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Re-opening Schools?

Junior Joe (11 tomorrow) had a positive LTF yesterday so we've all now had PCR tests. We are all negative except him.

He now has 10 days in his bedroom. We've moved his Xbox and a TV into his room, he has a phone with Sky Sports, BT sports and Netflix and 7 days off school.

He's got no symptons and hes bloody loving it
 
So is the outdoor classroom a thing in any of your schools?
It was big last year but what about now?
Schools here have all windows and doors open. Kids are frozen sitting in class and they are confined to pods or bubbles so they cant nove around the room anymore. They are supposed to sit in one place til breaktime.

Is there anyone taking kids out of the room to learn? Anyone going outside for classes? Just to get them moving and warmed up?
 
So is the outdoor classroom a thing in any of your schools?
It was big last year but what about now?
Schools here have all windows and doors open. Kids are frozen sitting in class and they are confined to pods or bubbles so they cant nove around the room anymore. They are supposed to sit in one place til breaktime.

Is there anyone taking kids out of the room to learn? Anyone going outside for classes? Just to get them moving and warmed up?

When schools were closed in January and we had the keyworker kids in stuck in one classroom all day staring at their chromebooks we made them do a lap of the school site at least once an hour. Walk, run, whatever just move your bones and focus your eyes on something far away. After a while the kids got quite good at self-regulating this and realising for themselves when they needed a breather.

In normal times we're not allowed to let the kids roam the halls for a few minutes in he middle of a lesson to help them settle down, even though that is exactly what many of them need. Just now I had a kid sent back into my classroom by some behaviour drone with a walkie talkie; even though he'd recognised that he needed a quick reset, asked me if he could go outside, basically done everything right. And of course he came back and immediately started pissing everyone off because he couldn't sit still or be quiet.
 
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Spot on SpookyFrank
Kids are very stressed and sitting in rooms unable to move about because "pods" and no mixing is really causing issues.

I think health breaks are necessary. Above and beyond the usual yard breaks.

Interesting that there was someone on that kids case in your example.
How does management view the kids getting a few minutes of time to decompress and get some air outdoors? Outside of scheduled yard breaks?
 
Interesting that there was someone on that kids case in your example.
How does management view the kids getting a few minutes of time to decompress and get some air outdoors? Outside of scheduled yard breaks?

Management doesn't even think they should be allowed to go for a piss. All lesson time is sacred, even if the kid is getting nothing out of it and spoiling the environment for everyone else.

Mostly the only place you can send them is whatever the school calls the naughty room. Some schools have a 'sensory space' where kids, particularly ASD kids, can go to get some peace or do something they find calming but this is not nearly common enough.

You can also have a school dog, which is a great way to trick troubled kids into going for a walk outside and opening up to a sympathetic adult.
 
Management doesn't even think they should be allowed to go for a piss. All lesson time is sacred, even if the kid is getting nothing out of it and spoiling the environment for everyone else.

Mostly the only place you can send them is whatever the school calls the naughty room. Some schools have a 'sensory space' where kids, particularly ASD kids, can go to get some peace or do something they find calming but this is not nearly common enough.

You can also have a school dog, which is a great way to trick troubled kids into going for a walk outside and opening up to a sympathetic adult.


You're lucky you've a school therapy dog..

I really think that outdoor learning and teaching should be an option even just to get kids out in fresh air more often
 
So is the outdoor classroom a thing in any of your schools?

Hahahahaha. Alfresco school is what we call ours. (I know we're not typical). But kids not going to classes is an every day thing, nearly an every class thing. Half my day is spent outside chatting shit to kids. I mean educating kids. With that and the steroids I have a hell of a suntan for the end of November.

But we do run Forest schools as well. It's a brilliant thing. My understanding was that it's becoming quite widespread, even in mainstream? It should be. Do none of you mainstreamers have Forest schools?
 
Hahahahaha. Alfresco school is what we call ours. (I know we're not typical). But kids not going to classes is an every day thing, nearly an every class thing. Half my day is spent outside chatting shit to kids. I mean educating kids. With that and the steroids I have a hell of a suntan for the end of November.

But we do run Forest schools as well. It's a brilliant thing. My understanding was that it's becoming quite widespread, even in mainstream? It should be. Do none of you mainstreamers have Forest schools?

There's this weird thing where nice, sensible ideas are spreading gradually but in parallel with a bunch of stuff that runs directly contrary to it, like all that moronic 'ready to learn' filth.
 
Hahahahaha. Alfresco school is what we call ours. (I know we're not typical). But kids not going to classes is an every day thing, nearly an every class thing. Half my day is spent outside chatting shit to kids. I mean educating kids. With that and the steroids I have a hell of a suntan for the end of November.

But we do run Forest schools as well. It's a brilliant thing. My understanding was that it's becoming quite widespread, even in mainstream? It should be. Do none of you mainstreamers have Forest schools?


BB2 has forest schools, run by the National Trust at Witley Common, we have so much open land around here, much more so than in many more rural areas, yet so many kids here have never been taken in to it, so definitely a good thing.

And on Covid, BB2’s 2 form junior school, the other year 4 group has 8 out of 29 off with plague. There is a school Xmas fare in the playground tonight, should help the spread…
 
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Pupils at a Kent secondary school have been removed from lessons and given detentions for wearing face masks in class.

Youngsters at the Abbey School in Faversham say they have been covering up to protect vulnerable relatives as Covid cases soar across the town.

But teachers say the masks are a "barrier to learning", and have been punishing pupils who refuse to remove them during lessons.
The Abbey School is located in a small area referred to by public health chiefs as Faversham West.

In the most recent week 86 new Covid cases were recorded, giving it an infection rate of 994 cases per 100,000 - more than double the national average.

At the same time, a case of the new Omicron variant has been discovered at a school in Northfleet.
 
I just can’t imagine why you’d bother. (Quite apart from the whole “punishing kids who voluntarily show public-spirited behaviour” thing).

Do these teachers not have enough to do?
I suspect this is something passed down to teachers from SLT and they have to enforce it. Can’t imagine an average teacher objecting to this as a matter of principle.

Either way sounds like a toxic as fuck school and one to avoid.
 
We've had masks for all staff since Monday and for students since Tuesday. And yesterday I spent time in reception waiting for a student to come in for a meeting and easily more than half the students were maskless and no staff member challenged any student. There were groups sat maskless in reception.

By the end of Tuesday the staff in the college shop had had so much grief off students after being instructed not to serve anyone maskless that they complained...and were told not to bother challenging them.

I was on door duty yesterday morning giving out masks and tbf almost all students were happy to take one ("go on, it's free, second one's twice as much but this one's free" etc) but I then visited the other five entrances to the main building and nobody was doing the same as me.

What we needed was SMT on doors for a couple of days at the start. But I guess that's a bit tricky when they're all WFH.
 
Multiple schools round here are sending entire year groups home. Another week and it'll be whole schools closing early for Christmas.

Another January school shutdown would be a catastrophe. Everything else should be shut down immediately to prevent that IMO.
 
Nuts

All kids over the age of 9 are wearing masks here now.
(Ireland)
Governement wimped out on telling schools to send kids home if they were not masked.
So now the schools have to engage with parents if their child is unmasked and attempt to reason with them. If they cant see reason the the school is to bring in the inspector...like anyone wants to draw one of them on you.

On another tack.
Santa is arriving to our school.
To a beautifully made indoor grotto which will have two doors open either end.
Madness. But my voice is meaningless. So I have given up warning.
There was 1/5 of staff out with covid over the past 2 weeks. 3 staff are pretty unwell since Halloween and wont be back this side of the holidays.
I think its absolute madness to parade kids class by class into a room to see Santa. They will be masked and will have to stay 6 feet away from Santa but it's asking for trouble imo.
 
I suspect this is something passed down to teachers from SLT and they have to enforce it. Can’t imagine an average teacher objecting to this as a matter of principle.

Either way sounds like a toxic as fuck school and one to avoid.

Yep.
The parents should be fighting this nonsense
 
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