EPISODE NOTES

In this episode, Claire talks with Stuart Tiffany: teacher, history consultant and founder of the ‘Mr T does history’ website.

Stuart talks about his journey through education from being fascinated by history as a child – even declaring to his grandfather during a tour of a castle that history was his passion in life – through to training to be a teacher and working in primary schools himself.

Stuart shares how, following some difficult struggles with anxiety, he left full-time teaching to work part-time as a teacher whilst also promoting history through his website ‘Mr T does history’, and working alongside other schools as a consultant and training provider.

Throughout this episode, Stuart talks about how the organisation and planning of history teaching can be improved, shares a range of tips and strategies for promoting history in school, and discusses a number of options for teachers to turn to for further support – including his own website.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Start local.
  When planning or beginning a new unit of work with history, where links could be made, begin by considering your local area. This can help to make the information and learning significantly more relatable to the children. For example, for a unit of work on World War 2, activities could involve visiting the local remembrance memorial and researching names, and Roman and Iron Age units could involve finding out which tribe or settlement the children would likely belong to back in that period of time.
  Beyond these specific curriculum units of study, activities linked to the local area could include finding out about the history of the school itself or a local park.
  Making use of local archives, societies and museum services, as well as Historical England’s heritage school’s scheme can provide a wealth of information and options for learning.
  
  
• Spend time on chronology and narrative.
  Ensuring that children can link together periods of time to a clear chronology and ‘see’ and place events on a larger timeline is key to them having a deeper understanding of what they are learning.
  Also, being clear about history as a discrete subject is important. While there is nothing wrong with teaching history within topics, children should understand that when they are learning about historical events or periods of time, it is ‘history’ they are studying. Children can find it difficult to see history as a separate area of learning where the activities they complete as a part of a topic lesson might be more readily recognised as art or English.
  
  
• Make history relatable and diverse.
  It is important to consider the choices and decisions that go into planning a period of history to teach; in particular, the children’s cultural capital. An important question to ask is whether or not the children will be able to see themselves and their own history reflected in what they are learning? An example of where this can help to make history more relevant would be the popular topic ‘the Maya’. While the Maya still exist today, it is unlikely that children in schools will encounter anyone from this culture and, while it is an interesting unit of study, it is not one that most children will be able to relate to. However, a school with a number of Muslim children would relate much more to studying early Islamic history; likewise, a school with children of a west African background could engage more with finding out about the history of Benin.

BEST MOMENTS

“The main thing to consider when you think about curriculum is ‘clarity of thought’. If you say, 'Right, we're learning about the Romans.' The list of what you could teach is endless.”

“Do we see history with that sense of narrative – that’s crucial – or do we have it in that isolated, episodic understanding of ‘we know lots about this block, this block, this block’, but we don't fit them together?”

“My biggest tip is spend more time on chronology. It's not just 'I'm going to sequence some pictures from a well-known resource website.' We have to actually unpick what it represents. We have to look and examine those contrasts and those trends.”

“It's that sense of narrative [with history]. If I'm talking to people, I usually say, 'Look, it's got the word story in it, so teach it with that sense of story.'”

“There's nothing wrong with teaching topics. You just have to teach children what the subjects are. A few high-school teachers have said to me that when the children join us in year 7, they've no idea they've actually learned history because they just call everything topic.”

“If you're only going to do [history] twice, once in key stage one, once in key stage two that's the minimum requirement, which are the most fundamental parts for the children to appreciate to understand their locality?”

“Are we giving children the opportunity to see themselves reflected in what they're learning?”

“It's sharing the achievements that the world has brought to us. We use the Hindu-Arabic number system. Think of the medical advances, the scientific and astronomy advances. It's 'A' fascinating and 'B' it's really relevant because if we don't teach about heritage accurately, where are they going to learn it from?”

“We can see the curriculum two ways: is it a benchmark or is it a minimum standard? I would like to think of it as a minimum standard of, 'that's not what we should be aiming to teach, that's what we should be teaching and going beyond.'”

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Mr T does history: https://www.mrtdoeshistory.com/

Stuart Tiffany – Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mr_S_Tiffany

Stuart Tiffany – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MrTdoesPrimaryHistory

Stuart Tiffany – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-tiffany-266930168/

Historic England Heritage Schools: https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/heritage-schools/

Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk

The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/

Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/

Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/

LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/

ABOUT THE HOST

'My mother is a teacher. I will never be a teacher.' - Claire Riley

Claire arrived at the end of her performing arts degree with no firm plans to move into the entertainment industry. A fully funded secondary teaching course seemed like the perfect way to stall for a year on deciding what to do with her life. Turns out, teaching was her thing. 

Three years in a challenging secondary school - check. Two years in primary schools with over 90% EAL children - check. Eight years doing day-to-day supply across 4-18 - check. If there's one thing she learnt, it was how to identity the best ideas from every school in terms of resources and use that knowledge to create something that would work for teachers far and wide.

In 2013, Classroom Secrets was born. Claire had seen other resource sites and wanted to add something to the market that she felt was missing. More choice + More quality = Balance.

Claire is a self-proclaimed personal development junkie and is always looking for ways to learn and improve. It's usually centred around business, her new-found passion.

In 2019, Claire launched The Teachers' Podcast that hit that charts on launch and is listed in the top 200 educational podcasts most weeks.

The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.