I spent the first week of this term in Belgium with our year 10 students, visiting the battlefields and cemeteries of the First World War.
The aim of the trip was to deepen our students’ understanding of the topic, bringing the horrors of the Great War to life in a way that cannot be done in a classroom.
I also found the trip to be invaluable to my own professional development and have returned to school with a greater sense of confidence in my ability to deliver this part of the curriculum.
We departed from school on Tuesday afternoon to catch the overnight ferry to Bruges. From there, we drove through Belgium to the town of Ypres, the site of three major battles during the war. The town is a beautiful place with a tangible sense of pride in the sacrifices made 100 years ago. The town was utterly destroyed by the end of the war and had to be entirely rebuilt.
Upon arrival, we visited the “In Flanders Fields Museum”, named after the famous war poem by Wilfred Owen. The museum explores the role of Ypres in the war and allowed the students to view artefacts from the time and hear the stories of individual soldiers who fought in the battles that occurred in the town. This gave a real sense of the horrors that had been visited upon this beautiful part of the world.
We spent the rest of the first day visiting both British and German war cemeteries. I personally found the contrast between the two to be profoundly moving – while the British soldiers were laid to rest in bright, open spaces with white headstones, their German counterparts were buried in darker areas of land shadowed by large trees, with the soldiers lying in mass graves of up to eight men. This really brought home the scale of the sacrifice that ordinary men made – on both sides of the conflict.
On day two, we crossed the border into France to visit the Somme. The Battle of the Somme is a crucial part of the GCSE curriculum and so this was very useful to both the students and teachers on the trip. I have not visited the Somme since I was 12-years-old and so I was very excited about this aspect of the trip.
At the Somme, we visited preserved trench systems and also went to Thiepval memorial, which has the names of 72,337 soldiers who have no known grave. This was a very emotional part of the trip as we laid a plaque from our school commemorating those who had fallen during the battle. We also visited a battlefield where one of our student’s ancestors had died, and the student was able to lay a cross and poppy at the site.
On the final night in Ypres, we attended the nightly ceremony that takes place at the Menin Gate, where the Last Post is performed and visitors are invited to lay wreaths in honour of those who lost their lives in the war. We nominated two of our students to lay a wreath on behalf of our school, and they did so with great maturity and sensitivity.
This was my first residential trip since joining the school and was a brilliant opportunity to get to know my students in a less formal setting. It was also a good chance to bond with my fellow history teachers.
In July, I will lead a trip to Krakow and Auschwitz with year 9 students. I hope it is as poignant, memorable and enjoyable as this trip has been.
- Our NQT diarist this year is a teacher of history at a comprehensive school in the North of England.