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.'

So sorry to hear about your positive tests, @RuleWithAWoodenFoot and @DrMadelineMaxwell. I hope it passes for you both soon, and that you're not affected for too long.

Been back for one week and we've already had a parents' evening, one set of full reports and grades and learning scores reporting for the other years. I think I'm going to be a wreck by Christmas and quite frankly will want to order a curry and then crawl into my bed on Christmas Day!

Two weeks later and I am feeling much better. Back to work tomorrow I was definitely not ready last week and glad I took the extra days.
@Rule your symptoms sound like mine!
My DH got it from me but he seems to be faring better but he is hating the isolation part. He's missing his first day back in the office (since March 2020!) due to isolation.

Similar here @DreamingofBrie -parents' evenings, seemingly a full class of annual review paperwork, and now learning walk week this week. Plus hours of ECT work on the Teach First platform.

Has anyone got any tips for being ready for learning walks? Could be any lesson, any time, feeling a bit stressed.

Maybe just write yourself a little reminder list of what you want them to see if they do turn up eg. types of questioning, modelling, moving round the room a lot or whatever is the current push at your school - bit of live marking and afl low stakes stuff?

I seem to do a lot of hands up if you think the answer is x, hands up if you think it's y type stuff at the minute. I don't like no hands questioning unless I know the group really well but that's similar enough imo. They're big on no hands questioning at the minute at my place.

We've been alerted to two weeks of slt learning walks but honestly I've spent all my stress on my proper observation and the whole appraisal stuff already so I'm a bit like meh they'll see kids on task learning and behaving and that will have to do them.

www.tes.com/news/dfe-review-longer-day-warns-about-teaching-capacity?fbclid=IwAR2bse7MS8R1KtxcX3mMJp8gZpnuYU-GysK0OXdnBLwsICj6Hh290D0-OvU

Contractual constraints

"For these older pupils, this is slightly below the OECD average of 27.5 for pupils of a similar age" - 0.7 of an hour is considerably below? Isn't that less than 4 minutes? Ffs.

No it's more than 4 minutes. I'm not a Maths person. My brain went 0.6 minutes times 7 which is 4.2 now I think about it and probably the wrong Maths anyway.

Still all of this longer school day business is arguing about less than 5 minutes? What??? They have way too much time and money on their hands.

And that's per week!!! Less than a minute a day! Muppets.

It's a tiny number of schools who have these mythical 'short days' too - most schools have a pretty standard number of hours, the range of the times is probably really small. If that makes sense. I can't find the words this evening.

The only school I know that finish before 3pm, start at 7.55 and don’t have a proper lunch break, they have two 20 minute breaks and finish at 2pm.

Every school I have worked at has started around 8.40 and finished somewhere between 3.05 and 3.15.

Thanks @TheHoneyBadger that sounds sensible and doable. It would be nice if they could pop in when one of my class isn't wrecking the place, anything else will be a bonus, I think!

Has anyone got any tips for being ready for learning walks? Could be any lesson, any time, feeling a bit stressed.

Have your seating plans readily available. Last time I had a lesson obs, I also had under each name their baseline score, last test score and any SEN flags such as 25% ET or buff paper. Observer loved this.

Ooh I like that @DreamingofBrie ! Under 10 pupils in my class and they all have significant SEN so will print extra copies of my classroom management plan too.

I don't do anything for a learning walk other than make sure I've got the key stuff covered for each lesson that week. I had a full hour obs in summer term, I don't reckon I'll get another one this year.

I have almost no interest in anyone's opinion of one lesson, or a part of a lesson. When I get feedback I just sit there and say 'fair point' at the end. If I've asked for a specific thing to be looked at/I want help, them I'll ask a specific someone to observe me and give me feedback.

Covid update - did 10 minutes of tidying child mess (poor kid has been watching telly and doing paper craft stuff all weekend), and had to have a half hour nap. Haha.

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot bless you, I remember the utter exhaustion. Hope you don't get any worse.

I don't do anything different for learning walks.

As far as I'm concerned they're to get a snapshot of what's going on across a whole area, not to monitor individual teachers.

I'd be concerned if I walked through 8 Year 10 lessons and one person wasn't close to following the scheme of work (by scheme of work I'm talking general direction, key topics, not following prescriptive PowerPoint by the way) or there were glaring issues with content, behaviour etc, but couldn't care less if I saw 8 different lessons that were following the right sort of directions. That's for individual teachers to play to their strengths and know their classes.

I just make sure the date on the board is correct

Yep...pcr confirms it. Positive.

Sorry to hear that DrM

Loads of us positive on this board. I wonder if that is being replicated in schools?

I think there's more of us on here have had it now than haven't (I haven't...)

Yeah, I'm dreading going in to see the cover board today. Staff are losing PPA and SLT are teaching all day too.

I haven't yet (touches wood furiously!)

Urgh Happy Monday.

Observation from the Head and parents evening.

Hope those who are positive don't feel too I'll with it. Take it easy and look after yourselves.

Another out in my dept today.

Someone coughed in Tesco this morning - no mask, didn’t even attempt to cover his face. Nearly bludgeoned him with a tin of quality street. However, feeling fairly good touches wood as have been for a swim this morning. First time managed since second week back at school 🙄

It's not Covid here and feeling better so am off (a little late) to work.