I've made it to the end of my first full week back. The high of the week had to be receiving a really nice email from colleagues at the HA telling me that Michael Gove had mentioned me in a speech. When I had a look, it said "...the brilliant young head of history at Lampton School..." and a huge smile spread across my face: "young"!!  I really don't really consider myself young.  And indeed, many colleagues who've seen the speech have had a good laugh about Mr Gove calling me young.  But actually, as the week wore on, I did feel younger, and younger, and younger. 


First, there was the meeting with a colleague who suggested a beautifully simple way of helping the team improve their teaching for OCR Paper 2 (which, if you're interested, involves me taking them through the examiner training I did this summer for OCR), and gave me some great advice on helping a group of boys who are really, really struggling with GCSE History.  His 13+ years of teaching gives him such a wealth of experience and ideas that in my 'youngness' I simply don't have yet. 


Second, there was meeting my new Year 8 class and somehow ending up becoming a ventriloquist for a stuffed toy (George the turtle) who lives in my classroom.  George was [miraculously] a wonderful source on life in England in the 1500s, so much so that the students have vowed to take it in turns to look after him during each History lesson in case he ever decides to speak again and tell them such interesting things.  Only when I became conscious of how much I was laughing with the students did Gove's word pop back in my head: "young".  


Third, there was the discussion I had with a student after school.  I've put some film posters up on my classroom walls, and she stayed back to ask me a question (I've decided that getting the students to try and draw parallels between films and history might provide a 'hook' for some of them, hence the film posters).  She asked if the actor knew that his film could have a link to history.  Obviously I didn't know.  But then she confided in me that she thinks this actor is the best thing ever, and that she has a crush on him.  And it was one of those moments where I remembered being that young and "fancying" people til it hurt.  And so I made a promise: "we will find out".  So now we've got a plan: we're going to ask this actor on his Twitter site and post questions on his Facebook page, and we're going to try and mail his agent.  We want to know if he likes history, and whether he thought his film had any links to history. 


In all, Mr Gove calling me young has actually done me a great favour in my first week back.  It's reminded me that (1) I need help - I can't run a department on my own, and there are plenty of people with experience who I need to call on, (2) The individuals I teach are young people: fun is far more important to them than learning history... so I have to remember to bring the two together if I want to make learning successful (the ventriloquist turtle may have to be a very regular appearance), (3) The youngness of the individuals I teach means that my 'hooks', or the ways in which I think history can be made accessible, risk having up to a 20 year age gap... If I want to engage my students, I have to start where they are in their historical thinking and then lead them from there.  I know we all check their prior learning when we start each new task, but do we check their prior / existing interest?!  If I don't gauge their interest and what's hot to them right now, I could be missing some great hooks.  

What a humbling week I've had.  My colleague and I decided to run a Pirate's Training School for the end of term activities week. You would not believe the strategy document we wrote, justifying our proposal (even complete with detailed, broken down budgets). I think people are beginning to learn why you should never ask a history teacher to justify themselves: they get a very, very detailed answer!  We were really fortunate to be oversubscribed (even those leading the week told us of their shock that students were actually opting for something with an historical element and thus - in their view - dull).  But, we had a huge number of students (they - not us! - turned many down!)... and I think (hope!) we spent the next few days proving that learning (and history) is anything but dull. Among other things, we ventured back and introduced them to famous pirates (teachers in role of course - you can see my colleagues Juliette and Alex in the photo).  I went off on a Disney tangent and became the crocodile from Hook (come on, even History teachers are allowed to be silly and ahistorical!). Then it was the pirate code (you can find these genuine articles on the web), followed by training in pirate songs (again, all over the web).  Next came boat making (the fact we couldn't crack it in paper showed students the sheer skill and craftsmanship of these boatbuilders). This first day ended with a fantastic 'ship wreck' obstacle course.  The nex We then reviewed pirates in film - how they've been portrayed through the silver screen - from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp. Then it was a review of contemporary sources: were these silver screen representations accurate?  So then came the students' turn to create their own Hollywood dramatisation of a recorded event, based on the sources... And OMG (as I hear the kids say?!): the results were staggering.  In a mere 2 hours, the students' productions were utterly awesome.  They'd even made films that had 'bloopers' scenes at the end, showing their mistakes as they'd misunderstood the sources - how amazing is that!!!!  SO, it really made me have that glowing, great feeling that History is liked by the students, and that it's fun. It was so uplifting to watch the students go home singing and wearing their pirate clobber with pride! Brilliant end to the term.