A few weeks ago I was  working with trainees at Leeds Trinity on the theme of local history. I wanted to place a particular emphasis on how local stories might be a means to help pupils connect to the wider national narrative. This is not only a great way to approach complex national stories, but also ties in with the new focus in the curriculum on putting the historic environment in context, something which I think is a hidden gem of those specifications where you get to choose your study!

The idea was to replicate some of the planning processes we used to go through when I was head of history and to build an interesting historical enquiry rooted in a local story. As such I hope this might be of some use to departments planning their own local history enquiries.

Over the course of a day, we were able to wrestle with enquiries which linked pupils'  localities with the bigger national picture. We were also able to grapple with real issues around appropriate sequencing, disciplinary development, and the interplay between contextual knowledge and historical thinking. We also learned some interesting lessons about letting the history lead the lesson sequence, rather than the other way around, as I will explain in due course...

Or to give this it’s fuller title: “Shackled to a corpse by hands and feet, tied to a 50 tonne block made of GCSE specifications, in a sea of indifference, blinded by the sea-spray of accountability, with a guy sat in a boat asking why we are not swimming better: Why can’t we make progress in our understanding of progression?” To be honest, if you want the short version and have a bit of imagination, you can stop reading right there.

I will warn you now, this is a long post. But then again, progression is a complex subject…or rather it is a subject which has been made complex. Please bear with me though, because I think this is fundamental!

If you have not yet read my “primers” on progression, you may wish to do so now.

• PRIMER: The problem with linear progression models
  
• PRIMER: Research-based progression models.
  

If you are already familiar with the two aspects above then please feel free to read on...

Context
Over the last week or so I have been marking PGCE trainees’ assessments on planning for progression in history. As I have done this, I have found myself returning to a common theme in my comments; namely that trainees first need to consider WHAT they want pupils to get better at before they start considering HOW they want to achieve this. Where trainees did focus on the substance of history, there was either too much generic focus on the development of historical “skills” and processes (and issue which I will deal with later), or too much time spent on discussing knowledge acquisition and aggregation with little sense of how this contributed to overall historical progression. Knowledge acquisition certainly is a type of progress, but I would argue is insufficient to count for all progression in history. In essence, trainees have found themselves wrestling with history’s twin goals of developing pupils’ knowledge as well as their second-order modes of thinking. Too often they fell down the gap in between.

Interestingly, these confusions were much less evident in work produced by maths trainees. This may be because the maths curriculum specifies a series of substantive concepts for students to master. For example, in understanding algebra, students are asked to “simplify and manipulate algebraic expressions”, to “model situations or procedures by translating them into algebraic expressions”, or “use algebraic methods to solve linear equations in 1 variable” (DfE, 2013, p. 6). As such, maths teachers can help pupils progress to more powerful ideas about maths through a clear content focus. Maths does still have its unifying second-order concepts, “select and use appropriate calculation strategies to solve increasingly complex problems” for example (DfE, 2013, p. 4), but progression in these is can be tied to precise curriculum content. To be fair, this does also come unstuck, as pupils failed to use their second-order ability to apply maths in context in the “Hannah’s Sweets” controversy last year!

A very real confusion
In many ways, the confusion about progression is at the heart of history teaching more generally. Indeed, the recent book "New Directions in Assessing Historical Thinking" (Ercikan & Seixas, 2015) suggests that there are vastly different approaches to understanding historical progression both internationally and within countries and states. This is certainly true of history education in England. There are many reasons for this:

This is a primer post which goes with my upcoming blog on progression in history. You can find the main post HERE. You can also find my other primer post, in which I attempted to do a demolition job on the idea of linear progression models HERE.

Linear progression models are riddled with problems. In this post, I want to focus on one response to the confusions created them: research-based progression models. Let me be clear from the outset, research-based models of progression were not designed as a replacement for National Curriculum levels, rather to address their myriad shortcomings and help teachers to really get to grips with what progression in history looks like.

The best thing to do to understand research-based models of progression is to read Lee and Shemilt’s seminal article in Teaching History 113, “A scaffold not a cage”. Research based models differ from linear models because they take students’ work and understanding as a starting point to describe what improvement in history actually looks like. In the above article, Lee and Shemilt offer some descriptions of what pupils’ thinking about historical evidence looks like. They then divide this into “stages” of development. The upper four stages of their model are given here.

This blog is a primer for my upcoming post on thinking about progression in history. You can find the main post HERE.

Linear progression models have dominated the way we talk about progression in history for many years now. Once upon a time, they were an odd perversion created by the mis-use of National Curriculum levels, but now they are absolutely everywhere, infiltrating everything from A Level to GCSE.

Linear progression models attempt to create a series of steps which pupils must climb in order to improve at a subject. In maths for example, pupils might begin to understand the concept of angles and their relationships to straight lines by looking at how angles on a straight line add up to 360 degrees, then moving on to deal with angles on parallel lines, and so on. In maths this has the potential to work because there are clear steps for pupils to take to improve in their knowledge of angles and lines.

In history the situation is quite different. Linear progression models, such as those used by many schools up until the abolition of the National Curriculum level descriptors, were generally based on the idea that students could improve through a focus on their second-order understanding, rather than knowledge; that is to say, the ways in which we understand history, for example through our understanding of significance, cause, or change. See the example below:

So buried in amongst the tax tweaks, smoke and mirrors of today's budget announcement is a major statement from the government about the future of education in England. George Osbourne (yes the Chancellor, not the Secretary of State for Education) has announced that all schools will need to have left Local Authority control and have become academies between 2020 and 2022. There are many reasons to be wary of such a change, but I really want to focus in on one of those here: the loss of the National Curriculum.

As academies have the freedom to set their own currciulum and are not bound by the nationally agreed document, the movement of all schools to become academies means an end to over two decades of government-set curriculum. "Good!" you may cry. But actually I am not sure it is all that good. Like it or not, the National Curriculum has done an awful lot of good to British education, as well as the more widely publicised negative impacts. The reason it does some good is mainly down to the fact that it balances out other pressures which the government puts on educations, notably the drive to produce ever improving exam results (but not have more people passing).

You may remember that between 2010 and 2014 there was an enourmous fuss made as Michael Gove and the education people (or otherise - you decide) in Whitehall attempted to re-work and re-write the various statutory frameworks for study. History of course was famously controversial, with a list of content which initial looked like it had been dreamed up by a drunken Nigel Farage on a bender at the Premier Inn with David Starkey and Nial Ferguson. Yet the thing which was always striking about these reforms, was that the academies Gove created did not have to follow this curriculum at all. Why then go to all that trouble if some schools could just ignore the results? Indeed, some schools who became academies were also some of the worst for teaching a narrow, C20th heavy history curriculum. With academy status they had no need to change. Indeed, they were even permitted to continue using National Curriculum Levels if they so chose (and many did!). But at the moment, this is intertia, already there are some major and worrying changes to the curriculua of academies which are setting a potential future trend for English education. The National Curriculum was far from perfect, but it did (and currently does) enshrines a number of principles which may risk being lost if academies continue to be allowed to plough their own curricular furrows. For the purposes of brevity I just want to deal with two of these.

Richard White's "Remembering Ahanagran" is a book which I have been unable to put down. At times witty and amusing and at other times deeply moving, White tells the story of his mother's early life and emigration to the United States through her own memories, gathered over a lifetime. 

"Lives are not stories. A day, a month, a year, or a lifetime has no plot. Our experiences are only the raw stuff of stories...We turn our lives into stories, and, in doing so, we...[give our] lives a coherence that the day-to-day lives of our actual experience lack."

One one level, White helps us to get a glimpse into the intimate stories of his family and shows us the strangeness of the world they inhabited. We see the impact of British policy in Ireland, we feel the social stigma attached to mixed marriages, we appreciate how people were both driven by the own desires but also controlled by factors outside their control. I was particularly drawn in by the detailed focus on the construction and reconstruction of ordinary lives. White is by no means glorifying the life his mother led, however, he shows it to be of the same interest and importance as so many other "famous lives" which have of course received far more attention. He demonstrates this beautifully when talking about the house in which his mother spent her early years in the USA.

"There are no histories of Chicago in which 6420 South Mozart Street...matters very much...But for Sara, Chicago always existed in relation to South Mozart Street. And all of America existed in relation to Chicago. South Mozart Street, where she started and ended her day, was the center of America."

On a different level, the book is also a history of the United States in the early 20th century. The characters of the story, whilst very ordinary, are also touched by the major events of the time. During Prohibition illegal stills are kept in the basement. When the Great Depression arrives its toll on the immigrant Americans can be seen. The racial tensions in the South also receive mention as do the corrupt legal systems of Chicago which find themselves in thrall to the Irish gangs. Towards the end of the book, themes of anti-Semitism and racism tinge the story, whilst the War throws the lives of the characters into disarray. If nothing else, the book is well worth a read to see how these "great" events impacted on the lives of everyday people. It is a story about what it means to be American and how American identity has been shaped.

Finally, and most importantly, "Remembering Ahanagran" is something of a historiography. The memories of White's mother are the raw materials of the book, however White has taken a very different approach to this. Much of the book sees him discussing and dealing with the gulf which exists between the memories of his mother and the evidence he can find historically. He begins by outlining the tensions between memory, story-telling and history.

"I once though of my mother's stories as history...Then I became an historian, and after many years I have come to realize that only careless historians confuse memory and history. History is the enemy of memory. The two stalk each other across the fields of the past, claiming the same terrain."

In every aspect, White compares his mother's memories and stories with the evidence he can find. In most cases there are huge tensions between the two version of the past and the book deals with how these might be reconciled. This is often a difficult process, and on more than one occasion it is clear that White's mother is not entirely happy with the direction the book is taking, she would rather keep the version of history she has created for herself. However White persists and the most fascinating aspect of the book is how White deals with these tensions and how he attempts to construct a history from the fragments. This is one of the most brilliant and eloquent explanations of the historical method I have read. It is like picking up White's thoughts and notes as much as it is a finished book. He also clearly struggles with his own memories of his mother and father as these are challenged by the evidence.

I think my favourite aspect of the book has been, what White would term, its anti-memoir quality. There is no attempt here to construct simple stories with simple meanings. Every aspect of Sara Walsh's life story is scrutinised. In many cases the result is complex and the result seems strange. But as White notes:

"Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not be a familiar echo of the present...The past should be so strange you wonder how you and the people you know and love could come from such as time..."

Ultimately the book feels like a discussion, a conversation about the past and how and why we construct it. It is a brilliant way to get thinking about the historical method and a highly recommended read to really get you thinking about what it means to be an historian and what the role of history should be. It also asks us to consider the meaning of historical significance, taking seemingly innocuous events and showing the enormous shadows they cast over the lives of the people in the book. White also demands that we think about the nature of time itself. He shows how some stories occur in ordinary time, whilst others, such as those of the heroes of The Troubles, take place in a "monumental time", where lives and deaths can span centuries instead of decades. Of course, ultimately the question of historical truth is raised. The conclusion on this is far from clear cut. The themes of the book are universal, they ask us to consider the merits and dangers of memory, and the shortcomings of History as a discipline. This book has not always been a simple read, but it has been absolutely riveting. I am not sure I have done it justice here but I cannot recommend it highly enough. I will finish with one last quote (from a book I could quote every second page of).

"Memory is a living thing vulnerable to a dead past until memory itself dies with its creator... History is a dead thing brought to new life. It is fragments of the past, dead and gone, resurrected by historians...It threatens our versions of ourselves."

Below you will find a link to the Teaching Personnel, Planning for Progression Session I ran on 23rd February. Please do feel free to download the materials. I would just ask that any attributions are left in.

This short task got the pupils thinking about how we view the roles played during the Holocaust. The idea behind the lesson was to challenge students perceptions of the Holocaust through the use of character cards and real stories.

Each pupil would have a personal story of someone in some way be linked to the Holocaust. This was an excellent chance to highlight differentiation, as I planned which person would best match a pupil's ability in terms of the complexity of the story. By differentiating in this way, I was able to ensure that students were all able to participate in task. Once they had filled in their worksheet about their person, they discussed them with the other members of their group (again these groups were differentiated).

Pupils were than asked to make a judgement about their person, whether they were in fact a Perpetrator, Collaborator, Bystander or Rescuer. I then instructed pupils to move into one of the 4 corners of the room, which I had previously labelled Collaborator, perpetrator etc... Pupils then had to rank their person against this scale and justify why they were there - something which enabled me to really stretch and challenge all pupils.


Finally the pupils were once more asked to consider Barney Greenman - many pupils had changed their opinion.

Some post-lesson thoughts
The lesson was, overall a success, which was lucky as it was observed by my ITT coordinator! The lesson required a good pace, and quick transitions between tasks, which has been something I have been looking to work on. The pace of the lesson was good, a definite improvement on previous lessons. The pupils were engaged throughout, and the differentiation ensured that the majority of pupils were on task the majority of the time. I am confident that all pupils progressed in the lesson, as I was able to circulate and discuss individual people's stories with pupils throughout.

Improvements

The pace at the beginning of the lesson could have been improved, perhaps too long was spent on the first task which meant that the plenary task was slightly rushed [might this be a 2 lesson sequence of work? AF].

I would also have like to include some AFL, which could have been done very simply: at the start of the lesson I could have asked 'Who killed Barney Greenman,' and asked the pupils to respond, on a scale of 1-5, of how confident they were they could answer the question. I could have asked this question again at the end.

Today's Fri-deas is more of a follow-up to Darius Jackson's excellent session on teaching the Holocaust. The purpose for this is just to provide you with some extra resources which you might use to address some of the Holocust teaching issues Darius raised. There is a particular focus here on rehumanising the past, avoiding the use of trauma, and respecting the victims.

I have uploaded some summary notes from the session with Darius' kind permission HERE. From a specifically teaching perspective note how Darius' use of the following helped hold that whole four hour session together, much like a sequence of lessons:

• A clear overall set of overall aims - to unpick our conceptual frameworks about the Holocaust and begin to reconstruct them and challenge them
• An overarching enquiry question to tie it all together - Who killed Barney Greenman?
• Clear and detailed subject knowledge deployed to ellaborate, illustrate, challenge and hook interest
• Activities which helped develop, deepen and challenge thinking whatever your prior knowledge on the Holocaust

Reading & Research
As ever, one of the big issues in teaching any subject effectively is knowing the content and context itself. Darius noted that too often Holocaust teaching has very general purposes and fails to engage properly and historically with the subject. In order you broaden your own historical understadning of the Holocaust you may wish to have a look at:

"The Coming of the Holoaust" by Peter Kenez. I have put a review HERE, but Kenez tries to engage in the reasons for the Holocaust, but also its varied impacts in different European countries. He also has an autobiography looking at his own experience of living with antisemitism in his "Varieties of Fear" HERE. I like Peter's book because it is written from a clear perspective of trying to explain the Holocaust in a manner which goes beyond the Hitler & top Nazis argument.

"The Story of the Jews" by Simon Schama. This is both a book and a TV series - you can find a link HERE. If you know little about the history of Jews and Judaism, Schame is an excellent way into the background of the Jewish experience. This is especially important in seeing the contributions made by Jews to European society.

"Beatrice and Virgil" by Yann Martel. I seem to have lost my review for this one, but you can find a link to another one HERE. It deals with the issue of Holocaust fiction versus history. It is certainly a challenging read. I am still not sure if I think this is brilliant or awful, but would really like your thoughts.

The Holocaust Learning website and Holocaust Learning Project are archiving and cataloging the stories of victims of the Holocaust who now live in Yorkshire. This is a brilliant project and a great way to engage with the lives of victims before the events as well as their lives after. You will find all of Iby Knill's story here as well.

Using film when teaching the Holocaust. This was a session run by Jo Fox at Durham University unpicking how film and popular film might be understood in the context of the Holocaust. The notes are HERE. This is particularly good for challenging conceptual frameworks which hold that propaganda swayed Germans. Jo looks at the comparative failure of the Eternal Jew as a film and a piece of propaganda. Conversely she argues that films like Jud Suss were much more subtle and effective.

In the Classroom
There are obviously some brilliant resources which UCL are making available with regard to the "Being Human?" approach. Here are just a few other resources which you may find helpful as ways into teaching the Holocaust. I am not holding the PowerPoints up as excellent examples, but they may provide a starting point.

Unpicking frameworks about perpetrators: One way into considering frameworks about perpetrators is to look at those who actually took part in mass killings. Karl Kretschmer was an Einsatzkommando. His letters to his family are a way to really consider what is meant by a perpetrator. Using the first letter from the PowerPoint, students tend to assume he is a victim of the Holocaust - something which comes from their existing framework. The lesson then challenges the view and asks why Karl participated. This unpicks notions that Karl was forced to take part by challenging this with evidence. Students are effectively reshaping their conceptual framework about what it meant to be a perpetrator. It is important to note that Kretschmer was not in a concentration camp as well. The PowerPoint including the two extracts from Karl is HERE, some documentation showing what Karl Kretschmer's Einsatzgruppe did is HERE, and some extracts on how much choice people had in participation is HERE and a similar accompanying resource HERE.

Broadening definitions of victims. The story of Hans Frank is one way to engage students with the idea that multiple groups of people were targeted by the Nazis. However it is also a way to begin to understand the unique experiences of disabled victims of the Nazis. You can find the story HERE.

Unpicking frameworks about remembering the Holocaust: This needs to be used carefully but can make a useful way to draw together thinking about the Holocaust. The resource revolves around a real stag tour advert for an "Auschwitz Experience Weekend". The discussion could be taken in any direction but in the example here it has been used to address the issue of what is acceptable in remembering the Holocaust. The resource itself is HERE and an associated PowerPoint is HERE.

Continuing Professional Development and professional learning are complex terms (Day & Sachs, 2004). Both are loaded with myriad meanings, and there is still no clear definition of either.  In 2001, the DfEE released a major strategy document for CPD. This document set out the government’s aims for professional learning in English schools, a vision which notably blurred the definitions of professional development and professional learning (DfEE, 2001). A second publication in 2005, placed even more emphasis on the creation of effective CPD by schools, stating that its purpose was “…increasing teachers’ skills, knowledge and understanding…” (DfES, 2005, p. 4). Furthermore, recent government reforms have seen an increasing amount of teacher training shifted into so-called “Teaching Schools”. Yet despite this very explicit focus on the role of schools in improving provision for professional learning, by 2006 Ofsted were still led to report that CPD opportunities in many secondary school departments were “wholly unsatisfactory…far more needs to be made available” (Ofsted, 2006, p. 4). It might well be assumed then, that many of the strategies implemented by schools during the course of the early twenty-first century had little impact in improving the quality of provision of professional learning in English schools.

This literature review is a response to general criticisms of professional learning, outlined above, as well as a the 2011 Ofsted report, History for All (Ofsted, 2011), which set out the shortcomings of professional learning in history departments nationwide. The report noted that “an important issue [in recent history inspections] was the near-absence of appropriate subject training.” (Ofsted, 2011, p. 42) and went on to highlight the discovery that “…in the 65 schools visited…[subject training] was good or outstanding in only 15 of them.” (Ofsted, 2011, p. 42). The language here is vague; however the core point is hammered home with statistical precision. In one institution for example, there had been no subject specific professional development offered to staff for seven years (Ofsted, 2011). These findings clearly present stark challenges to history departments looking to improve their practice.

Over the last few years, many schools have made moves to bring their professional learning in-house (Woodcock, 2011). This approach is fairly common and it is unsurprising that this has come at a time when reducing budgets is paramount (Woodcock, 2011). In one case I explored in some detail, Robwood High (a high achieveing secondary - name changed) began a programme of establishing “Professional Learning Communities” (PLCs) to provide in-house CPD. The PLCs were given the purpose of fostering cross-curricular, collegiate approaches to CPD as a surrogate for bringing in external expertise.  The PLCs at Robwood focused on improving teaching and learning across the school through a shared focus on Assessment for Learning (AfL). The challenge with this model of professional learning is twofold. First, the expertise must be available within the school already. Focussing too heavily on internal expertise runs the risk of encouraging conservatism and removing the challenge provided by external sources (Pendry, et al., 1998). The second issue whether or not such approaches to CPD allow all teachers to develop appropriately in response to their professional and subject specific needs.

So this week I have gone for a giant picture because I am a little short of Frideas... Never-the-less, thanks to those people who sent in something which they did this week which worked really well.

Welcome to the cheesily-named Fri-deas (yes, I was insanely proud of that). This is a micro-blog for trainee history teachers (and other interested parties) to share one idea that really worked well during the week. The idea is that these will become ways to inspire each other for lessons for the coming week.

Fri-deas can literally be anything...Getting excited about a great idea for a big enquiry you have had. Telling us about the fantastic and meaningful outcome task you have just taken in. Explaining how you have managed to successfully explain something historically complex. Letting us into an historical nugget you have unearthed which really got your kids talking. The sky is the limit.

Fri-deas don't have to be super long - ideally they are little, readable chunks of inspiration. Most importantly, we need to know:

• which class you did this with
• how it fitted into the learning sequence
• how and why you think it went so well
• if possible - grab a quick picture of the outcome and send it in too.

So, without any more of me rattling on - this week's selection of LTU Fri-deas. Thanks to everyone who sent something in - it was a tiny bit light this week, so please do send them over. Why not vote for you favourite in the comments below?

Initial Teacher Training, some of the most successful and important History PGCE courses were not likely to be viable to run from 2016. Meanwhile, school based training still had a bank of reserved places, despite struggling to fill these in many cases in the past. Now, I have no inherent opposition to schools providing ITT, if it is done well, however I would argue that much of this has been driven by an ideological desire to break up university control of Initial Teacher Training. Just like the unfortunate Despenser, university education departments have been accused of formenting strife, being disloyal to the cause of traditional education, and ignoring the practicalities of training classroom teachers. What is bitterly ironic is that many of the places which are facing the prospect of being forced to shut their doors, are at the forefront of the fight against the dumbing down of education, exam driven practice and pandering to Ofsted’s latest whims. The stage has been set for the final execution of university based ITT, for it to be divided up for academy chains and private education companies to fight over. Much like the execution of Despenser, the process has been long and painful.

By now many of you will be considering what you will be teaching for the new GCSE units, which are launching in September 2016. The less fortunate of you may even be teaching them already, despite the fact the specification documents are still in draft; but that is an issue for another day. One thing you will certainly have noticed if you have begun the process of choosing already, is that there are now an extra two units for students to cover in their two (or three!!) years. To recap, students now have to study:

• Content from 3 different periods of time: Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern
• A breadth study which covers all three of these periods
• A period study which tells an unfolding narrative
• A British depth study which can come from any period
• A World depth study which cannot come from the same period as the British one
• A study of the historic environment

So far, so complex. In reality what this means is that most GCSEs are asking students to study five different historical periods or issues in the time they used to study three. This effectively means a term per topic if you want to leave time for revision. Clearly this puts a huge focus on students learning a significant (although not overbearing in some of the better specifications) amount of content.

One of the most important tasks for history departments over the next few months will be narrowing down and choosing which specification best fits your students, expertise, interests and (sadly) resources (again, I might make this a future blog). Once you have decided on a suitable route, you can then think about mapping out how you will cover each of the units in the 10-12 weeks allocated by the new specification materials. This is also a good way to test specifications as some certainly have an awful lot of content to cover! I have already written about the process of unit planning for the new A Level HERE and HERE, highlighting the importance of excellent subject knowledge in planning meaningful units. I will not repeat that, but if you are considering issues of planning for GCSE then these posts would be a good starting point.

The one worry I hear a lot with the revised GCSE, is that it demands a lot of content knowledge and may be inaccessible for weaker students. I therefore want to spend the rest of this post exploring these claims and considering how we might respond as history teachers who want every child to be able to access and enjoy really great history.

Over the last two days I have been writing an account of what happened during one of the most stressful school trip experiences of my teaching career. Yesterday I focused on the challenge of keeping calm and relinquishing some aspects on control. In this final blog I hope to look at those areas where the team and I were able to play a more active role in events. 

Working with support 
​As I have already noted, one of the most amazing parts of the whole experience was just how co-ordinated the emergency response was. As soon as we had established the condition of students in each of the seven hospitals I endeavoured to speak with each of the representatives from the emergency response teams: Red Cross, Police, Coastguard, Public Health, Youth Hostel and so on. In doing this I was able to work out what their remit was and therefore know which aspects of our case were being dealt with effectively. On the first night for example it was clear that our immediate medical needs were being addressed and that the physical needs of food and shelter for the well students were also covered. I was also able to establish that nobody would be checking on the status of students in hospital and of course no-one would be contacting school. We were therefore able to access the hostel’s phones and focus on these tasks, allowing the emergency services to deal with the rest. By midnight we had therefore communicated the situation clearly back to school. 

On the Tuesday, further support was provided by the local police to coordinate returning students to the hostel and booking well students a crossing back to the UK with P&O. Again, this freed up time for staff to see to students’ more immediate needs such as eating breakfast and lunch and getting clothing and other items for them. It also gave us an opportunity to check all students still had their passports and other key documents.  
​
School were of course vital in supporting us. When we lost two members of staff the previous night I requested and was given two support staff who came from England overnight to join us on the Monday. They also brought a car which was extremely helpful in visiting the students.  Again, the choice seemed somewhat overkill at 7pm on Monday but by Tuesday morning I was extremely glad of the extra support.  
The one recurring question I was asked by the emergency staff throughout was what I wanted to happen. We decided early on, after discussions with school, that our main aim was to get students home as soon as possible, as long as this was safe and in their best interests. Therefore, the decisions made by the emergency services helped us to achieve this long term goal. It is well worth considering what your long term goals are for a situation early-on, as this will determine many of your options. One example is that the coach company offered to drive us to a second crossing at Calais. However, as I was not convinced the driver was fit or safe to drive, I opted to spend the night in Belgium. As it turns out, the Calais crossing would have denied us access anyway, but here my overarching imperative for student safety and welfare overrode the possibility of getting them home sooner. It was, in hindsight, the correct call. 

Accepting Your Limits 
As a trip leader I like to be in control of everything. I plan to the nth degree, providing colleagues with detailed itineraries and regular updates throughout the trip. I like to know who is going where and when, and to have a clear chain of responsibility with group leaders reporting back to me. This is how I feel comfortable.  
 
As soon as the ambulances arrived in the port, we were faced very quickly with a key decision: to try and control the whole situation or to relinquish some control and focus on other areas. In this instance there was little time to confirm with school. As more and more students began to fall ill, keeping up with who was being taken away became extremely difficult, especially with diminishing numbers of staff. I was forced to confirm and accept that the paramedics would give me a full list of all the people who had been taken. Once I had been given the assurance that every student would be assigned to a specific hospital and that a list would be given to me, I was able to partially let go and focus on other issues. Throughout the next two hours I continued to liaise with the paramedics and confirmed multiple times that I would get lists. This made communication back to school tricky, as we were unable to provide a definitive list of students for a time, however it was necessary for the emergency crews to complete their jobs effectively, and to ensure that the other students were being looked after. 

With the paramedics working with those who were ill, we shifted our attention to ensuring that students were aware of what was happening and that they did not panic. There were also practical issues to deal with such as access to toilets, stopping children from getting cold, and ensuring that luggage was in the right place to travel on to our hostel for the remainder. Again, having really good support meant that all these issues were dealt with, even to the point of staff collecting errant passports and EHIC cards, something which might have created chaos later.  Eventually I was given the list of students with their associated hospitals. We made multiple copies of this and used it as our master document for all updates. 

The situation was similar once the remaining students were transferred to a local hostel. Fifteen or so Red Cross volunteers helped to register and administer to sick students as they arrived. Remaining staff supported in keeping students calm and getting them to rooms. I ensured I was part of the registration process so that I knew who had arrived in the hostel. I therefore had a clear list of those who were well and based in the hostel and those who were sick and in hospital. Keeping and updating a single copy of these lists proved very important three more students fell ill during registration, requiring two more members of staff be sent to hospitals with them.  

So here is the scenario: You are leading a school group back home after a successful residential visit abroad. As you arrive at the ferry port, forty of your students and four members of staff fall ill. The ferry company refuse to let you travel. What do you do?

Any thoughts? Until recently, I would probably have laughed at such an outlandish proposition as being even vaguely plausible. Still, life brings nothing if not experiences and a good slice of humble pie.  The scenario outlined above is now a staple one for the local authority in its trip leader training and one which I ended up having to manage on the ground. 

Let me say this now, if you are running a school trip and want to choose a country for over half of your students and staff to fall ill, make it Belgium, the emergency response is outstanding! Coordinated services, clear communication, and everyone bending over backwards to be of assistance. When our history battlefields trip party fell victim to an outbreak of illness last week, every single agency we worked with in Belgium was absolutely fantastic. From the staff in the ferry terminal, to paramedics and police, right through to staff in the youth hostel. We could not have asked for more in terms of care and compassion. All of this, coupled with students who dealt bravely with the crisis and the support of my own amazing colleagues, meant that all students were eventually returned home safely. 

For those of you who missed the news headlines, a little extra detail. Recently, I was leading our annual battlefields tour of eighty students and eight staff . It was set to be a 5 day tour of the battlefields of Flanders and the Somme. Days 1 to 3 were brilliant, amazing students and real interest in the history. But on day 4 unexpected problems struck. By 11pm on our final full day in Belgium I had 45 students, 4 staff and 1 driver in 7 hospitals all across northern Belgium.  

Despite the fact we all got home safely, a situation like this is every teacher's worst nightmare! However, the purpose of this blog is not to reflect on the details of what happened, the newspapers have already covered that angle, rather to reflect on the issues that arose for us as teachers during the two days. Hopefully I will be able to offer some thoughts on what helped and hindered us in the process of getting our kids back home.  ​

When I began this blog several years ago, I used to get quite excited when the occasional message popped up in my inbox from the contact form on the website. Said bubble of excitement was often punctured shortly afterwards when it turned out the message was offering not the interesting and engaging comments on my most recent post as expected, but a selection of pills I might buy to increase the size of parts of my anatomy. Still, I persevered and continued to open my contact messages dutifully, despite their often uninspiring content. In the end, I am glad I did, because there has been a seizmic shift in the last 2 years in the types of message I now receive (I also have better spam filtering). 

Ever since the announcement of major curriculum changes back in 2012/13, I have received more and more contacts from teachers via the website. For the most part, these are what I like to call "messages in bottles", quite often fairly substantial missives from people looking for help and guidance relating to some crazy initiative or other being brought into a school. The other common contact is from new Heads of Department looking for some guidance in a school offering little support. It can be a very lonely world out there as a history teacher looking to meet personal, professional goals, whilst also meeting the expectations of school data and tracking systems. The fact that so many people seem to seek help from an ostensibly anonymous source like this one suggests that many of us are probably struggling with similar issues but don't know where to turn. I try to respond to all of these messages in bottles, not always with an answer, but just so people know they are not completely alone in their experiences. 

As I typed my most recent response however, I got to thinking that the conversations I have with some of these people might well be of use to others in similar circumstances. I am therefore intending to anonymise and republish some of the conversations I have had on the most common topics of discussion in my new "Messages in Bottles" feature. It is my hope that others might then contribute their own responses in addition to my own advice. In this way I hope we might continue to develop and deepen our professional understanding through joint endeavour. Moreover it chimes with my previous blog that we have to keep talking about "History Club" if we ever want things to really change.

Today's letter is one of the most common I have seen from new HoDs and is one of the most frequent discussions I have with people at conferences and other events. I offer a modified and anonymised version of the contact I received as well as my response. Please feel free to add your own comments or disagree with my advice.