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My first two years’ teaching – Hope Nyabienda

My first two years’ teaching – Hope Nyabienda

16 September 2024

Read time: 2mins

‘…the students I taught, overall, appreciated the effort given to present the geography they learnt in a way that gave value to their experiences and the cultural contexts they and their communities came from.’

Hope Nyabienda

The norms within a school creates a school’s identity, shapes the culture of a school and sets the parameters of what can be achieved.

What would it look like to start a school from the ground up? And what could this mean for the geography education delivered? My first two years in teaching have been in two new free schools, and it has been amazing! Here are a few reasons why…

Both schools had a catchment which was in a deprived area but they sought to teach ambitiously. It was inspiring to be part of both teams, who didn’t see the background challenges for some students as something to fear or succumb to but rather something to tackle head on with research-based strategies for teaching such as Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction. Coupled with strong behaviour systems, this created lots of time to delve deep into subject knowledge.

In both schools, learning and wanting to learn were the established norms – a sort of school utopia. I was also encouraged and given the freedom to grapple with difficult concepts, often beyond KS3 level, in my lessons with years 7-9.

For example, teaching the theory of continental drift or introducing different theories of globalisation to contextualise the knowledge they were being introduced to. I was a benefactor of well-thought-out curriculums which were shared centrally which meant most of my planning time was taken up considering how to teach well and meet the needs in my classroom.

Having been part of the Decolonising Geography group, it was important for me to be in teams and schools where there was openness to doing things differently to what’s been done before.

Instead of being satisfied with teaching a Eurocentric perspective of the majority of world countries (how we might view them and making broad sweeping, oversimplified comparisons and generalisations), there was an eagerness to see how to centre the narrative and the cultures of the countries being studied instead.

This could be done through dispelling misconceptions, such as explaining that Nigeria, for example, has different types of climates and is not just a stereotypical desert/savannah landscape. Or considering the challenges faced by the native Orang Asli people in the Malaysian rainforest, and how they have used their agency to challenge the deforestation occurring.

I really enjoyed this and the students I taught, overall, appreciated the effort given to present the geography they learnt in a way that gave value to their experiences and the cultural contexts they and their communities came from. And I do think that through presenting students with rigorous ideas in geography, it would help to strengthen their mental models of concepts to understand and approach the GCSE years with confidence and better fluency.

It was such a privilege to begin my career in such a unique context. I look forward to taking the lessons I’ve learnt from the last two years into my next school, a well-established community of students, teachers and families covering KS4 and KS5. I wonder if the lessons drawn from the new school context could bring a little sparkle to my next venture.