The Curriculum PATHS – PATHfinders blog posts build on our mission to encourage and support history teachers in their work to creating empowering history curricula for their pupils. We hope that the PATHfinders updates, and our Principles for History Teaching will support and inspire teachers in their efforts to bring complex but vital historical issues and topics into the classroom.
In our Summer 1 PATHfinders blog, Rich Kennett explores the work he and Helen Snelson did together on improving our teaching of GRT histories. A related scheme is available via the Sharing Hub now.
Wrestling with the issue
Since 2008 there has been a dedicated ‘History Month’ to celebrate the history of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers in wider society. As with other ‘History Months’ it would be fantastic if we did not need to identify particular groups as needing space for us to acknowledge their achievements and contributions to society, but we do! I wonder how many readers of this blog will look at their curriculum and be able to say they have done a good job at integrating this group into it. I hope there are many of you. I fear there will not be.
So what can you do?
What you can do about it depends on your starting point.
A good start would be to read this article. The link takes you to York Clio, an amazing website full of great ideas and links. The article presents a “compelling rationale for why history teachers should be slotting in the stories of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people to broaden inclusive representation and challenge intolerance”.
Another quick win for this year would be to hold a whole school assembly. There are many websites with resources for this. Friends, Families and Travellers is an excellent website and has resources here. If an assembly is too much this year, raise the need to do something with your line manager and SLT. Can you get time in a CPD day to highlight this and then push for more space in the school curriculum at a later date?
More ambitious would be to include GRT history in your curriculum. The first article focuses on a way to do that, and you can find the resources on York Clio here or on the Curriculum Paths website. There is a reading list in the Padlet on Curriculum Paths should you want to begin researching this history.
Two years ago, a small group of educators, including representatives from within the community, convened to discuss strategy for encouraging more schools to introduce GRT history into their curriculum. One of the results of this meeting was the curation of existing materials found on the internet. We hoped that by curating these resources, attributing them to certain key stages, and providing a health warning (if necessary) we could encourage educators to dip their toes into what already existed.
These resources can be found on York Clio and Curriculum Paths.
York Clio: Teaching Gypsy, Roma and Traveller history – yorkclio
Curriculum Paths: GRT Resources Database
We hope all three documents will prove useful in helping educators explore existing resources and be confident in using some of them, before developing their own (and submitting to Curriculum Paths for hosting).
The five-page database guide is full of ideas for each key stage. It signposts resources in the database and suggests how to use them. Whatever key stage you teach, there is a starting point here for you.
The Romani/Gypsy, Traveller and British Roma History Educator Database pdf sets out the rationale behind the work as well as offering a comprehensive list of resources with a note on suitability. The health warning here is that any resource should be checked by the educator before being used. The links in this document are all live at the time of writing.
Finally, the excel spreadsheet database. This is a searchable database and includes the resources in the Educator Database.
There really is nothing stopping you from including this history because, as Snelson and Kerridge said in 2022, “[i]t is quite simply better history to teach a more representative past”.
