When Joe Hull finished university, he pictured his life in two places - in the police, or as a teacher. He made a choice, and joined Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in 2000, where he stayed for just shy of 13 years.
Joe, from Stockport, had a successful career in the police. He spent several years both in uniform and in the Crime Investigation Department, reaching the rank of Detective Sergeant. His days involved investigating homicides, and working on tackling some of the biggest crimes across Manchester and beyond. He frequently worked with both young offenders and young victims.
But in his early thirties, something shifted. Joe became restless, feeling that his work with GMP was dealing with “the symptoms rather the causes of problems” that drag people and communities into crime.
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“I didn't feel that I was having any kind of impact. I was just pushing a wheel round and round at times,” Joe told the Manchester Evening News . He began to “regret” his decision to join the police.
“Some of the people who I would see across the interview desk, I thought were really bright, really switched on and able to problem solve and, and really quite talented individuals.”
Joe said that during his time in GMP, he worked with hundreds of promising young people whose lives could have been totally different if they had made “different choices or had someone different influencing them as a young person”.
“I was also also alarmed by how often people with poor literacy or numeracy skills came to our attention both as victims and offenders,” he commented.
Disillusioned with his life in the police, Joe decided to make a career change after a “chance” conversation introduced him to TeachFirst. He left the police, went back to university, and followed the career path he’d given up on nearly 13 years earlier - teaching schoolchildren.
He said he was drawn in by the “ability to make change” to some of the most vulnerable people in Greater Manchester’s communities, and work in schools that work with some of the most challenging and vulnerable people in some of the “most socially and economically deprived parts of the UK”.
The transition was challenging at first. Joe told the M.E.N. he found it intimidating to stand in front of a class of 25 pupils who expected him to know all the answers straight away. But he found a combination of a good sense of humour, and an ability to connect with pupils from all backgrounds, helped him ease into the job.
He said there are “far more similarities than people think” between police work and teaching.
“So much of police work and teaching is about managing people and communicating with people. Teachers are leaders in the classroom, just as police officers are often looked at as people to offer leadership in society.”
Joe said that in the police, he saw people who had resorted to violence or who had had struggled and come into conflict because they “couldn't make themselves understood clearly” - now, as an English teacher, he hopes to teach his pupils the value of communication.
“I want to break that link between people who have struggled in school and people who become easily frustrated, or people who can't make sense of the situation around them,” he said.
“Those are the people who often can either be vulnerable as a victim of crime or drawn to a life of crime.”
He feels his career as a police officer gave him a “unique” perspective in teaching - having seen “another side to life,” he can relate the qualifications his pupils are working towards to the adult world. His favourite part of his job now is the unexpected that comes with every day. “You walk into a classroom and you never know exactly what’s going to happen,” he said.
“No two days are ever the same. And that stands for the wonderful pupils who I teach and the staff who I'm fortunate to where we can never ever predict what's going to happen!”
Ultimately, though, he wants both teachers and police officers alike to come together in supporting young people not if things go wrong, but when they do.
“We must understand that young people inevitably make mistakes because they're learning, and that they're developing us as young people all the time.
“What young people need is to know that people have their best interests at heart, and that things do go wrong, but not only will they learn from it, they'll be supported as well.
“I think that's what good teachers and good police officers look to do with people. We look to make situations better rather than make them worse.”
