GA Presidency Month 4: December 2021

December saw a range of activity in the first part of the month which came at the end of a long and varied term which was particularly tiring and challenging, with growing COVID cases in school, and waiting to find out more about the new variant and its potential implications for us, as cases rose and the threat of another lockdown began to loom the week before Christmas.

December 1st was the first of another month of activity supporting GA branches.The GA Birmingham Branch has continued with a programme of excellent speakers, including Ben Hennig.

Thanks to those teachers who came along, and to Bob for sending a recording of the session, which I think went very well.

The 2nd of the month saw the latest of our Parents' Evenings via Parent Cloud. These may well become one of the legacies of the pandemic, with the end to face to face appointments, or perhaps hybrid events.

My booster jab was given on the 3rd. Many people in the world are yet to receive their first vaccine, although impressively over 800 million Indians have received their first dose. It turns out this is going to very important with the Omicron variant.

ERASMUS projects have continued and we have negotiated extensions on the project as they have been majorly affected by the pandemic which has impacted on our chances to work with the teachers who are part of the project. They have been delayed and subject to alteration.

Zaragoza in Spain is a city that I have never been to (yet) and my trip there had to be cancelled last weekend following the emergence of the Omicron variant and changes to travel arrangements.

I also had to cancel a proposed trip to Romania in the New Year, and an event in London as well due to people having to isolate.

I also filled in my CPD log for my Chartered Geographer status this week. I have been a Chartered Geographer since April 2007, and the GA Conference will mark my 15th anniversary as a CGeog (Teacher).

To find out more about this opportunity to get accreditation for your CPD and other efforts check out the Chartered Geographers section of the RGS website.

I had a GIS resource to work on and spent some time on that as well.

I also put out the call for papers for the session that I have had accepted at the 100th IGU in Paris. If you would like to be part of the session you need to submit your abstract by January 11th.  Let me know if you would like further information.

I also had to get copy for the Spring 2022 issue of my Webwatch column for GA Magazine's Spring 2022 issue finished. The magazine is getting a face lift in 2022 with a new format which means the full version of Webwatch will now be available to download with a smaller version in the magazine.

With the GA now passing 10 000 plus members (as you may have read in a piece I wrote for the GA website)

Christmas was a bit of a pause for most people.

I continued to potter on projects during the school holidays:

- The first day of the holidays I had a meeting with Alan Kinder.

- Wrote an article on the KS2 work I am doing at school. This will appear in 'Primary Geography'.

- Worked on ERASMUS project outcomes for GI Pedagogy and also D3 - check out the course we have created here.

- I also bought and started reading David Gardner's new book, which is out now as an eBook - it's excellent, and comes with an accompanying GeogPod broadcast which I listened to this week as well.

- I worked on finishing a new session called 'Click and Collect' to present at a number of GA Branches this coming year. It links with another resource I'm working on, which also connects with the idea of Supply Chains. That will all emerge in 2022, as part of my 'Curriculum Vitae'

Omicron cases continued to rise as we entered the final few weeks of 2021 and many of the teachers I follow on Twitter tested positive.

Here are the Twitter stats for the month as usual.