusive-videos-teachers.html

But I wouldn’t read the comments. Apparently it’s our own fault for allowing it to happen.

But I wouldn’t read the comments. Apparently it’s our own fault for allowing it to happen

Of course it’s our fault. It’s always our fault.

Apparently the data shows that kids with covid have been attending school. WHO KNEW?

www.tes.com/news/covid-49k-hidden-cases-may-be-primary-schools

…..noble!

Why are they phrasing it as hidden cases? If the infection rate was known to be higher then doesn't that suggest that some parents were sending in known cases?

Hidden because they haven't been caught by testing.

The cases must be asymptomatic because no kid with symptoms would be sent to school or not tested, right?

Haha! I think parents forget that their children are often more honest than they are. I've had children who have openly told everyone that they haven't had the test the parent has said that they've done.

Sorry but could any primary school teachers help?

Ds has just turned 8 and is in Year 3. He is having a huge issue passing his 5 times table test (it’s an online game thing, a TT rockstars style one).

He seems to be ok with the times table but is massively struggling with the division questions (35/7 = ?, 45/5 = ?).

Ds keeps getting so frustrated and upset. Is mental division standard at the start of Year 3. We’ve been slogging away at it for 2 weeks and all the family are throughly sick of it now.