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Subject Leadership: Developing a brand within the school–putting vision into practice

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As I come close to the end of my time leading Priory Geography, I’m taking the time to document and reflect upon various aspects of the department.  Anyone who has had a conversation with me will know that I like things ‘corporate.’  That’s not to say that we all shout at each other, but that the department (and school) should look and feel like a coherent unit.  I’m a great believer that young people should have a similar experience regardless of the teacher who teachers them.  It’s worth revisiting these two posts and they feed into this approach – the desk set up and the classroom front.  To me, small details such as display, aims, carpet colour and the outward look of the department are all ways in which to put a vision into reality.

Above is one of the displays outside the Priory Geography classrooms.  We inhabit three dedicated classrooms next to each other so are lucky to have wall space.  Now, before I move on I know that displays are not a teacher’s work.  My attitude is to ignore that. Disagree with me or shout, but get over it.  Secondly, I try to avoid too much pupil work on display outside the classroom.  Although this gives prestige and recognition to young people, this can be done through internal classroom display and other means.  Pupil work should be available to use as model work, so should be within the classroom.  It also should be current to the current unit, something that’s tricky with external displays.

The first display above always shows a collection of images from the latest high profile trip.  Visitors to the department, parents during parent’s evenings and prospective staff and parents all visit the Humanities balcony so it’s important to show what we can do.

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The next displays show our GCSE recruitment information (this is small as GCSE recruitment is done through delivering excellent learning at Key Stage 3). Thanks to Tony Cassidy for providing the original movie posters.  We also have displays showing the DofE; some example work and highlighting the GA’s Secondary Geography Quality Mark.

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Finally, we have some displays showing the Aims of the Department – it’s vital to share these publically.  They can also be found in the presentation embedded below.  There’s also room for celebrating the projects that I’ve asked Jo and Sam to lead over the year.

 
Anyway – now it’s here for me to look back on.
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