Linda Asquith
Lecturer, researcher and holocaust educator,
Linda Asquith completed her PGCE Citizenship at
Bradford College in 2004.
After 3 daughters and a varied career, Linda took
a degree in Criminal Justice Studies at Leeds
University. “Around this time a friend at Uni made
a rather offhand comment about how he thought
I would be ‘an ace teacher’. So, off went an application for a place on Bradford College’s PGCE
in Citizenship. I remember one tutor spending a
good hour on the phone with me when I threw a
wobbly because I hated my primary placement!
Nothing can prepare you fully for that moment
when you first find yourself in front of a class, and
for once there is no one sat at the back ready to
help you out – nothing prepares you for the sheer
panic you feel, but when I was at that point, I
knew I had a whole range of skills to fall back on
that I had developed during my training year.”
Linda made an immediate impact, becoming
head of department after just 2 years of
teaching. “I loved teaching, and took to it like a
duck to water. I spent 3 years at a high school
in Wakefield, teaching a mixture of RE, PSHE &
Citizenship. I was promoted to subject leader
of Citizenship at the end of my NQT year, and
then followed that with a promotion to head of
PSHCE at the end of my second year. Halfway
through that year, I was beginning to get jealous
of the students - I wanted to learn too! I’d really
enjoyed my PGCE and doing my own evaluation
and research, so I decided to investigate a
postgraduate course in something related to state
crime and genocide.
I’d been involved in Holocaust Education since
my NQT year, when I successfully won a BT
Award to run a Holocaust education project in
school. I ran a trip to London to the Imperial War
Museum, arranged for a Holocaust survivor to visit
us in school, and along with a colleague I went
to visit Auschwitz. I was then accepted onto the
Imperial War Museum’s Fellowship in Holocaust
Education project, which involved study visits to
Israel, Lithuania and Poland. So, I applied for a
PhD studentship at the University of Huddersfield,
focusing on the genocide survivors.”
Linda is currently lecturing part-time in
criminology, working in schools for the Holocaust
Education Trust and doing doctoral research into
victims’ experience of genocide.
Photograph by Shelagh Ward