Off Topic Back to School

And lucky for me, despite being crammed into a building with 600 other humans, teachers are apparently immune.

 

Fortunately you haven't starved for the last few months because check out girls, supermarket workers and delivery drivers were at work for less money than you get whilst you were at home.

 

Why does supermarket workers and delivery drivers getting paid a pittance mean you have to **** on teachers? Shouldn't your ire be directed at the corporations who pay workers ****e wages and the government's incompetency in handling the virus?

 

Sorry, while I was where?

 

Not the point. The They have gone to work whilst many teachers have been paid to stay at home, on full pay, and complain when they have to go in to work.

 

Really?

Did this happen?


In reality I mean.


I mean, I know that it happened in the frothy minded, spluttering, spittle flecked world of the Mail Online comments pages, but in the real world?


Really?


Did it happen?

 

Any evidence every teacher went into school then? No?

I said many teachers didn't. They were supposedly setting homework over the Internet. My grandson's didn't. Even he, who is happy to spend all day playing computer games, complained about the lack of contact.

 

Maybe one of the teachers can explain what all staff were doing?
If a school of say 400 have 25 teachers, during Covid how many kids in school? 50 ?
Why would you need all 25 teachers in? Put some meat on them bones??!

 

Practicing ping pong so they can change careers and become a fireman.

 

That is a slur on firemen. A lot don't play ping pong but are very good at snooker and darts.

 

I think they've been practising the Kama Sutra in the primary school round the corner from me....Positive tests aplenty!!

 

OK, I'll bite (now that I've finished binge watching Line of Duty, The Falls, and sobered up - only joking!!)

Firstly, let's be more accurate with numbers. Most Local Authority Primary Schools are funded and work on class sizes of 30 pupils, so a School of say 400, wouldn't have 25 teachers. I can't vouch for all Schools, but using ours as an example, equates to just over 400 pupils, 16 teachers. During lockdown, approx 50 pupils in, (key worker kids, vulnerables) in bubbles of 8, so on average min 7 or 8 teachers for these, 2 on mat leave, a couple isolating/shielding re family illness. Other remaining teachers working on remote/home learning provision, putting lessons together on line real time for those who can access, or online provision via google docs, or for those with no equipment or broadband capability, paper packs, incl delivering paper packs, collection for marking. We use an app for parents/pupils to liaise directly with their teacher, so continual monitoring, marking & feedback of home learning being done. There is no hiding place.

Then, there was home delivery of free School meal packs, due to the voucher debacle. And of course, the biggie, well-being, mental health. In more rural areas, Schools are the heart of communities, so staff on well-being check ins with pupils & families. All of our teachers were holding regular weekly class Zoom get togethers to give the children a sense of belonging, seeing their friends etc.

There was also the continual deluge of DofE guidance dropping, usually at last minute, risk assessments, protocols & procedure docs to be drawn up, checked, rewritten, rechecked etc. and communicated to parents and pupils. One such example of DofE "guidance" landed at 10 pm Friday eve, before Aug bank hols, a 28000 word doc, not annotated, no tracked changes, bizarre when some Schools had already reopened and others reopening that next week.

So, I don't get the "teacher bashing" - these are human beings, with their own family worries too, confined to a work space with upto 30 children, some high maintenance, without social distancing and masks etc. Their well-being matters too.

 

I was asking a question not attacking anyone

 

I think part of the issue is that teachers are 'shocked' by bureaucracy, and think it's unique to them, without appreciating that it's part and parcel of a lot of other peoples daily lives in the private and public sector, where you have to have complex reports and returns completed in line with guidance, and by deadlines that come before the guidance has even been issued, so even the help desks can only shrug.

Some upper manager comes up with a wheeze, and it rolls down hill through a series of middle managers, who are all being told 'make it happen'. Anyone at the arse end of it can only do what they can, despite many of them having considerable implications for a lot of people.

 

Years 1 and 6 were allowed in, along with F2. At my school, that's knocking on 200 kids at the height of the pandemic.

Even if we had half that, we still used all staff to keep the bubbles as small and spread out as possible and to provide support to other teachers. If one teacher is in one bubble, they can't leave the room, so the extra staff were absolutely necessary.

We sent work packs home to the children that couldn't be in and provided daily lessons in all subjects via Google Classroom, but just because the year groups weren't in, doesn't mean the teachers weren't. We also made weekly phone calls home to parents to check on the welfare of the children.

 

Thank you. It's good to see some people have a realistic view of what we face.

The government have been totally unhelpful, they changed on a tuppence and often left us baffled as to what they actually wanted to see. Many schools were left to fend for themselves. I went to a management training seminar just before lockdown and nobody had a clue what was going on in their respective schools, they just took it upon themselves to do it.

 

I read this thrice and all I'm thinking now is 'DEATH TO TEACHERS'

 

Why?

 

I'm a contrarian