After more than a decade of teaching internationally, I finally decided to formalise something I had already spent years doing professionally: becoming a licensed teacher through QTS.   For years, I’ve taught successfully without holding a formal government-issued teaching licence. I do hold a CELTA, but that is designed for ELT rather than mainstream school teaching. In many schools around the world, especially in the international sector, teachers can build strong careers w

One of the most challenging things to teach in history is not content—it’s thinking. How do we move students from simply seeing something to actually understanding  what it tells us about the past? I designed a lesson for my Grade 10 Ancient History class on “What is a Civilization?” in an attempt to do this. Below is the lesson. Starting with a Simple Question Rather than beginning with definitions, I started with a task. Students were given a set of images showing differen

The other day I was watching King Richard, a biographical sports drama film about the life of Richard Williams, the father of tennis...