Being a Middle Leader is a challenging task, to be sure, but one that can bring real satisfaction and reward for those who want to be involved in academic leadership and work within their subjects.

However, unlike in some other Departments and subjects, there are very few opportunities to take a formal role in which you can apprentice towards subject leadership in Geography careers. We don’t tend to have second in Department roles very often, so how can you understand some of the challenges of the job, or prove to an interviewing panel that you are ready for it?

The first thing to do is to understand the different components of an academic Middle Leadership role. Once you’ve done that, then you can look to demonstrate the competencies in different areas: explore what is already in your tool kit, or experiences. Of course, every school will have different perspectives and weighting, so this is some generalised thinking based on my experience of what people are looking for in general, and “at best”. I don’t think (m)any aspiring HoDs tick all the boxes on this list, and you shouldn’t feel you have to do that either! But recognising the breadth of the toolkit, and all the components that you *could* work on – hopefully – is a positive experience. It gives you areas where you can focus, strengthen and develop, even if you can’t develop other ones right now!

Academic and subject confidence/passion. 

First, and foremost, you are your subject. You should be able to represent it confidently in talking to students, parents, prospective students, prospective parents. You should be able to explain why it matters for an options choice – without even talking about the other considerations. We don’t persuade people to do Geography because there’s no future in History (one of my favourites!) – we should be able to be eloquent about why Geography matters in principle. You should be able to inspire students about your subject. You don’t have to be the world’s best public speaker – but you should be an excellent classroom teacher – and be able to inspire other teachers, too.

Often, Geographers get confused with other subjects or themes – I don’t mean that you’re well travelled, or that you’re a conservationist/Extinction Rebellion member. Those things are fine – of course they are! – but they aren’t what it means to be an academic Geographer, particularly if you’re applying for an ambitious and academic school: it’s about understanding, exploring the connections, showing the awareness of scale, place, space and interconnections. 

How do you show that? Well, you’ll probably need evidence of a Geography degree – or strongly related, to start with. At more academic schools, that is likely to be straight Geography. You may have additional qualifications (e.g. a Masters’, further education) in your discipline – an MA in Educational Leadership etc. is for aspiring SLT, in my opinion, rather than making you a better subject leader! Are you a Physical Geographer? A Human Geographer? Know your topics, strengths, weaknesses, understand how the courses are taught and which areas you’d want to read up on. Read up. Show you care about your subject – are you a member of the GA? The RGS? The Chartered College of Teaching? Have you got Twitter, a blog – how do you engage with the world? What books have you read recently for interest? What did they teach you? How do you keep in touch with the subject – as an adult, not at student level – and show your interest. In an ideal world, you should have coached and supported students to transition beyond your work, too – have you got experience of advice on UCAS and subject applications for Geography?

Responsibility for Academic Performance, and Tracking

Being a Head of Department is more than just being a great teacher. Ultimately, you need to be accountable for the outcomes of students, either directly in your own teaching, or in the teaching across your Department. This means you have to be able to understand student performance – think about assessment, what it shows, tracking and supporting progress – and to deal with the top, middle and bottom end challenges of students who want to be inspired to excellence, students who need to be strongly supported to achieve their best, and to support those who have somehow fallen behind where you know you can be. In an ideal world, you might have some specialist insight – have you been an examiner? Have you done moderation, or NEA courses, or approaches that help you consolidate your experience beyond just your current school? 

Some of this is the kind of experience that’s hard to get formally. First, and perhaps most important to my mind, I think you’ll probably need to have shown you can deliver exam results yourself – whether at KS4 or KS5 depends on your context and school. And that context matters, and you should explain it. A brilliant teacher who has got great results consistently in an 11-16 school would, to my mind, be a safer bet to recruit as a HoD than a teacher who has got inconsistent outcomes in an 11-18 context. It’s up to you to define “great results” – you’ll need to explain the changes you’ve made, or the improvement against your own context. If you show you’re adding value – however that’s defined in results, or recruitment for subject – that’s the key thing. 

Second, you want to be able to show that you can understand what would be needed to manage and see ‘the bigger picture’. You may be able to ‘co-ordinate’ a Key Stage as a development point – running the curriculum, or ensuring people are on track. I’d want to show evidence of thinking about data – not saying you have to be an Excel wizard, but you need to be confident that you can understand and use data as a tool to inform your knowledge of your students. If you can’t run a Key Stage, think about what you “would” do – and what thinking you’ve done. There’s a huge literature out there – do you read any of it? Do you know what the options are? Have you got opinions – maybe even done some ResearchEd Home conferences, or some Seneca Learn online CPD? To an extent, you’ll have to do whatever the school does – but you want to be able to site that within some wider framework of your values, your perspectives and your thinking about data, management and assessment. You want to be able to give specific examples of ways that you have monitored, supported and delivered for students within your context, and know how that would apply to a wider team. 

Third, I think that should sit within a wider context of thinking about pedagogy, values and vision. You should know what’s important to you, and why. Whether you’re progressive/traditionalist, a fan of Rosenshine, Michaela and Lemov, or you idolise Sir Ken – it doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is that you do think, you have thought about it, and that you’re able to articulate your views on education and how you want to contribute to it. This should be a key part of your application process, I feel – you want to make sure that you’re the “right person for the right place”. There’s no point being a dyed in the wool progressive, and applying to Michaela. You won’t fit. There’s not a “good” or “bad” narrative – it’s about fit. To an extent, Middle Leaders are a little less ‘fit critical’ than Senior Leaders, in my opinion – you can work within a system and be a little more maverick and experimental – but it’s still something to be aware of, think about and consider. This should come out in your cover letter/application – it’ll be key to developing your Department vision, and the relationships you want to build. 

Leadership & Management of People

This means – ultimately – that you’re going to have to be responsible for leading and managing people, and a Department. 

A number of the “management” experiences will not be things you can necessarily do elsewhere – HR, for example. However, lots of the key components of management and leadership *can* be obtained through other experiences in schools: perhaps in the pastoral sense, perhaps in running a club, extra-curricular event or experience, or sports team. This is also where whatever your life before/outside of school can be really relevant – if you have previous career experience, or if you have club/hobby skills that can be brought in to the environment. A trip or visit might give you budgeting experience; a sectional responsibility might help you to understand how to organise resources, or do administrative tasks. Leading a volunteer group might help you show some components of this, too. Think about how you manage time, workload and responsibilities – how do you delegate? How would you describe your organisation skills? If you want to consider the bigger picture of this, then I think reading Kat Howard’s book on wellbeing is an excellent starting point. 

Ideally, you want to show that somewhere, you’ve actually been responsible for a group of people and getting them to achieve a task. HoDs have to line manage their teams: coaching them, thinking about their development, but also monitoring, supporting and helping them to progress on the journey. In this way, you’ll be able to tackle the conceptual questions of how you deal with difficult situations, or how you hold people to account. How do you support people? What’s your style? What’s your way of dealing with issues? If you’ve got specific examples and experiences to draw on in interview, then that’s a great bonus! You can read lots of leadership models from the business world, and get drawn in – and plenty of people make a living out of leadership philosophies of education, too. Dip your toe if you want; but be aware that it’s a huge pool, and you might easily find yourself thinking far too much about concepts, when you want to be developing your expertise and experience. Personally, I’d recommend Sam Strickland’s work (Headteacher of the Duston School, amongst many other things), and I think that’s heavily linked to the wider work of Simon Sinek (leadership theorist). Have a read of “The Infinite Game”, or look through his TED talks (Start with Why, Trusting Teams). 

I think it’s also important to think about the distinction between “leadership” and “management”. The latter, to my mind, is how you get something done. Leadership is about figuring out what you want to do, and inspiring people to join you on it. As a HoD, you’ll be responsible for leadership AND management – creating a vision, a philosophy and team that wants to go to a destination with you. Leadership is a choice, and an active component; not just conferred on you when you are appointed as a HoD. This is very likely to involve change. Inevitably, there will be change to manage – whether that’s academic, curriculum, or style of teaching. Have you got experience of leading change, and understanding the dynamics of that? How can you show it, and understand the need to manage it sensitively, and with consideration of your team? Again, if you haven’t got practical experience, think about what you can read, study and consider in principle. I’m a huge fan of Capt. L David Marquet’s “Turn the Ship Around” – there are some great TED/Google talks, and his work is based on Stephen Covey’s 7 Principles, which you may also enjoy. For me, this comes again to your subject enthusiasm and experience – what do you believe Geography is about, and what you can achieve as a Department?  

Nice to Have: Fieldwork Experience

One of the ‘big things’ that Geography Departments, and HoDs in particular, are linked to and associated with is fieldwork. To an extent, this will be very context specific – some places will have an extensive and developed fieldwork programme for all year groups, with “awe and wonder trips” to Iceland, or Kenya, or wherever. 

If that’s the kind of school you are applying to, it helps to have experience of fieldwork. There are a number of different levels of experience you might have. At the lowest level, that’s participating (local, residential, international) and being able to say that you’ve been on trips and delivered NEA etc. Stepping up from that, you can show experience of leadership of trips and budgets (local, residential, international), or the academic combination of teaching course work and controlled assessment, designing resources and embedding fieldwork in to teaching. These are potentially things you can volunteer for and become involved with, even when you’re not a HoD – in fact, often, HoDs love other people running their trips!

Nice to Have: Wider Experience

Of course, no teacher – or HoD – exists solely within their Department. You are normally expected to play a part in the wider life of the school. Think about what that, and those roles have taught you about leadership, or about what you can bring to the role as a middle leader. Whether you’ve been a tutor, or been involved in cross-curricular activities and projects, these are sources of skill development and evidence of your potential as a middle leader. Even better if you can show ‘change management’ experience in a different context – this is how I introduce a Debating Club, or an Eco-Society, or a… something. 

Really Nice to Have: Whole-School Experience

One of the biggest steps in to Middle Leadership is that you have to work within and recognise the whole school context. Your Department is your domain, but it will sit within a wider framework of development for the whole school, and you will need to manage a multitude of competing interests at different levels. For some people, it’ll be about defending your Department from threats – others about expanding and dealing with wider concerns – and however you do that, there are times when it’s helpful to have some whole-school project experience.

Look to see if there are things running you can be part of: research groups, working groups, committees, tasks or parts of your school’s Development Plan that you are keen to action. The more you can practice that strategic mindset, and operating at the whole-school level, the easier you’ll find it to do and talk about as a HoD.

Reflections:

I don’t know how many people are ever “ready” to be a HoD and step in to the role perfectly formed. It takes time, and experience to build up your competence – and the support and coaching of an excellent peer team to become confident with it. 

I’ve shared my thoughts on what you might think about – and I’d stress that these are definitely only my own thoughts from a perspective of working in relatively small ranges of schools! If this has helped, you’ve got questions, or you want to add – please do comment & get in touch – would love to hear your ideas!

I think – for a lot of people – this week has been a tough one. The “novelty” of being at home, and working in a different way has worn off, and as we settle down to what increasingly looks like a longer-term activity, the ‘new normal’ starts to generate its’ own particular challenges and foibles.

What’s gone well?

I am starting to plan more specifically for remote learning now – thinking about what we can do differently, rather than trying to replicate my classroom environment and old way of teaching. For example, this week’s lessons have included – specifically – blocks of “group work”, where I’ve created a separate chat channel, for students to collaborate and work across a file. Being able to share, type and comment/work together has been positive for them – but also feels a little bit positive for me, too.

Following last week’s reflections on losing my voice, I’ve been deliberately thinking about “things to do”, rather than “things for me to say”, and I think that’s helped. Certainly, my voice is in better shape this week – despite teaching 21 online sessions over the course of the week.

I have started to consider and plan and extend my work in booklet/worksheet form, for KS4. This is a significant departure from what I thought I’d be doing, but based on my KS5 experience, it’s helping hugely to have a sense of ‘what’s in front of them’ and what we’re doing to go through the work. I can’t see them in the same way, but at least I know what they can see…

I have been able to do some “non teaching” things, and that’s been lovely – UCAS seminar, chatting through some components of decision making. It’s odd not having a form at the moment (UCAS coordinator role!), but that has been positive and helpful.

Some of our classes are ‘enrichment focused’ – the aim is to get support for Year 11 and Year 13, rather than teaching course-specific content. These have been some of my favourite lessons – a chance to love my subject and discuss a range of weird and wacky ideas. This week – where am I a local – debating the decline of the nation-state, and the rise of anti-globalisation… an unexpected intellectual challenge and joy!

What’s been hard?

I’ve been exhausted this week – really struggling with the separation of “work” and “home” lives, and I can see why people who work from home regularly – and have the means to do so – aspire to a location shift: a home office that is physically separate from the house. I happen to have one of those brains where motivation is linked to productivity (success = motivation for me), and if I’m feeling listless, then the number of “jobs” I need to do exponentially increases. It’s hard to separate “work” jobs and “home” jobs at the moment – even weird stuff like ‘sorting out the collection of photographs on my phone’ has become apparently important and critical, and gone on a mental to do list. I’ve done long hours, and not felt productive or positive.

I think there are two underlying components – the first is just volume of work right now. We have one of our team off work, for example, and “cover” takes on a completely different dimension in this brave new world of ours.

But perhaps the more significant cause is the lack of “feedback” loop. Teaching is, amongst many other things, quite a performative exercise. You have a good lesson – you get a positive feedback, someone “gets it”, you see some great work, you see excellent outcomes – these things energise you and you’re lifted.

While the converse can also be true – bad lessons can sucker punch your energy levels unexpectedly – I’m at a stage in my teaching career where they are fewer and further between, and the reality is that a five period day is tiring, yes, but gently exhilarating too. There’s adrenaline, endorphins, positive feedback – a sense of a “job well done” at the end of the day, a sense of “earning one’s money for the day”.

Remote learning doesn’t do that. There’s nothing comparable. You get to the end, the students roll out of the chat room, and… that’s it. No endorphins. No boost of energy, or sense of job well done.

I think it’s important to recognise that in myself – and even in my team. As a middle leader, I can help my team celebrate and separate their time & achievements. Senior Leaders – do that for your HoDs and your teams, too! It’s hard to be a middle leader right now – perhaps this is where the push comes strongest – so support, help and praise wherever you can?

I finally caught up with Kate Stockings’ excellent Seneca Learning discussion on leading a curriculum change – and one of the concepts that she grappled with was how to translate the overall vision and ‘masterplan’ in to the day to day realities of what that looked like in the classroom. For many people, that ‘middle way’ is challenging and linked to individual development planning for Departments, and this is an article that I’ve written that has previously appeared on TES, but I haven’t put here until now. As we start, perhaps, to think about what we’re doing, and how we might start thinking about changing our pathways, I hope it’s of use. You can also read some of my thoughts on how to make that operationally effective here.

Enjoy!

You’ve seen Simon Sinek’s talk on TED, and you’ve found your why. You know what to expect in your “First 90 Days”, and you’ve thought about “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Now, you need to implement your vision – and communicate, lead and inspire to success, right?

If you’re a Middle Leader, then chances are that the answer is “no” – because you are caught between worlds.

You have some leadership of your Department, team and subject area, but you have to work within the wider ethos, development agenda and approach of your institution and context. Despite this, up and down the country this September, there will be scores of HoDs and middle leadership teams who are expected to produce a Development Plan to identify how they intend to lead their area forward.

For some Middle Leaders, particularly if you are new to the role, that can be a frustrating experience, and a difficult needle to thread. Here are some stages that I’ve found to be helpful.

What is our destination?

Start with the blank sheet of paper and leadership vision that you’ve read about. As a team, you need to identify the ingredients of success, and what you ultimately want your teaching, learning and Department to look, feel and be like. If you have a stable team, this is about reinforcing the progress and discussions you’ve had before. If you, or the team, are new, this is proper blank page conversations. This is going to be a challenge of ‘realistic dreams’ – how do you have aspirational statements about who you want to be, without becoming fantasy, or straying too far from the context of your school? For me, I try to think about the nature of the subject, the nature of teaching, learning and what we do to support, engage and inspire. This gives me six or seven ‘strands’ of development that I can look to work on – I’ll also include the professional development of my staff as another one, separate to the subject aspects. Whatever you call it – whether it’s a mission statement, or a vision, or a strategic overview – this is the roadmap you want to come back to, again and again.

Where are we now?

The first part of any journey is to know where you are. This is often driven by analysis of results and performance. As a Middle Leader, you’ll be accountable for results, recruitment (if you are an options subject) and relationships – but be careful. Chasing the numbers will only ever be reactionary: you will always have something to look at, and respond to. You will have results analysis data, you may choose to review with students, other teachers, or even make use of your SLT to conduct an ‘audit’ if you’re new to the role. I’ve found that informal conversations work really well in this regard – how does it feel to work in your team, how high performing do your colleagues think your team is? How is your subject regarded within the school? What are the things that they feel are in line with the vision, and where are the biggest issues? Often, these might not be the priorities of the Senior Leadership – but allowing people to grow and develop their own areas of interest is a major part of your role as a Middle Leader, and a huge asset you have at your disposal to get the team working together. Honest discussions, analysis and reflection of your team’s strengths and weaknesses is essential to being able to move forward.

Break up the journey – what are we doing right now?

No matter where you are starting from, achieving your vision will inevitably be too much for one year. You owe it to your staff, to your students and your own physical and mental health to split up your ambition and ideas in to manageable chunks. Having too many priorities means that none of them are ever really the priority – you need to be strategic in deciding what needs to be done first, and most importantly.

For me, the way I have worked through this tension is to create a 3-5 year plan. I use my vision statement to build up the ‘strands’ that I want to work on towards the end goal, and then I try to put factors and considerations (e.g. specification changes, or staff changes etc.) for each year. Then, we plan together what we try to do when. It helps us to keep our focus on “strategic” rather than reactive thinking – we have a collective long-term vision, and the understanding of how we want to get there.

It also helps us to identify when particular development or financial ‘pinch points’ might come: and to budget time, planning, or resource allocation appropriately. Having the evidence of when you’ll need to replace all your textbooks for a specification change helps to reduce the surprise that your Head will have – and makes it more likely that your budget request will be accepted.

Spending time on establishing this mid-term planning is crucial. For us, we want to get this right, and the annual Development Plan will almost write itself! I would suggest consulting with a range of people now, to make sure you are making sense.

Are we on the right path?

There is no “right way” to teach, or lead a Department – but I think the best Middle Leaders are in tune with their school’s vision and ethos, and able to work well with their context, while helping to make it better. Consulting at the stage of the medium term plan helps you to identify and be confident that you are working at the right level, working towards a sympathetic vision, and balancing well between ambition and achievable. This takes time, and it cannot be rushed if you want to do it really well.

Getting a sense of what’s going on in your subject area is a valuable exercise. Whether it’s through subject associations, professional meetings, or a professional Twitter account, it’s always worth understanding what’s going on in your area. It helps to give you evidence and ideas to build in to your plan, and support that dialogue if needed.

Consulting with your own Senior Leadership; or trusted colleagues at Middle Leadership level, is a great barometer for how your Development Plan fits within the wider and collective ethos of your institution. In an ideal world, they will love your first draft – but you need to prepare to adjust your expectations accordingly.

One set of expectations is where you are not as ambitious as your context, and your SLT want you to ‘do more’ or ‘aim higher’. You may decide that it’s a realistic adjustment, or you might feel that it would have workload or wider implications. In this case, having the longer term view, and being able to explain your developmental thinking and why it’s in that particular order creates a positive and productive dialogue.

The alternative approach is that you have tried to do something far too ambitious, or out of the comfort zone of your school. In this instance, you might want to try and justify your approach with reference to your subject reading and consultation, and get your plans ‘sense checked’ by a colleague. Often, showing the educational research and exploring ‘trial’ approaches has been valuable. After all, you are on the same team as your SLT: if something is better, and can be shown to work, then they want to be involved and get it for their school! So, you might plan a trial with some classes, and then report back to your SLT on the outcomes. Phasing these changes as part of your plan is a strategically smart thing to do, and helps you earn the trust and confidence of your leadership team.

How do we know?

A development plan is only worthwhile as a meaningful document if it is “alive” and something that is regularly referred to and used to inform your tactical and operational decision-making. Writing it in September, and then leaving it on the hard drive/filing cabinet until next August doesn’t change anything.

There are two stages to achieving this: first, to be clear and communicate your Development Plan to all of your team. It’s essential that everyone knows what they are working towards, what that looks like, and what success will look like. Take time to talk it through with your team – make sure everyone has had their say, their time to think about this. There is no point, if it’s not clear. Repeat it, often.

Second, review it regularly. At the end of every term, it’s a worthwhile exercise to examine where you are again. Some aspects of your development plan won’t have seen fruit yet, some of them won’t be for the term you’ve just done – that’s fine. Put a pin in those, and discuss the ones that you can explore. Are you making progress? Is it working? Is it feeling positive and manageable? What, if anything, might you want to share with your leadership team about the progress of that plan?

At the end of the year, you’ll be able to look at it with reference to your strategic plan, and have an understanding of what you’ve achieved, and where you are towards your big vision – but, critically, you’ll have only a very small amount of work to do for next year’s development plan cycle.

Development planning is a real challenge to get right. Threading the needle between what you want for your Department, and your school’s vision for what they want for everyone is hard, and it takes time and thought to do it well. However, it’s also the strategic engine by which great middle leadership works – giving the scope to your vision, giving the timescales to your operations, and giving you the lens for decision making and day to day work. I believe it’s one of the most important discussions and processes any team can go through: I wish you well with yours!