In the summer of 2022 I was fortunate to be selected as one of the UCL and IOE Fawcett Fellows for 2022-2023 alongside six other wonderful geographers following the Mode B programme.
If you’ve not come across the Fawcett Fellowships before, here is a little bit of history from the UCL website “In 1987 Edith Fawcett endowed annual Fellowships in the Department of Geography at UCL in memory of her father, Professor C B Fawcett, who was head of the department between 1928 and 1949. The Fellowships were originally designed to enable UK-based teachers and other professional geographers in mid-career to spend a sabbatical term studying at UCL. The teaching Fellows continued to be paid their full salary and the scheme funded replacement geography teaching”
Whilst the Mode A sabbatical sounds brilliant, the shortage of specialists and the needs of schools means that it is a rarity to have someone apply under the Mode A route. On the Mode B route, we met termly at UCL with a discussion topic and used this time to network, share ideas, and discuss our curriculum plans. Within the 2022-2023 fellows there was a range of experience from new Heads of Department to ex-GA Presidents demonstrating that there is always more to learn and that we had so much we could learn from each other.
To apply for the Fawcett Fellowship we needed to write a statement outlining our focus for the year ahead. I chose to focus on the following
- Diversify and de-colonise our curriculum – this will be an ongoing piece of work and not just something to focus on for the Fellowship – more on this to follow.
- Improve literacy levels as part of a whole school initiative – introducing our students to more challenging texts to showcase a range of global voices.
- Encourage further participation in fieldwork – this one needs little description and I’m sure schools up and down the country are doing the same post-pandemic.
We also needed support from our headteacher as we needed to spend one day a term at UCL. Thankfully, my headteacher at the time was very supportive and understood the value of this type of CPD.
After applying for the Fellowship I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter, Luna. Another CPD course I was doing asked me to defer for a year, I’m not entirely sure how supportive that is, however, Dr Alex Standish was more than supportive and never discouraged me from attending – even with Luna in later sessions!
During our sessions we focused in on our curriculums, sharing ideas and resources with each other and filling our minds with plenty of ideas. Every session I came away buzzing with ideas for case studies to include in our curriculum, websites to visit and books to read. My bookshelves have increased in titles from personal stories to pedagogy and theory. Whilst I haven’t read them all yet, I love knowing that they are there to dip into!
We each chose something to focus on too. I chose to focus on the inclusion of stories in our curriculum to ensure that the examples we were using were real. I remember hearing Margaret Roberts talk about the examples used in geography textbooks and how many were made up therefore it felt important to me to ensure that we were giving a true representation of people’s views – which also ties into decolonising and diversifying our curriculum.
At the end of our Fellowship we presented our journey to the rest of the Fellows and some of the staff from IOE, it was great to see the progress we had all made over the year. I presented mine bobbing about with Luna in a sling! Ever the multi-tasker! We also wrote up our curriculum journeys as case studies, which will hopefully be published in due course.
Alex challenged our thinking in our curriculums, and for me this was really important to have this challenge from a geographer. I can truly say that the Fellowship has been the most useful CPD I have had since becoming a teacher and I’m now 10 years in. Opportunities to talk with a group of geographers in real-time and on a weekday are few and far between (apart from the conferences) therefore this was an opportunity that I was really pleased to have. It was also good (for me – I know most people want to completely switch off on maternity leave!) to still feel like my input was useful despite not being in the classroom. I constantly feel imposter syndrome – why would anyone want to listen to me, but I felt really valued as a Fellow and I also valued everyone’s contributions. I have pages of notes from each session as well as hundreds of bookmarked pages on my laptop where great resources were mentioned. I feel really lucky to have been a Fellow!
Following the Fellowship I was invited back to IOE to talk to the PGCE Geography students about KS3 into KS4 progression, another opportunity I was really grateful for.
So if you’re thinking about applying in the future, you should! Grasp the opportunities that are out there with both hands.
Thank you to my fellow Fellows Alan, Charlotte, Gio, Jo, Julia and Kathryn and of course to Alex for his wisdom and support over the year.
