Author Archives: teaandlearning

I recently finished Jeffrey Ostler’s new book, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas, and it’s excellent, in my opinion. Just like the research I did for the “women in the West” blog, reading Surviving Genocide drove home just how essential it is to find the timeContinue reading “How important is pre-1830 history to studying the Plains?: A review of Jeffrey Ostler, Surviving Genocide”

I am always on the lookout for films, documentaries and clips that can explain historical events better than I can, or offer different perspectives and convey a message. With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to share a collection of my favourite ones with an explanation of how I use them andContinue reading “Useful films/documentaries/clips that I love: Part 2”

Q1: How has your classroom management developed since the start of NQT?  J: The thing that I think is really important to acknowledge when it comes to behaviour management in NQT, and moving forward, is that you start off quite defensive. You go into your NQT year being told that students will test you, itContinue reading “In Conversation With … @JThompsonMilne: Tackling student behaviours as an NQT”

There are many conversations happening at the moment regarding the state of diverse and representative curricula. We are both very firmly of the belief that history is not accurate unless it is representative and that every scheme of work should meet this standard. It would be quite surprising if there were any history teachers whoContinue reading “Critical analysis and racism”

Bluntly, there are not enough women in our teaching of the American West. This probably isn’t a surprise for most people, given that there are not enough women in our teaching of anything, but now that I know how many women there are to talk about, it does surprise me (a little bit).  As farContinue reading “Finding women in the American West”

N: So, what was your experience of applying for jobs? N: Do you want to go first? Yours is simpler than mine.  H: Okay, so, I applied for … lots of different jobs. I’m not sure how many but I think it was around 6 or 7. I wrote the applications, which were really drainingContinue reading “In Conversation With … Hannah & Nicole: finding our first jobs”

1: It’s a really encouraging, supportive environment for an early career teacher. What you have to say is still valued and respected. 2: History teachers are a fantastic bunch of people and you don’t need to sit at the bar on your own for hours before plucking up the courage to join them (oops). 3:Continue reading “5 takeaways from TMHistoryIcons 2020”

This week we’ve had a very nice lady (@amalsayala) in the department to see if she wanted to embark on a teaching career, or not. She asked some really tough questions and we’ve tried to answer them honestly! We both trained with a schools direct programme, very closely supported by the University PGCE course, butContinue reading “Thinking of getting into teaching? Currently training to teach?”

My latest area of fascination within education is metacognition and I was very grateful to attend a course last term hosted by our trust associate research school. I came away with more ideas than minutes in the day and with a colleague from geography we put together a CPD session for the Humanities department. InContinue reading “Understanding how to learn: an exploration into teaching metacognition explicitly”

Happy New Year!  We’ve written some short resolutions to give us focus and drive for 2020. They’re small, manageable things that we can do to progress, and therefore feel confident and motivated to tackle bigger opportunities that might come our way in the rest of the school year.  @MissHBHistory 1: Use more historians at AContinue reading “3 Tea&Learning resolutions for a successful 2020”