Back from 4 amazing days on a PhD course in Sweden focusing on Education and Bildung in the Anthropocene. Tarnished only by the absolute car crash (pun intended) which is the UK public transport system

Exemplary use of the Blue Plaque and the term “bellend”

So much @1972shp.bsky.social stuff going on right now! Last call to register for SHP UNEARTHED (Nov 10 5-6pm), our groundbreaking (ha ha!) webinar on Empire and Gardening - email [email protected] to sign up.

Night time rune stone walk in Sigtuna. Not sure I could get any more history geeky

Just one week to go before our UNEARTHED webinar (just email [email protected] to register for your FREE place). Thought we needed some male role models to publicise the event as currently I am the ONLY male who is attending!! So come on lads, environmental history is for everyone!

As a history teacher who has taken hundreds of children to sites of remembrance in Belgium and France, this just makes me deeply sad

In teacher preparation courses, we ask beginning teachers to create lesson plans. Of course, this level of lesson planning depth is not done in the classroom, but it is to learn what makes a good lesson plan. So, I asked AI to do it and described two different contexts. The results were concerning.🧵

Reform are into Day Three of Racismsplaining. It's harder than it looks. thecritic.co.uk/easy...

Another beautiful morning out in Tynemouth!!

All the seals

Stunning out at Whitley Bay today

The select committee report on the asylum hotel shambles highlights a point I made repeatedly - the absurd gimicks pursued by the last govt like Rwanda took resources away from running the actual system properly.

pure rage at this

Went to a prayer service tonight at St. Mary of the Lake, where they have cardboard cutouts throughout the church representing parishioners afraid to come to Mass because of ICE.

This year we are delighted to welcome back to our primary strand two legends of the primary teaching world; @mr-s-tiffany.bsky.social and @msquinnhistory.bsky.social and we welcome a new presenter Nick Mackintosh (who joined us in Leeds for our summer conference).

We have curated a record-breaking NINE workshops for secondary teachers, covering a huge range of topics. You won't be surprised that we have an awesome roster of presenters including @fredoxby.bsky.social @petejackson.bsky.social @missrcarter89.bsky.social @oblaize.bsky.social

Afrua Hirsh did a brilliant podcast, "We need to talk about Empire". In ep3, she explores the journey of certain rice grain from Sierra Leon to Carolina, hidden and nurtured by enslaved people. These grains chart the middle passage in such deeply human terms and could be sources too!

Have a trainee who is delivering a source task to launch a lesson on middle passage. She is very keen to place enslaved people at the centre and not lean into gratuitous horror. Any suggestions for a possible source? @justice2history.bsky.social @abdulmohamud.bsky.social

Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino personally joins ICE raid at Chicago laundromat—owner locks him out and refuses entry. "When we saw agents we immediately locked the doors," supervisor said. "No one was committing a crime. We were just doing laundry... It’s racial profiling.It’s a numbers game."

Neat way of visualising extreme wealth… Didcot is most avg town in England (pop. 32,186) Mean net worth in England is about £305k per person. If a millionaire came to live in Didcot, the mean worth would rise by 22p per person. If Elon Musk arrived it would rise by £11.5 million #itsnotnormal

NEW: Labour condemn Tory plan to strip people of indefinite leave to remain: “It’s utterly grotesque that Tories want to deport people with the lawful right to be here to achieve ‘cultural coherence’. “This policy would mean tearing families apart and ripping out our neighbours from communities."

question at the same time. Worksheets that are just word documents, so you can't type on the "lines" without everything reformatting. You're supposed to record yourself reading Spanish in an app that never works properly. PDFs uploaded at resolutions so low they can't be read. It is demoralizing.

So many people are trying to figure out what's happening with kids and schools. I don't know any big-picture answers. But from my n=2 sample, one big problem is the constant jankiness of doing schoolwork on Chromebooks and Google Classroom. Math apps where you can't see the diagram and the

This year, my 7th-grader has a math workbook on actual paper, and it is a gamechanger. He can see all the diagrams. He can write on the margins. Yesterday's homework was page 88-89; today's is 90-91. Easy. The technology is a barrier to accessing the work long before they get to the content.

I swear if I ever have to look at another consent form…. Would feel less empty if I could persuade someone to even pick one up #PhDLife

I am pleased to announce that ground has been broken on refitting the Enterprise. The Enterprise is being fully modernized as part of this process & will be more beautiful than ever when it is complete! I am honored to be the President to finally get underway #StarTrek #Sisko197

At @engmediacentre.bsky.social we've been doing a survey of teachers' views on the current state of English teaching. We've had a great response but we'd love more, incl more from out of London. If you're an English teacher please do it. It doesn't take long! www.surveymonkey.com/r/EngTeach2025

The draft legislation is crackers. It would fail immediately if we stayed in the ECHR but it disappears the human rights act. if passed after that it would involve mandatory loss of ILR for up to 400,000 people + refusal of 2-3 million others, though without no credible means to identify or remove

This is deranged and dangerous from the Conservatives, and similarly from Reform. If they could enact it, it would rip British society apart, destroy the economy & NHS, & make the UK an international pariah. Every decent politician & political journalist/commentator needs to push back hard.

the president has destroyed the east wing of the white house without so much as a word of input from anyone else to build a royal ballroom paid for with bribes

I mean it would really help their “we are not Nazis” thing if they stropped drawing inspiration from NSDAP posters

The thing about the Overton window is that it just shifts by default if you let people propose insane policies like removing people with indefinite leave to remain without robust challenge. It doesn't just go away, it slowly leaks into the mainstream water supply unless you properly hose it down.

Apropos of nothing, I really do think UK journalists and politicians need some reminding that mass deportation of LEGAL immigrants, particularly those with permanent status, is far more extreme than even Trump's America and would basically place Britain completely on its own among democracies.

Just so you know exactly where Katie Lam stands as her political star rises! Every decent person in this country should be denouncing this kind of bigotry and inhumanity

These people are never getting elected again, and the collapse of sensible conservatism is a disaster for the UK.

Democracy dies in silence. …when people are too afraid or don’t care enough to speak up. Not today. MILLIONS of Americans and allies of freedom and democracy, here and around the world, are taking to the streets. Showing their love of country and defiance of tyranny. It’s a beautiful sight.

“Readers who love the chaos of Junie B. Jonesand the innocence of Amelia Bedelia will enjoy Jo Jo's guileless humor.” —Booklist

Giant copy of the Constitution being carried down Pennsylvania Avenue.

There is evidence supporting this globally already. When you repeat far right framing you end up normalising it. We're seeing same thing with Labour pandering to the far right, and how they're actually helping Reform gain support with their rhetoric and policies. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Tickets are FREE but you need to register for your place by emailing [email protected] #historyeducation #historyteacher #skystorians #environment #history @apf102.bsky.social @arthurjchapman.bsky.social @davidrawlings.bsky.social @paulalobo.bsky.social @btrappy.bsky.social

Noooo @oaknational.bsky.social have removed @monsieurbenger.bsky.social video lesson on what British colonialism looked like!! Does anyone still have the video? Have been using it a lot with trainees.

It was so much fun chatting to @carmelbones.bsky.social about the history of the Schools History Project and how it can support the #historyeducation community today and in the future. I hope you enjoy the chat that we had with Mel @histassoc.bsky.social creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

NEW POST: Making sense of school performance data in 2025 This year's published secondary school performance data shows why Progress 8 (or something like it) is needed, despite its flaws. vist.ly/4amsj

Just about ready for UCET Conference. Have actually really enjoyed writing this one!

This is the inevitable outcome of relentless anti-immigration political rhetoric and a media environment which disproportionately amplifies the voices of racists, giving the indication that they are the "voice of the public" rather than the minority they are. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Please do come along to this - it looks utterly fab!!