Teach Secondary Issue 14.8

LucyWorsley looks back on her time as a ‘geeky’ student, how she found her true calling at A Level and the TEFL teaching that left her in awe of what teachers do... What I learnt at school What sort of student were you at school? I was a very geeky student – very diligent, very hard working. The sort of student a teacher would say was a dream to teach, and all the other kids would hate. I was bored for quite a lot of the time. I’m glad not to be at school any more, let’s put it that way. The lessons I did enjoy, though, were history and Latin. I also used to quite enjoy sport, did lots of extracurricular activities – acting, music – and was also in the Girl Guides. What was the social side of school like for you? My friends were mainly from outside of school, through the Girl Guides and the music, rather than from within school, where I was just ‘the freak’. Things got much better during my A Levels. We were in smaller groups, getting deeper into subjects – everything became much more engaging to me then. When did you first start to actively pursue a career in history? My dad’s a geologist, and he was keen that I be a scientist too. I don’t want to draw some foolish divide between the arts and the sciences – the world needs both – but he was he was very clear that I should follow in his footsteps. So for my A Levels, I initially chose biology, chemistry and maths. After a term of that, my mother said to me, “ You’re not enjoying this at all, you should change to history. ” My school was fine with that – but then I had to tell my dad. And his words have gone on to become quite famous in our family: “ If you do a history degree, my girl, you’ll be cleaning toilets for a living. ” Now, he was wrong to say that, because there’s nothing wrong with cleaning toilets for a living. But also right in one sense, because I have spent quite a lot of my time as a grown-up talking to people about how the Tudors went to the loo... Did anything of how your teachers taught feed in to your career as a presenter and broadcaster? I’m aware that there’s a whole world of pedagogy I’m not familiar with and have no insight into, so I’d never presume to tell teachers ‘how to teach’ – though I did once have a job as a teacher of English as a foreign language during the college holidays, which was the hardest job I’ve ever done. The Spanish and French 15-year-olds I taught did not want to be there . Their parents had sent them to a strange country where they were unhappy, when they wanted to be with their friends, messing around and wasting time. It was my job to try and get them engaged, and it was an such uphill task. The experience only lasted a fewmonths, but it left me in awe of what teachers do, and really made me see howmuch effort you have to put in to engage somebody who’s disengaged. Luckily for me, that isn’t generally what I’ve had to do since. Most people who visit historical palaces or will watch a history documentary usually have some level of interest already. I see it as my job to try and coax those people with that interest into exploring history a bit further. But making someone who’s not interested into someone who is interested? That’s a magic that I don’t know the secret of, and yet there are teachers out there in schools doing precisely that every day. My hat to hat goes off to them. What can you tell us about Historic Royal Palaces’ InspiringHistory Teaching Awards? I love meeting history teachers, and think they deserve to be celebrated. The Inspiring History Teaching Awards have been set up to to do just that. Anyone can nominate anybody, and entrants will be judged on a range of criteria – fromhow they’ve made their teaching inclusive, to their use of heritage sites and sources, and how they’ve encouraged students to develop skills of enquiry. We want to recognise the many different ways in which history teachers can excel. LucyWorsley is a historian, author and broadcaster, and was joint chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces for 21 years; for more information, visit lucyworsley.com. Entries for the Inspiring History Teaching Awards are now open; winners in 10 different regions will receive £500 personally and £500 for their school, before an overall winner is announced at the Tower of London in June 2026. Further details can be found via tinyurl.com/ts148-LW1 21 teachwire.net/secondary C L A S S O F T H E PA S T