Ed Podesta

I'm a history teacher. I worked at Little Heath School in Reading for the first 10 years of my teaching career. Taking one year off to be a PGCE tutor at the University of Oxford. For three years I was head of the History Department at Little Heath School, as well as a whole school CPD co-ordinator and chair of the grandly titled 'Curriculum Reform Group'. Over this last year I've been working in the independent sector on a fixed term contract, which has been fascinating and very informative.I also do some work for the BBC as an occasional consultant on internet related history teaching stuff. I have done bits and bobs for BECTA, PiXL, the SSAT (for whom I was a Lead Practitioner 2008-9) and the Historical Association. Recently I have worked with OCR on their new GCSE specification. My textbook on the Unification of Italy has just been published, which I wrote with a colleague, based (loosely) on my podcasts at www.onedamnthing.org.uk/italy. There are three more textbooks that I'm contributing chapters or sections to, all of which are for the new (draft) GCSE specifications of various boards. Having just finished an MSc in Educational Research Methods at the University of Leeds I'm keen to continue working as a practitioner-researcher. You can find me on twitter @ed_podesta. At the moment, I'm extremely available for work from September 2015, so if you need a history teacher, or a teacher-educator, with ideas but very little hair, get in touch!