Perhaps you have Polish students in your history classroom and are worried their homeland only appears in history lessons when invaded by the Nazis and the USSR? Perhaps you want your students to realise that links with other countries go back a lot further than some current political voices might suggest? Probably you are very pushed for time!

Have you seen? projectpolish.com

This Schools Project on Poland is a great way for young people to get to know more about Poland, the history of Poland, its links with Britain and the contribution of Polish people to the UK. It is a project in three stages and you can do just one or all of them, whatever works for you and your school. All you have to do is register for free with no obligations and you get access to the resources for:

• Stage One – Context: How have Polish people enriched my life? – this can be done in a single history lesson and focuses on Polish-British links from the past to today.
• Stage Two – Connect: What can we learn from talking to Polish people? – this takes the project into a homework task that involves oral history.
• Stage Three – Community: How can we make a difference in our community? – alternatively, if your school is looking for a summer term cross-curricular project then this stage uses oral history as a launchpad for students planning their own action to bring people together in their community.

You might want to just do Stage One in a history lesson, but it you do have the wider school opportunity to do all three stages, then your students and a teacher will have an all expenses paid visit to the Polish Embassy in London in February 2020 for a celebration event hosted by the Polish Ambassador. Details are here. 

Did you know that the Historical Association is an active member of EUROCLIO? the European Network of History Educators?  It’s another way that the HA is able to support its history teacher members to teach all the students in your class about their past, whatever their background.

Follow HA on Facebook and @histassoc.