Ever wondered what it was like to cross the Great American Desert? Ever wanted to know the experiences and hardships faced by pioneering families? 

During the Summer of 2012 I live tweeted the experiences of one emigrant family, from the diary of future women's rights activist, 17 year old Abigail Jane Scott, as they would have happened 160 years ago in 1852. Don't worry if you missed it because all the details are still here. 

• Find out more about the family by visiting the link HERE and some of the back story HERE.
  
• You can also download a Google Map of the journey in which I have embedded the diary extracts. This is available at the end of this section! 

• abigail_scott.kmzDownload File
  

The Aftermath

• Rev. Neill Johnson and his wife Esther Roelofson (Abigail's aunt and uncle - photo from later years) http://goo.gl/g35xw
  
• John Lawrence Johnson (Abigail's cousin) in later life http://goo.gl/e43uM
  
• Find out what became of Tucker Scott after his relocation to Oregon http://goo.gl/NeRtd
  
• In 1853 she married Benjamin Charles Duniway, "a sober and provident husband" as Abigail called him. More here goo.gl/QrGXk
  
• From 1871, after working as a school teacher and boarding house mistress, Abigail edited the "New Northwest" newspaper in which she campaigned for women's rights http://goo.gl/b4lc4 http://goo.gl/LNsGB . Her husband was also injured in 1862 and could no longer work so she was the major bread winner.
  
• Abigail Scott received her first voter registration card in 1913 after a long suffrage campaign http://goo.gl/fqvXl
  
• Of course one of the sadder results of the Scott emigration was the growing tensions in Oregon itself. Both Tucker and Harvey Scott ended up fighting in the Yakama Indian War in 1855 http://goo.gl/EhBBR http://goo.gl/IIVIw By 1858, the Yakama had lost 90 percent of their traditional lands and were confined to a reservation. 24 chiefs were hanged or shot. According to accounts, some of those who had surrendered were summarily executed by the US Army. The Yakama Indian guerilla Qualchan turned himself in and was promptly put to death http://goo.gl/2Mk5x

Well as it turns out, we do talk about History Club...quite a lot actually...my wife suggests possibly too much, though I think not enough! Anyway, today's blog is a follow-up to Toby French's excellent post about the myths of good history teaching. If you have not read it, can I suggest you head over and have a look now. In the blog, French notes how he tries to get a trainee to look beyond the "strategies for engagement" taught to them at university and think more pragmatically about how they might deliver effective history lessons. I thought this would be quite relevant as many trainees begin to think about moving into their new jobs for September.

Reading the blog got me to thinking about my own work with trainees. To be fair they are quite a mixed bunch. Some come in with really clear notions about what learning means and how it might be achieved, some less so. However all come with one unifying feature, a lack of experience. I completely understand French's frustration when he talks about having been told that group work, co-operative learning and teacher facilitation were the ultimate answers to pupil learning. Many of the trainees I have worked with in the past seem to work on a lesson by lesson basis, not really looking at the larger picture. They tend to focus on activity over content and assume that "engaging" means "fun", and that all teacher talk is a bad thing. They look at assessment as a way of showing progress, rather than as a useful teaching tool. These are the rules of History Club for many trainee teachers. What trainees don't yet know, is that these are the rules of Trainee History Club...

Now I completely understand why universities have to equip their students with all of these beliefs. A single year is really not enough to become a good teacher. Hell ten years is barely adequate in my view! Universities therefore need to imbue their charges with a wide range of approaches to teaching, to allow them to deal with an even wider range of schools and students. Universities need to provide their NQTs with the milk needed to survive their infancy in teaching. This means quick ways to getting classes engaged and simple solutions to delivering content after only a few weeks of training. We all need to start somewhere, and the best universities couple this with excellent pedagogical training as well (the problem of poor training will if anything become worse as universities are cut off from the training programmes, as Rich Kennet has written about before.) The real issue with this form of training comes when such teachers are not weaned off this diet and into more complex understandings of their professional role. The best students should be moving beyond the "activity" approach to teaching within their first few months, others may take a bit longer, but all need to make this move.