A number of people are currently in the process of writing NQT job applications, and making statements, and there are wide ranging advice and connections that are excellent. Having helped a few people with Geography statements, I thought I’d share three key ideas from the perspective of a moderately experienced Head of Geography!

First, it needs to be personal to you, not the generic teacher standards. As a PGCE student, you’ll have a lot of experience in providing evidence for a portfolio, rather than anything unique or personal. A personal statement for a teacher application must be personal. While it’s important that you can talk about planning lessons, calling home, behaviour management etc. and you are rightly proud of learning these things as a trainee teacher, it’s important to recognise that all of these things are just to be expected as part of the job description as a teacher, and will just be “normal” for a teacher application. They don’t, therefore, really add much to your statement to make *you* stand out. As much as possible, you want to try and explore the things *you* believe, and the ways that you bring them out in your teaching. There are debates in education, there are values – are you knowledge driven, are you really proud of the work on retrieval practice, or a huge proponent of Wilingham’s work etc.? If you have something: practical, evidence, or ideas and values that makes you stand out from other candidates, then say so!

Second, if you are applying for a Geography job, your application needs to be Geography-based. As a HoD, I’m naturally a serious Geographer, who wants to drive up academic standards of their students, and I’m going to be looking for subject strength and evidence of that. Do not assume that anything is drawn explicitly from your CV/other bits of the application form – if you want to make a statement, it needs to be *in* your statement. My suggestions:

• Talk about how you got here & what got you interested & passionate about teaching Geography. Might include trips, travel, A Level (& how they help you be a better teacher) and degree/other experiences. If you have a degree that isn’t 100% Geography, then say so, and say how this helps you to teach other subjects, or show width. Geog/Econ might be hugely powerful to teach A Level human Geography; Geog & Ecology might be brilliant for the physical elements of the courses, too!
• You won’t necessarily have a huge range of experience, but talk about what *geography* you have taught, and what you’ve learned and reflected on from that. Don’t be afraid if you haven’t taught the full range yet: discuss what you have done! Which topics have you enjoyed? Which have you not? What has surprised you? What’s been more fun than you expected? Previou physical Geographer, who’s loved teaching Y7 globalisation? Say so! Tell me about your subject teaching experience and love for the thing. If you’ve taught specific GCSE topics (or know the specification) then mention them, ditto for A Level. Being as specific and example-driven as you can is really helpful.
• Talk about how you are continuing your subject knowledge development and growth. What are you doing to ensure you’re the best Geographer you can be? GA? RGS? Twitter? Reading, journals, memberships etc. – how are you showing your commitment to professional Geography development, and ongoing learning? What do you do for that, what do you do for fun? Are they the same?

These things are about you.

The final component of this should be that a statement should be tailored to the job you are applying for, and the values and ethos of the school culture. It’s a cliché, but interviews and applications are a two way process. You want to be confident that the school fits within your ambitions, that you will be coached and supported well, and that your values and wellbeing will be looked after effectively.

Likewise, the school wants to know that they are finding a good match. If it’s a sporty, co-curricular-heavy school that loves a co-educational ethos, someone talking about single-sex education and the benefits of a narrow curriculum and highly academic focus *isn’t* likely to be a good “fit” for how they want to do their education. It’s not a judgement on if you’re a good teacher or not, it’s about finding people who share the same values.

Read their website carefully, their job descriptions carefully, and try – where possible – to reflect on whether you *do* actually want to work there. If you do, then show them that you believe what they believe (see Simon Sinek’s TED talk/book on Starting with Why for some examples and development ideas). If you need the informal chat, or the visit to the school, then please use them – but they are a way to establish the fit, rather than make you “stand out” as a candidate! To an extent, I think this should be more like a UCAS personal statement than your teaching standards statements: and that mindset can help in unpicking the way to approach the components of this.

I’m always happy to help with ideas and discussions – do reach out on Twitter and drop me a line if I can help?

I didn’t always know I was going to be a teacher. While I was still doing my graduate studies, I was desperate for something to feel productive, and found a local Air Cadet unit a short distance from my home.

Having been part of the Air Cadets as a child, and loved my experiences and all they gave me, I found purpose and meaning in being able to give back to an organization that had given me so much. Inspired by the young people I was working with, I decided that secondary education would be my career.  

I found a community of like-minded people, bonded by a love of aviation and flying.

I found a family, older brothers, surrogate uncles, people who would support and help a young man make his first steps as an instructor, then later a commissioned officer, and take command of the unit.

And I found Ken Hull. Or rather, I had joined “his unit”.

Ken’s family had been from Lewisham, and his father had helped form the first beginnings of the 5^th Lewisham ADCC unit, and the basis of what would later become 1921 (Lewisham) Squadron. Ken joined the unit to help his father. When his father retired, Ken carried on the Hull family tradition. When he retired, and moved down to Folkestone, he’d still drive up (a 100+ mile round trip) to the unit twice a week. That was just his way.

A trail blazer and pioneer, Ken had been the first instructor ever to take cadets out to the 100km endurance Nijmegen Marches in the 1960s. Thousands of cadets had gone through Ken’s training programme; and he had literally written the manual on how to do it. He had completed 36 events, is probably still the UK’s Senior Marcher, and been part of the training team for many more. He’d always be down in the south coast around St. Martin’s Plain for the training weekends; turning up with a good brew, or some good advice. That was just his way, too.

Ken had a heart of gold. He was patient, he was kind. A friend – later to be a Nijmegen Marcher, and a Sqn Commander himself – recalls a time when as a young 15 year old cadet, he’d got off the coach at Folkestone to do a Nijmegen march training camp, and realized with sinking horror that he’d left his boots back in his home in South London. With a trembling lip, he confessed his mistake.

“No worries, lad”, said Ken. “We’ll just drive up and get them, shall we?”. And they did.

Ken was a gentleman, of the old school. Sharp as a Sgt Major on the parade square if he needed to be, I never heard him lose his temper, never heard profanity escape from his mouth. The closest he ever got – when I was explaining some new idea, or new doctrine given to us – was to say “Ah, well, it baffles brains, sir”, with a knowing look. He made great tea. He offered great advice. He listened, and then gave you his wisdom.

He was the living embodiment of the unit – the thread that connected us to our beginning in 1938, to the present day. He was the thread that connected all cadets together. He was the first person any former cadet asked about – and he knew them all. Everyone knew him, too – a legend in the Lewisham community, in London Wing, in the Region, and well beyond.

Ken passed away a few weeks ago. Challenged by health problems for much of his life, he was still active and no doubt organizing things in his care home, until a fall saw him hospitalized. He died a few days later, just short of his ninetieth birthday. COVID had taken him, like so many others, and robbed us all of a chance to say farewell as we wanted.

His funeral, on Friday, was attended by the regulation number of people. He should have had a parade. We’d have lined the streets for this man; and thousands would have come to pay respect.

His family – blood, 1921, Nijmegen – spoke together of his qualities, of his service, of his ferocious loyalty to his values. We’d have dipped our banners and rendered honours to his lifetime of service; and he’d have been secretly pleased that so many remembered him.

How could we forget?

I was the youngest member of the Air Cadet family at the funeral – the baby of the group. I’d only known him sixteen years, you see. There were those grieving the loss of their friend for half a century or more.

And yet, in the darkness there was hope. We stood, socially distanced, and shared our stories. We rendered the final honours we could, to a man who had lived his life according to that which he valued: service, honour, loyalty, integrity, great kindness, and great humanity. What an inspiration – not just in what he did, but how he did it.

A legend.  

A role model.

A friend.

I’ll miss you, Ken. We all will.

Per ardua, sir.

At A level, we studied peasant farming, I think. I remember Waugh’s chapter on it, at any rate, and learning about enclosure, and changes, and something else. I am embarrassed by my lack of recall; and have no idea what the unit was actually about. But we struggled on this for maybe a term – I know it felt longer. In my first term at university, I remember with startling clarity a lecture by Dr John Langton, where he told this story from start to finish in about 45 minutes. Each change was explained as a context and reaction to the problems of the one before – and the sequence of events was shockingly obvious, now I looked at it through his expert eyes.

My first ever blog post was a frustrated call for a “story of teaching”. As an undergraduate, I had studied a course called the “Philosophy, Nature and Practice of Geography”. I didn’t see the point of the course – which was to tell the story of Geography, and frame it as the output of people and ideas that changed through time – rather than an immutable “truth”. I was forced to read a lot of books that I couldn’t see the point of: Said’s “Orientalism”, or Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolution” weren’t going to help with my essay on arid geomorphology, were they? I looked at “big texts” like Johnston & Sidaway’s “Geography & Geographers” (now on seventh edition), or Livingston’s “Geographical Tradition” – and I didn’t see their relevance to me.

Looking back, of course, this was some of the most important reading and thinking that I ever did. As an A Level student, and even as an undergraduate to a certain extent, we were taught ideas and asked to critique the concept/how it’s been applied – but how often do we critically examine the narrative that has shaped them? To understand that we went towards x idea as a reactionary move because of the problems that y caused doesn’t help a better understanding of either x or y independently, but it certainly helps you to see how and why the shift has happened and to be able to contextualise within the wider field of learning. My undergraduate self didn’t understand that I was stood on tectonic plates, in terms of philosophy and the approach of the discipline. It’s only through time that I could see how much they have moved, and hence, come to understand the changes.

Mark Enser, clearly, would have been a teacher in the mould of Dr John Langton, and his book “Powerful Geography” is the kind of reading and realisation that brings sharp clarity to the experiences of many Geography teachers in the UK over the last few years.

In Part One, Enser establishes his academic position as a master storyteller. With painful accuracy, he talks about the ‘problems’ of an ill-defined Geography curriculum of my early teaching career, and the debates of ‘sage on the stage’ versus ‘guide on the side’. Inspired by Biesta as much as Young, Enser writes about educational philosophy with confident sharpness – fluently exploring the discourse’s journey through Socrates, Roussea, Bruner and Locke with chronological insight. Arriving at Young’s view of “powerful knowledge” and “Future 1-3” models, Enser reflects on Lambert’s application of these ideas to Geography as a discipline.

The first chapters explore the journey to the present: unpicking the philosophical, geographical and curriculum policy debates that have shaped the subject. It is Johnston-esque in mastery: a clear sense of the pathway, without any missing steps, to the challenges of a modern un-rooted Geography curriculum. The analysis can sometimes feel painful: partly through the clarity of memories of teaching activities; but partly because of the sense of inevitability doomed by good intention. No one deliberately broke Geography as a school discipline – it just shuffled like a tectonic plate to a collision point.

In Part 2, Enser offers a clearly articulated vision of what Powerful Geography could be in a Future 3 model. He offers a disciplinary coherence through specific tools and examples. Here, the use of case studies – one of which, I should note, I was delighted to contribute – shows that this vision is more than abstract idealism. Choosing a wide range of places, schools and people, Enser shows how feasible it is to enact the curriculum he describes.

Enser has been thinking through blogging (since 2015), and previously written the Andy Tharby-inspired book “Making Every Geography Lesson Count” as part of that series, focusing on the “what and how” of classroom Geography teaching. In Part 2 of this book, he draws on all of that experience – and skilfully navigates the Geographical academy of thinkers – Rawlings, Standish, Roberts, Lambert et al. – to provide practical and clear examples of how the curriculum can be made meaningful again.

Ever alert to the risks of “performative rituals” of teaching, Enser’s conclusion deliberately asks the reader not to adopt his ideas unthinkingly; but provides a walk-through and road map for Departments, HoDs and teachers to critically reflect on their own curriculum and practice. There are no “do as I say” moments, or even a sense of this being “Mark Enser’s vision for the subject”. There’s no hard sell; no ego, no stories of what he’s done – only a personal sense of how these things have felt to teach and work through. He writes with great humility and without embellishment.

This is an excellent book – that should be read carefully by all ITT, subject leaders, Geographical thinkers and experienced teachers – as a context and story of our curriculum discipline. I think “Making Every Geography Lesson Count” is still the book I’d recommend to trainees. While it won’t hurt to read it (of course!), I think Powerful Geography – like my undergraduate experience of PNPG –  is the kind of book that won’t make so much sense until you have some lived experience, and you understand how skilfully the retrospective view has been constructed.

Professor Ron Johnston, Professor David Livingston and Dr John Langton would all recognise this book as a kindred spirit, I think. Powerful Geography, indeed.