The world is the textbook. I teach how to read it.

I was the child who read atlases under the desk during maths. Fourteen years later I teach geography the way I wish it had been taught to me — starting not from the Amazon or the Alps, but from the students' own street, and working outward until the whole planet is implicated.

My classroom runs on maps students draw themselves, monsoon data they log on the school terrace, and an annual field survey that has mapped everything from market footfall to the city's dying lakes. Board results follow — a 96% average over five years — but they're the by-product. The product is a student who looks out of a train window and can't stop reading.

If your school wants geography taught as a live subject — maps on every wall, mud on some shoes, and results on the board — send word. I travel with my own rock collection.