Teacher Training

[johnnytapia]

To be honest, even after 4 weeks off i would be crawling the walls at home bored sh1tless never mind 6 weeks.

I would be sitting at my desk today in the classroom in silence thinking “this is the calm before the storm”

Also ask the other Teachers if they want a big game of Manhunt (for morale purposes obviously)

If you were a teacher you’d be resting and recuperating as much as fucking possible during any holiday; most especially summer.

 

[johnnytapia]

Genuine question but what is the purpose of these inset days at the start of the year? In most companies the staff go on training at different times and have to cover each other’s work so there’s no impact on customers.

Ask the government; it’s the law.

 

[johnnytapia]

Thanks for that Zen, I will read that properly when I get chance but on the face of it I get the sense that teacher training days are for various and varying reasons. I asked my question because I was speaking with a parent yesterday whose child had been at home on Monday and she didn’t know what the extra day was for, so this thread just popped up at the right time.

Having left school myself before Baker days and then inset days, the first thing we knew of them was when our eldest went to school in the early noughties. I think when you’re deep in a career, and terminology is used for a long while, it’s easy to forget that some customs, words and phrases can still be a new thing to those not in the same line of work. We just put up with it at the time but I was always curious as to the reason for them, having not experienced such things during my own education. Plenty of strike days, though!

Couldn’t help yourself at the end could you? The mask well and truly slipped.
Get fucked you ignorant ****. And keep paying for my 13 weeks ‘ of holidays. Beautiful.

 

[johnnytapia]

A concern I sometimes had about whole school Inset training was to do with with the evidence for the efficacy of whatever innovation we were being introduced to. Often, that evidence was lacking.

For example, many years ago I asked a facilitator if they could direct me to studies demonstrating that getting pupils to set targets for their own academic achievement genuinely raised attainment. They were unable to do so.

Eventually, I came across a small one that did suggest that this approach had something going for it. Which is just as well, as by then I had made this for the Year 10 form I was a tutor to (Rooney was still playing at the time), in order to model the method:

View attachment 92672

Just before I retired, I also started receiving a few e-mails offering Inset training for teachers in Mindfulness, maybe because I taught Buddhist philosophy. Am not sure whether any school has trained their entire staff in this technique, but it turns out that the jury is still out on it.

For example, the training teachers receive in mindfulness can often be superficial and insufficient, and may not equip them with the skills needed to deal with adverse student experiences in meditation. Mindful school programs also do not usually adequately screen children for prior psychiatric disorders, nor are they cognizant of criteria for exclusion, which for adults would include depression, social anxiety, psychosis, PTSD, and suicidal tendencies. On top of that, students are told to focus exclusively on themselves whilst immersed in a stressful regime of high-stakes testing and the micromanagement of student performance which perhaps suggests that there might actually be something wrong with the system itself.

On the other hand, a review of ongoing research authored by Professor Katherine Weare that appeared in 2018 notes that there is ‘little evidence of harmful (so-called ‘adverse’) effects from these short, focused interventions’, whilst acknowledging the need to look into this issue in greater depth, as well as the quality of the training that a mindfulness instructor receives and the need to reduce possible bias in reportage resulting from a lack of separation between ‘those who develop the programmes and those who evaluate them.’ Weare is also aware of the tendency to ‘oversell’ mindfulness, and emphasises the requirement to report results with ‘modesty and caution.’

These concerns notwithstanding, the studies that are included demonstrate that MBIs have tended to have a modest, small to medium impact on pupil well-being, specifically with respect to overall mental health, cognition (as evidenced by an enhanced ability to focus and sustain attention), and problem behaviour. Intriguingly, improvements in physical health have also been noted across a spectrum that includes blood pressure, heart rate, sleep patterns and quality of sleep, and eating-related issues.

Weare’s summative conclusion is that – while research on MBIs is still in its infancy – ‘mindfulness in schools appears to be well worth pursuing [as] it has already demonstrated a great deal of promise’.

Unfortunately, a much more recent article suggests quite the opposite, with the Guardian reporting in 2022 that ‘School-based mindfulness training does not appear to boost wellbeing or improve the mental health of teenagers, according to research that found many pupils were bored by the course and did not practise it at home…While it has been found to help with the symptoms of depression and anxiety in some studies, researchers from the My Resilience in Adolescence (Myriad) trial found the broad school-based mindfulness offered was no more effective than what schools were already doing to support student mental health with social-emotional learning.’

Have gone on at length about mindfulness because there is a vogue for it right now, and it hopefully illustrates my point that if a day is going to be set aside for staff training, it is important that whatever that day is about is founded on gold standard, peer-reviewed, empirical research.

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Just sneaked the above in for the benefit of lovebitesandeveryfing, who will no doubt recognise the literary allusion in this instance.

Metamorphosis?

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Couldn’t help yourself at the end could you? The mask well and truly slipped.
Get fucked you ignorant ****. And keep paying for my 13 weeks ‘ of holidays. Beautiful.

When I read ignorant fuckwits opinions of teaching I occasionally thank them for my index linked final salary pension, which in my case I accessed with full enhancement in my mid 50s twenty years ago.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Cheer up you ballbag.
Maybe smile

How boring must you be to not be able to fill your time.

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

Couldn’t help yourself at the end could you? The mask well and truly slipped.
Get fucked you ignorant ****. And keep paying for my 13 weeks ‘ of holidays. Beautiful.

Jesus, what an idiot. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that infers anything about my opinion of teachers in the post you replied to. I merely stated a fact that as a pupil we were regularly treated to strike days from the various teaching unions. I never declared support, neutrality nor opposition to them and never have.

Put down your mouse and take a break.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

So after 6 weeks worth of holidays they decide to have another 2 days (monday/tuesday) off for Teacher Traning

On top of the Teacher Strikes, holidays in October & Christmas my work leave are nearly gone.

Now this is not a pop a Teachers - far from it. I was just wondering why after approx 30 working days off the powers that be need another 2 days for training?

Would it not make sence to do the training during the 6 weeks holiday and have 28 days off?
As a working parent the 2 extra days saved would have come in handy (like a City european trip)

Is anyone a Teacher or know the reason why?

Schools are only required to offer 38 weeks/190 days/1,235 hours of the year to children in Britain. The 13 weeks of school holidays leave 39 weeks leftover for school time so 5 days are for INSETs.

Britain has the shortest Summer holidays I can think of.

They are 9 weeks in Ireland, 10 weeks in Scandinavia, 12 weeks in the Mediterranean and Canada, 14 weeks in USA…

Not all staff who work in schools are paid for 52 weeks’ work a year. I’m term time only plus 15 days. Others are TT+10 or TT+5 or just TT only. Also it’s not ‘Teacher Training’. There can be as many staff in schools who aren’t teachers as are teachers, and these are mainly the staff who don’t work in and aren’t paid for the holidays. The training is for all staff.

And school staff can only take time off during the designated holidays. That includes TT only staff. They can’t decide to go to the Ibiza closing parties in September or Leipzig away for three days if they want to if they’re in school term time.

Schools are not there to look after peoples’ children while they go off to work. It’s not a babysitting service. Children are the responsibility of their parents. Schools are there to offer a set education over a set number of weeks/days/hours. If their parents can’t look after their kids for the rest of the time that’s their problem.

 

[Bluesince1979]

Jesus, what an idiot. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that infers anything about my opinion of teachers in the post you replied to. I merely stated a fact that as a pupil we were regularly treated to strike days from the various teaching unions. I never declared support, neutrality nor opposition to them and never have.

Put down your mouse and take a break.

You know what you meant

 

[johnnytapia]

Jesus, what an idiot. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that infers anything about my opinion of teachers in the post you replied to. I merely stated a fact that as a pupil we were regularly treated to strike days from the various teaching unions. I never declared support, neutrality nor opposition to them and never have.

Put down your mouse and take a break.

When did you go to school?