With the teacher recruitment offering worrying times for schools and ITE providers alike, it’s already quite common – and likely to become more important – that HoDs and Departments have a considered approach to supporting non-specialists with teaching in Geography. It’s probably wise to focus this on supporting at KS3 in the first instance – if you are having non-specialists delivering KS4 or above, then it might be a different set of conversations! I’ve recently been introduced to these as “TWOS” – teachers with other specialisms – by Dawn Cox, and I like this a lot!

Over my time as a HoD, I had a few non-specialist teachers supporting with the curriculum in KS3. I’ve worked with Economics and Business teachers, together with RE and English teachers, all of whom have thoroughly enjoyed their time as Geographers in the classroom and on fieldwork! and I wanted to share some thoughts and see where we could go with supporting colleagues widely who are facing these issues.

I think I always started with three key principles:

1. These teachers want to do a good job. They really do. They’re good people, and they want to do the best they can.
2. Their priority and training will always be dominated by their ‘home’ specialism. Their focus and accountability will often be on their exam classes, and their thinking dominated by that specialism. This influences how much time they can reasonably commit to what I want from them, and gives me priorities of what I can do. It also gives insights and perspectives we might not have – so we need to maximise those things as they bring them in!
3. If they are used to teaching in the same key stage, then you can trust them as professionals to develop and understand those relationships. If you’ve got a teacher who is “out of phase” (e.g. a Sixth Form Economics teacher, who is teaching Year 7 Geography) you may want to offer some support of “this is how we’d normally experience our classes” – but you’ll have to manage this delicately depending on the professional relationship and experience dynamics!

I think there’s a different consideration if you know this person will work with you for multiple years. Then, you may want to have longer-term conversations to support subject knowledge development, or wider curriculum planning, and hear their other specialism perspectives and voices.

But, in the short term, I’d prioritise:

Short Term:

Wide Angled Lens – what’s the story?

• Sit down together (you, someone else, them…), and talk about the ‘story’ of the unit. What is the big picture, and what’s it all about? How does this fit with the whole year? Does it support, build, or contradict something that they’ve already taught, or will go on to teach?
• Where does it go to, and what does ‘success look like’ for this unit? What will it feel like, and what will student conversations, work or outcomes look like? How does it get assessed, and how will they know they’re doing a great job?

Front load resources and structures where possible

• Front loading allows people to work through things. An established Department might be able to work together week by week, but I can’t make that presumption for others. So I need, at a bare minimum, to be able to give them what I can for a unit – half term, or term – at a time.
• Provide as much information as you can – textbooks, slide decks, as much as you can do to reduce the cognitive load, rather than “where do I find X?”. I think the aim is to make it as easy as possible to do their jobs really well, and focus on the lessons and content, not the systems and structures. It’s helpful to be able to explain the high-level, let them go away and dig in, and then come back if possible.
• I think it’s worth recognising the relationship might be interesting: if you’re a HoD, you may want to allocate a “peer buddy” so they can ask questions that they might think are daft, or not worth bothering you with. But the relationship will always be personal and depend on how you work, so it might not be too much of a concern for you!
• If you have common expectations of pacing of lessons, or setting of work/assessments etc. (“we should all be roughly here by Week 5, and we’ll want to be able to do this assessment for the data drop in Week 8”), then sharing that information is really helpful.

Simplify and streamline the admin as much as possible:

• Links and access to folders, resources and existing documents, slides or shared teaching materials should be automatically shared, preferably with everything clearly labelled and obvious. If you’ve got a Department shared folder where there are eighteen versions of everything, and you have to know which one you’re using, a little bit of spring cleaning might be in order.
• Make it as easy as possible for them to access shared mark books and admin, so they just have to do quick and easy work. If you’ve got templates for whole class feedback, or other elements
• Look at the shared calendar experience. If you know they are a Y11 teacher in their home subject, and there’s a mock exam cycle and Parents Evening, how do you make their life as easy as possible in Geography for that time? Can you identify the pinch points where they’ll feel the tension between “home” and “away” the most, and what can you do about them?
• If you have Department meetings, bulletins or approaches to events (e.g. Parents’ Evening), take time to include your whole team, and think about what they’ll need to know to help or make sense of it.
• Decide in as much time as possible whether you’ll be doing supporting observations, team teaching, or giving structural support or work in that way. It lowers the stakes and makes it clear – no surprises if you can!

Supporting disciplinary thinking and concepts

• What’s the key concept that this unit exemplifies? What does it mean to do that geographically? Lots of words have multiple meanings, and a non-specialist might not know what we mean by “globalisation” or put the same emphasis on “place” that we do, for example.
• The GA’s Curriculum Framework is pretty helpful at giving a background to some of the big ideas in Geography, or you could have a look at the really broad themes I identified with Mary Myatt & John Tomsett in ‘Huh’. Although it’s pitched at ‘senior leaders’, the design is to unpick conversations for non-specialists, so it offers a nice way in!  
• Supporting development of vocabulary is critical, too. Geography has a lot of Tier 2/Tier 3 words. What are they for this unit? It’s worth trying to think about whether you’ve said all of them out loud, and that they know how to say them, too. If you’re a school that is knowledge organiser/booklet focused, you can outline this very easily. If not, then it’s a valuable exercise to think about with your team too!

Include them in the positives:

• I think it’s really important to celebrate and treat these people as part of your team, however temporary. If you send Christmas cards, or do drinks, or BBQ at the end of term – please offer to include them.
• If you’re a school stickers fan, I’d always advise getting them their own set of resources… I used to love sharing the Lava-ly work stickers out!
• If you run fieldwork, or you’re doing an awe and wonder trip, I think it’s important to offer to include them in that too. They have become part of Team Geography, and that’s a big motivator for us – so why wouldn’t we offer it to them?
• Decide in advance how much you want to do formal performance management. Your school may have policies and plans in place already, but I’d try to be as positive as possible for their line manager, or your senior leadership team. Any concerns can be directly addressed (praise in public, and all that) should you need to – but I think it’s always worth being grateful and supportive of people’s time and effort!

If you have more time with the teachers, then I think there are some further medium term strategies that you might want to explore.

Medium Term:

• Supporting development of tacit skills and resources that we are potentially more confident with as Geographers. For example:
  • If you would draw a diagram, how would you do it?
  • If you’d play a clip, or open up a website, are all of these things signposted and easy for them to know and do?
  • What are the key things you’d want to use it for, and what would you say/do?
• Tayler (2023)’s work on visualising physical Geography offers an amazing overview of how you can use diagrams and get comfortable drawing them – if your Department has a copy, then it’s worth sharing and supporting.
• If you need to develop skills (e.g. teaching a Y7 map work unit), how could you do that? buddy system? Support? Time and space? What would you do to build the confidence significantly in advance or preparation of the time they are teaching it?
• If you have common expectations of presentation, or homework development, or something that is about the whole year, when and how do you introduce that to the teachers? How do you support them

Supporting time to think and make sense of this work in a low-stakes way is important. How do you set up a relationship and rhythm where this can be done? The buddy might work better than formal time in a collaboration with HoD or the whole Department, and ensuring that there’s space and time to ask questions and reflect is hugely important. The best relationships I’ve had with non-specialist teachers have been where we’ve shared proximal space – been in the same office, or been easily dropped in – and reduced the stakes and challenge of those conversations. Making time for a catch up and a cuppa can be hugely helpful in keeping these teachers feeling supported and looked after.

Longer-Term

If it looks likely that your non-specialist teacher will be working with you for more than a year at a time, then you can explore further options in terms of supporting their voice and input in your curriculum, and in supporting professional development.

For example, you could:

• Involve them in curriculum planning, review and evaluation conversation cycles. What worked well? What would you add? What made it easier or harder to teach this? What could we change?
• Explore ways they’d add value or input in to different topics. An RE teacher offered a great perspective on some of our Year 7 globalisation and identity work. An Economics teacher changed the way we taught certain data and the resources we used for units on development. What can they bring to the table?
• What can you invest in that helps? Do they have good physical resources (visualiser) and skills that they’re working on? Would they benefit from going on a course, or observing teachers, or doing some mentoring programme where there’s specific work over an academic year or cycle? In a luxury world, you might be able to offer them subject association membership or benefits of subject subscriptions!

Ultimately, the aim is to bring this professional colleague with their own specialism, in to team Geography as easily as possible. They want to do a great job, and a servant leadership mindset helps you remove as many obstacles as possible.

What else haven’t I considered, or what’s great advice you’d share?