Jump to content

Snow


Tam & Di

Featured Posts

Have about 4-5" in our marina, no way out (very hilly) for any 2 wheel drive vehicles.

 

Had appointment for job interview this morning.

 

Had to cancel.

 

Totally gutted. :lol:

 

 

How bothermaking!! Phone interview?

 

 

Sheffield has a pretty dusting so far - at least at canal level. Will venture out uphill later....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How come most people have got to w**k or at least are trying to get there. Apart from TEACHERS? Do they dissolve in snow? They announced on the local TV last night (BEFORE IT STARTED SNOWING) that most of the schools in this area (Mid Beds) would be closed!

I got the phone call soon after 7 this morning that the school would be closed. The official instructions are to work at home - there is always work to be done. I'm sorting out a mock exam paper for my year 12, doing some supporting materials to assist learning and some marking.

 

I'm sure my head teacher based the decision about closing the school when she had seen how bad the snow was, and how bad it MIGHT become. She has to think about what happens if a blizzard arrives during the day - this has happened within the time I have been at the school. We had to close the school for the afternoon, and meant reorganising school buses at short notice and trying to let parents know that their children would be arriving home early. It's not just the teachers that the head has to be thinking about - there is the consideration of how the pupils get to school and back home again. It was different when I was at school, all the kids and most of the teachers lived within walking distance of the school - that is no longer the case, many children travel long distances to school.

 

If the school had been open then what if some of the teachers couldn't make it in? Teachers don't necessarily live near the school - I have colleagues who drive some distance. It's often a problem to cover classes when there is no snow, especially at this time of the year when there are bugs and illnesses going around. Supposing some of the children make it in to school - but their teachers aren't there - what are you going to do with the classes? Let them play snowballs? Double up the classes? Leave them in a classroom to do what they like?

 

Even supposing you doubling up the classes with one teacher what would you do with them? You can't teach anything meaningful if half the class is absent - and how could you teach a class that was half year 7 history and half year 10 science? You couldn't - you'd end up playing hangman or taking them to a computer room and letting them play on the Internet. You end up babysitting. There's no point. You might as well do what the schools do - close and direct the teachers to work at home.

 

OK, so suppose that you tell the pupils to stay at home and bring the teachers in to get on with work - fine, you could do that, but they can just as easily work at home, without having to drive in difficult conditions.

 

This is for a secondary school - the problems will be different for a primary school - you will have far less flexibility of staff covering each others' classes because the number of staff is far lower, but there may be other issues that being a secondary teacher I haven't considered. Perhaps there is a primary teacher out there who could comment?

 

Cath

 

PS, if it's only teachers that don't work when there is snow, how come my Dad rang me from London to tell me that there are no buses or underground trains running?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How come most people have got to w**k or at least are trying to get there. Apart from TEACHERS? Do they dissolve in snow? They announced on the local TV last night (BEFORE IT STARTED SNOWING) that most of the schools in this area (Mid Beds) would be closed!

The decision to close Schools in anticipation of bad is made by the local Educatuion Authority, not the individual schools, 0r the teachers. In reality, most teachers can and will make it it school, although beacause they often live a signioficant distance from the School, many may be delayed by poor road conditions.

 

The local Authority cannot risk children being left in large numbers at a School which has insufficient adults to supervise them, and consequently make a blanket desision, in sufficient time to warn parents (who will probably also be unable to get to work) to safeguard then interests of the pupils. In most Local Education Authorities advance arrangements exist whereby Teachers report to their nearest School to assist those staff who are able to reach the School before opening time. This works quite well at Junior Schools, but can become a problem at some Secondary Schools.

 

If any criticismm need to be levelled at anyone it is the Local Education Authiority, not the Teachers, who will be required to report somewhere for duty albeit not neccessarily the School at which they normally work.

 

Edited to add:- Cath has given a fuller wexplanation, posted just before my contribution.

Edited by David Schweizer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

An old one but,

 

How does the driver of the snow plough get to work ?

We were once in a short queue of cars following a snow plough through a Welsh mountain pass in near-blizzard conditions. There was at least 2 feet of snow on the road except behind the plough. Nearly at the highest point, the driver of the first car got fed up with the slow pace and tried to overtake the snow plough. We didn't stop to try and rescue him!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How come most people have got to w**k or at least are trying to get there. Apart from TEACHERS? Do they dissolve in snow? They announced on the local TV last night (BEFORE IT STARTED SNOWING) that most of the schools in this area (Mid Beds) would be closed!

 

 

They stay at home and catch up on some 'marking'.. PULL THE OTHER ONE!

My brother was a teacher until he retired at the ripe old age of 50.. His brief-case never carried anything but his butties.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They stay at home and catch up on some 'marking'.. PULL THE OTHER ONE!

My brother was a teacher until he retired at the ripe old age of 50.. His brief-case never carried anything but his butties.

 

How long ago was this? I used to go out with a teacher and most nights she had a good couple of hours having to do marking and lesson plans.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's probably the case that if whatever has replaced "London Transport", were still operating good old fashioned Routemaster type buses. that many would be running.

 

From my own bus driving experiences, (admittedly now a long while ago), I can say that the old fashioned front engined buses were rock steady on a bit of snow and ice, whereas you only had to show some of the modern rear engined types a photograph of bad weather and they could go into a four wheel skid. :lol:

 

I know conventional logic says having the engine over the driven wheels gives the best grip and traction, but unless they have come up with some magic solution since I was driving them, I'd far rather take an old "banger" out in these conditions, than any of it's modern replacements.

 

And ChrisJW is right, of course, virtually every tube or "surface" underground train is kept in open sidings, well away from the tunnels they spend a lot of their day in. (Many of the routes have far more of the track above the surface, than below, of course).

 

My sister-in-law is due to fly in to Heathrow from California today, but that's another on the casualty list, with runways closed after a plane slipped off the taxi-way, and had nose-wheels stuck in the soft ground beside.

 

Just about to go to boat - should be interesting!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They stay at home and catch up on some 'marking'.. PULL THE OTHER ONE!

My brother was a teacher until he retired at the ripe old age of 50.. His brief-case never carried anything but his butties.

As usual, John, you are assuming that things operate now, exactly as you remember them operating in the past.

 

Believe me, no teacher's working day is any longer limited to the time they spend in school - if you believe otherwise, either you are out of touch, or you know some p*ss poor teachers.

 

The one, (and only) area I'll concede where teachers really win out over the rest of the working population, is on the topic of longer holidays.

 

I've always viewed that as recompense for the relatively crap salary that a typical teacher gets, versus what they could easily have achieved had they taken a job in industry or commerce. I'm not a teacher, and in the field where I worked, if you had expected someone with a good graduate degree, and a year's postgraduate training to work for what a teacher gets paid, you would have been ridiculed, particularly as the opportunities to progress to much higher positions are highly limited.

 

Many might be naive enough to think they could stand up in front of a class of thirty often unwilling teenagers, and be equal to not only just controlling them, but also to educating them, (all of them!). How many actually could ? - I know I couldn't!

 

Alan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

 

If you read my last post you would have seen that I agreed that it was not individual teachers who take the decision to close schools and I’m not having a dig at teachers as such but perhaps the willingness for school to close with only the threat of bad weather and very little consideration to how it would affect the parents.

 

I’m sure that most other “KEY WORKERS” have made every effort to get to work or their organisation would have alternative plans in place to cope with reduced staff attendance.

 

The electricity is still on, as is the gas and water, there are programs being broadcast on TV and radio. The engineering company just down the road is working and the supermarket is open. At the end of the same street the school is closed?

 

As a footnote it has just been announced on our local radio that the few number of schools which opened this morning would be closing at dinner time and would not be open tomorrow!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There was a whole wadge recently about boating through ice. It's now snowing (in Twickenham, anyway) which makes me think of a more uncommon but magical thing where we would be boating with temperatures more or less zero but before ice formed. It would then snow heavily, and the snow would settle for a while on the surface, and as we boated through it would cause great sheets of snow to move around like ginormous prawn crackers. We're not on the boat at the moment, and anyway it's in France, but it sends shivers up the spine remembering the magical experience.

Just be thankful you are not in eastern Europe where the ice can last for months. The lock gates on the Saimaa Canal in Finland/Russia are centrally-heated so they can work for a longer period. There is even a German book, published around 1900, just on ice breaking and how to blow up ice dams. There is a picture of the Oder when iced over on http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/images.html taken about ten years ago. The temperature was minus ten with a substantial wind chill factor on top.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just be thankful you are not in eastern Europe where the ice can last for months. The lock gates on the Saimaa Canal in Finland/Russia are centrally-heated so they can work for a longer period. There is even a German book, published around 1900, just on ice breaking and how to blow up ice dams. There is a picture of the Oder when iced over on http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/images.html taken about ten years ago. The temperature was minus ten with a substantial wind chill factor on top.

 

There was a superb aerial photo in yesterdays times of a german (I think) barge battling through ice.

 

Tim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just watching the cctv cams for Southwark and still no buses. the one or two trains that South Eastern have managed to get into London Bridge have now been put on hold due to youths on the tracks/viaducts throwing snowballs at the cars passing below.

 

That's silly. It's not like hitting one and knocking it off the bridge will hurt the train. Run on. Drive a little faster and you won't even feel the little twits.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well the snow has well and truely arrived here in Sheffield now. We had around 4 inch at home this morning (top of a big hill on the northern outskirts) and about 1-2 inch at work (near the south of the city). Now we have about 4 inch at the office so god knows what we have at home and its all uphill to get back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you read my last post you would have seen that I agreed that it was not individual teachers who take the decision to close schools and I’m not having a dig at teachers as such but perhaps the willingness for school to close with only the threat of bad weather and very little consideration to how it would affect the parents.

I’m sure that most other “KEY WORKERS” have made every effort to get to work or their organisation would have alternative plans in place to cope with reduced staff attendance.

 

The electricity is still on, as is the gas and water, there are programs being broadcast on TV and radio. The engineering company just down the road is working and the supermarket is open. At the end of the same street the school is closed?

 

As a footnote it has just been announced on our local radio that the few number of schools which opened this morning would be closing at dinner time and would not be open tomorrow!

I am sure that you are correct, but the comparisons that you are making are not operating within the same criteria.

 

The local Education Authority has to be able to guarantee that Teachers will be at work and on duty, in time to exercise their legal responsibility of "in loco parentis" ? And they may also find that it is neccessary for some of them have to stay at work overnight continuing this responsiblity because the weather conditions have worsened to the point where some children cannot make their way home or be collected by their parents.

 

On balance I think that most parents would prefer their children, particularly younger children, to be safely at home, within the security of the family, rather than cooped up, unprepared in unsuitable conditions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How long ago was this? I used to go out with a teacher and most nights she had a good couple of hours having to do marking and lesson plans.

Got to say I work alongside about 50 teachers. I never see a great amount of work going into their cars except around certain times when project work is being done for GCSE. Most of them get their lesson plans/schemes of work/risk assessments off t'internet where I work. I would agree some teachers CHOOSE to do work at home, but that is somewhat different. Perhaps they are just a lazy bunch at that school?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.