Thread by @msmisrule

My final observation on teaching from home before return to school on Monday. As you will remember, schools were reassured several times about the need for consistency and an ability to plan ahead. So in good faith that's what we did. Executive staff put in ridiculous hours...

planning what school would look like based on dates that shifted several times. So every time that happened, everything had to be re-organised. The new Premier's unilateral decision to bring us back a week early, released to the media first, of course, less than 24 hours

after the DoE's Secretary released a video to staff assuring us that nothing would change, so thereby putting her in the doghouse along with all our carefully laid plans... For my school, this meant we were now coming back to school in the middle of our two week exam period.

Our initial plan was that during those two weeks, the students would do their exams online (and so all the exams had to be written to be delivered online, with all the implications of that) and we would post no new work, instead we would mark said exams, write reports, and

prepare work for the rest of the term. The term has now been extended in terms of face-to-face teaching by, I can't remember now, 2-3 weeks? Which meant rewriting those units of work, perhaps even ditching what we had already prepared and starting from scratch.

So next week, we have to juggle kids being all over the place with subject exams outside of their usual timetable, a completely unknown situation of how we are going to maintain the required health strategies in classrooms that are unfit for purpose, and also start teaching

new units of work. And we've lost the week we could have spent on marking and reports and planning. So how am I spending my last weekend before I go back to work? Marking 100 Year 9 English exam papers.

It's not that teachers aren't flexible (it's effectively a job requirement)

or begrudge doing the basics of our job. It's the lack of interest in the impact all these changing political decisions have on us, and therefore on the kids, that is so demoralising. And then we have the likes of Tudge spewing out his ideologically-driven agenda

(again, via media release), just to pop some icing on the cake.

We're exhausted. Schools are highly complex places, and the fact we have had to keep turning on a dime everytime a new decision has been handed down without consultation, we just feel unseen and disrespected.

I can't wait to see my kids again, but I am dreading having to teach from behind a mask in an inadequately cooled classroom. I will do it, because I believe the science and the necessity of masks, but it's going to be horrible. None of us are rested. But we will front up,

cheer up, and do our best for our students. Because that's the job.

Fin.