About
About
Hello Geography teachers and welcome to my world!
I thought I would explain a little bit on how the Geography Teacher Box came about.
I've been teaching secondary Geography for about 20 years now, with experience in inner city, coastal and market town schools. I initially trained in Birmingham and then moved up to East Yorkshire with my now husband. I've been head of department twice and led a whole variety of field trips both locally, nationally and abroad.
When I joined the profession I was very much the typical bright-eyed, bushy tailed "I want to make a difference" cliche type of new teacher. I literally worked every hour available, creating brand new lessons and doing every professional development opportunity possible including becoming a Fast Track teacher.
But things began to change personally - I got married, we had kids and our commitments particularly on the weekends and evenings grew, especially with rugby and football fixtures.
Fast forward a few years and things were increasingly unsustainable. I went part time but with the way things have gone in the profession, I was still working as hard as ever albeit on fewer days.
As much as I love being in the classroom and being a HoD, I came to realise three things:
- Teachers are hugely undervalued in society - we don't get paid a salary that reflects our training, hours worked, expertise or the huge responsibility of educating children.
- Having time to create good, engaging lessons for students seems to get lost to irrelevant box ticking exercises. Exam boards and Ofsted regularly changing the goal posts doesn't help either.
- If you have to teach outside of your specialism, there is not always the support you need - having also taught RE, History, PSHE and even A-level Leisure Studies, I know how hard it can be to have to pick up a new subject with very little background in it.
So my new philosophy is very much to approach teaching as a JOB, it is not my life. Yes, I still work hard, but it is more on my terms.
To that end, I want to not only help those students in my own classroom and inspire them to be curious about the world around them, but I also want to serve the wider Geography teacher community, including non-specialists. I want to help encourage greater diversity in the profession and the wider subject-related organisations, as a woman and mother of mixed race heritage.
Until the government realises that teachers are more than just babysitters, I'm going to do all I can to give Geography teachers what they need to do the job - fully prepared, high quality lessons to teach and time back to enjoy as they choose. We deserve to have a sustainable career as well as a life outside of education.
So come and join other like-minded teachers in the GTB vault, it would be great to have you on board!
Proving to myself that I can do hard things!
A rare photo with us all looking ok!
Sunday's are for sport, not marking....
