In 5 characters you could express an entire years worth of contempt and indemnity to what we have experienced. Regardless of our borders and our roles we have all had to change our working practices to keep education going around the world.
I am writing as a member of UK support staff (non teaching) who worked and works with administrative and premises teams to keep schools open during the pandemic.
Despite the variety in our roles, the children are always at the heart of what we do, perhaps we don’t influence their grades or practices but we want good outcomes for our students nonetheless. As one who works across HR, administration, data management, scheduling, systems configuration and morale I have seen a lot of attitudes and approaches to the pandemic.
The effect on teachers has been widely publicised. The effect on support staff, not so much.
From January 2020 until late August 2020 ( when I had 1.5 weeks leave) I was on site every single day to provide advice to staff, administer remote work for students and prepare printed work for those without internet access. The role I was originally given has evolved and continues to evolve.
It is far easier to assign new work to me than it is to assign new jobs to a teacher/leader as a result of the terms and conditions that affect our roles.
Since the return of students in September 2020 I have served duty points and I have attended classroom disturbances in order to assist my institution in the absence of teaching staff as a result of the pandemic.
I have had my own personal struggles in this time, diagnosed with clinical depression in September 2020 then Major depression in June 2021 with potential psychotic indicators.
There is not an overall point I wished to make with this post, mostly emotional diatribe, however a point that could come from this is that we all should value our support teams more. Imagine a school without an office/admin team, would it run how it was supposed to? No, not a chance, leaders would step in but they would not be able to keep up with the service level demanded. Imagine a school without technicians/librarians; “students can’t go to the library at x time because staff can’t operate the equipment” or “woodwork/metalwork/technology can’t take place because the staff member in charge of the equipment is teaching another lesson”
Such are the reasons we hire support staff; such are the reasons that they should be respected.
Submitted July 23, 2021 at 06:12PM by EntropicThunder101 https://ift.tt/3y61y0f
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