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Meet George

Meet George, a History Teacher at a Secondary School.
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My name is George Tanner I’ve been teaching for, seven years now. I started to train three years in East London and then moved on to Brixton and then now I’m here in Bristol. The reason I started teaching, well, I guess it was sort of always me. I went to an amazing school. I did have some inspirational teachers and they they sort of planted that seed in me. For me. You know, seeing the kids, seeing that like a light bulb moment. They’re coming up to you, at break time, they’re talking to you about history, they’re talking about the things that we’ve learned.
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You see that passion that you have in them and you can see that they want to take it further themselves. Yeah, I just think that’s incredible. The hardest parts of teaching… there aren’t enough hours in the day You know,
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sometimes we’re teaching some students an hour a week. And I’d love to double that, triple that. You know, if I could, it’s hard to get the engagement there when you haven’t got the time to teach them. Myself I’ve got to drive the passion towards history, so I’m always looking at different areas. What drives me definitely is teaching our students new ideas, new concepts, things that I’m learning about as well. Because ya know history is so broad and so vast. I love delving into specific areas, different cultures. When I studied history myself, I had great teachers, but it was white British history. And that wasn’t long ago, you know, talking about early noughties.
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In reality, I wish I had the opportunity to know more back then There’s so much more we’re not delving into, you know, a lot of the students haven’t studied, even obvious history like ancient Egypt, which is a big part of African history, human history. We need to talk about West African empires, need to delve deep into stories and narratives that they haven’t even heard about before. I taught in an Afro Caribbean school in Brixton and for them, students seeing representation, seeing themselves in the history you know that worth its weight in gold It’s so important. But now I teach in a majority white working class school.
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But for these students, it’s not just about representation is about broadening their horizons, opening their mind and building up empathy, you know, and that will spark a new knowledge for them, that will spark a new idea for them that they can take forward into their lives. And they’ll broaden their horizons and broaden their empathy towards other culture. And that’s going to make their life so much more promising and fulfilling.

In this video, George shares what inspired him to become a teacher.

CARGO Classroom’s main focus is answering Lawrence’s wish.

Enrichment through education, readdressing the imbalance of a Eurocentric curriculum by shining a light on the accomplishments, achievements and contributions of individuals who are often overlooked or misrepresented in history.

Western discourse around people of African and African Diaspora Heritage has been one mostly of victimhood. As society gains a wider understanding and perspectives change with time, we are discovering more narratives to undo this framing of history.

Our focus is purely solution based. Our work is iterative and as a result have remained firmly rooted on the innovative transformational ‘edge’ of the discourse.

Through conversations with countless educators (from qualified teachers to home schooling parents) we have become aware of the challenges around finding confidence in teaching new resources. CARGO Classroom addresses this directly, but there is so much more to it than the resources themselves.

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This content is taken from
University of Bristol online course,

Practical Skills for Teaching Inclusive History: CARGO Classroom

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Introduce CARGO Pedagogy here Framing, art, poetry, education beyond the classroom

If you had one wish to address history in education, what would you wish for and why?

Why are you here and what do you hope to learn from this course?

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This content is taken from University of Bristol online course
Practical Skills for Teaching Inclusive History: CARGO Classroom
View Course
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Practical Skills for Teaching Inclusive History: CARGO Classroom

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Practical Skills for Teaching Inclusive History: CARGO Classroom

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