Today is my inset day tomorrow I'm onsite and had been looking forward to getting back to work at a SEN education college.
Today I've had a morning of virtual meetings outlining expectations for operating during Covid 19. I'm truly horrified. My question to management this morning was how long will these extreme measures be place? I didn't ask it. I know the answer. They don't know. All we do know is that this is the way the our society will be operating until further notice. I don't feel like being a participant.
Makes me feel like I want to stay home and play guitar and grow vegetables. Trouble is, I need to earn money to pay for the electricity to power my guitar and I need Internet access to remain in contact with my friends and family, so I must work.
The college admin staff have clearly got together and devised a plan to minimize the risk of passing any Covid-19 transmissions between people on the campuses. These measures are to make the college compliant with the Government's latest rules for social distancing. I fear I won't be able to tollerate these conditions. I'm begining to subscribe to conspiracy theories that are pointing fingers at authorities and accusing them of using the virus to put in place very strict means for social control. Practices that are set up to keep us fearful and thinking that we're in need of protection. I fear my complicity in that agenda perhaps that more than I fear the virus.
Providing education during the Covid 19 pandemic will look like this: on arrival at college, staff must sign in and take their temperature using the new stock of thermometers the institution has ordered. The students too will have their temperature taken on arrival at College. Students
must bring packed lunches in disposable containers and we mustn't share
pencils or scissors or glue. All books and resources will be taken out of classrooms and each student will have resources in personal packs: there is a strict - no sharing - policy. Staff and students have been allocated to a particular bubble and we are to remain in those bubbles and do our best not to have any physical communication with people in other bubbles. Staff room is closed. Soft play areas and sensory rooms closed. Gym and swimming pools closed. Outside play only allowed in bubbles and outside equipment can only be used if it can be disinfected before and after use by each individual student.
A strategy of the management team is to give us frequent praise for working under these conditions and treats. I've just read an email to say that this week complementary tubs of ice-cream will be given out to workers who will be onsite. And, there is a rule that staff and students must wear clean clothes each day, we can ask for clothes washing tablets, to ensure this new rule is complied with.
I'm upset. Ice-cream won't help.
