GA Presidency Month 5: January 2022

Arriving in 2022 means that this was the start of the second phase of my Presidency, and the 8 months leading up to the end of August. January has been a very busy month.

I started the year with meetings related to the working of the GA, and connecting with the GA's Strategic Plan (2020-25)

There was good news with an award for one of the GA's resources. Well done to all those involved in creating the resource which has won a TeachPrimary award.

We're delighted to have received the @TeachPrimary four star award for our Primary Geography CPD Packs 1-5 in the mail today!

Once again, thank-you to @TeachPrimary for the award and for the beautiful trophy.

Find out more about our CPD packs at https://t.co/EafBsW5Mtx pic.twitter.com/zumI9kJq4F

— Geographical Association (@The_GA) January 6, 2022

 

The Governance Working Group is going to meet at the beginning of next month, but preliminary meetings and discussions were held to set agenda items. For those who want to know more about the governance of the GA, the GWG sets the agenda for Governing Body. 

We also saw the publication of an excellent new book by David Gardner on Curriculum which deserves to be purchased and used by all secondary geography departments. 

We also had first sight of a National Research Report on the "professional needs and views of teachers of geography". This was launched just before the end of the month and we were expecting to see quite a bit of coverage on TES and elsewhere, and this was certainly the case. 

Download the report from here.

TES article here.

The report was co-written by Alan Kinder and Dr Emma Rawlings Smith.

Alan said:

'This GA National Research Report has been a year in the making and I’d like to thank all those GA members and others who gave their time towards such an insightful exercise. With a growing membership, the GA needs to work ever-harder to listen to and represent the views of its members. This report distils a huge range of ideas and makes recommendations for the GA, for policy-makers, for school leaders and teachers or geography. Our next challenge will be to pursue these findings and recommendations, so that children and young people in schools everywhere benefit from the improved support we are able to provide to teachers of geography, nationally and internationally.'

We also did final edits on the text of the latest Advocacy for Geography piece in the latest GA Magazine, which was the first in the new format, with a reducd page length for the print copy, but a larger and more flexible online offering. Check that out if you are a GA member.

If you aren't a GA member, I recommend that you join the 10 000 plus existing members to help amplify our voices.

This followed some final edits on an article which I wrote for the Summer 2022 issue of 'Primary Geography' on the transition curriculum I have developed at school. This will be out in the next issue, and thanks to those colleagues who I've worked with since last Easter to change what is taught in Years 3-5.

We also had further discussions regarding the Geographers' Gaze project. This has been funded by former Honorary Treasurer Brian Ellis and we are getting close to the first release of materials. Digital transfers of our selected lantern slides have been made and notes created. The next phase is going to be planned during the summer, and keep an eye on the website for the details of the first phase going live. We hope that you find it useful. There will be a second phase of images eventually. We have plenty of wonderful images to share with you.

I presented a session on Everyday Geographies for the GA's Tyne and Wear branch. Thanks to those who came along and for the excellent questions at the end of the session from those who were there and took my thinking in new directions. 

We started to send out the details of the GA conference to all those involved as well, as Bryan Ledgard worked on the design for the actual booklet. I also started previewing every session at the conference over on my LivingGeography blog.

There was also the recruitment of the moderating team for the Primary and Secondary Geography Quality Marks for the Summer 2022 season. I look forward to reading through the portfolios of the schools that have applied for the award.

I worked on updating the wording of some of the GA's Policies, and we also had discussions about some forthcoming changes to the GA's Governing Body in the year ahead. That acts as a reminder to everyone that there are some opportunities for you to get more involved in the GA coming up as we move into March. 

The year always starts with planning for the term ahead and the Education Group meeting - the 2nd of the meeting that I chair as President. I worked on the agenda and papers for the meeting and then chaired it - a long meeting with plenty of interesting discussions. We also welcomed Eleanor Rawling who has been working on a framework which was shared with us, and was also going to be included in the GTE conference the following weekend.

This included this very helpful diagram showing where different groups get involved in the process of curriculum change.

I also checked submissions for the IGU Session that I am chairing in Paris in July to find that there were 12 submissions to be part of the session that I am going to be chairing.

I attended a meeting of the GA Worldwise Board. Once again, this is a way for people to get involved in the work of the GA, particularly by organising or sending a team to a local Worldwise Quiz.

The Board were interested in the conference theme that I had developed and I will help with the development of some special activities for Worldwise Week later in the year. I've helped create materials in the past. It was lovely to chat to the Board members, who include a number of former Presidents: Sue Lomas, Mark Higginbottom and Steve Rawlinson, along with a former colleague 

A flyer has been produced for the National Fieldwork Week which is coming in June.

It can be viewed here:

GA National Fieldwork Week Flyer from GeoBlogs

I also had a chat with a film producer and we worked on a project which is going to be part of the BBC's Bitesize and children's programming in 2022. This was very exciting to be involved in, and followed some other work last year on the new BBC Regenerators resources for Primary.

The conference programme was shared in draft ahead of April, and bookings opened. I started blogging about each of the sessions on the programme.

I also completed the first draft of an article for the summer issue of 'Teaching Geography'. Historically, the GA President's conference paper was always reproduced in an issue of 'Geography' journal, as they were often presented in that format: read out from a paper, rather than being a little more improvisational.

The end of January is the Geography Teacher Educators' Conference (GTE), which had been due to be held at the University of Worcester.

I was pleased to be able to kick off the whole event with my own presentation on the GA Presidents and their influence, and a slightly redacted version is here:

Out of the mouths of Presidents from GeoBlogs

Particular thanks to Elena Lengthorn and other members of the GTE for their organisation, and for changing to an online format at the last minute.

I led a 90 minute session for teachers in London last week as well on the theme of curriculum making. This involved a series of ideas linked to the nature of curriculum and the part of teachers and students in the process.

This was based around some ideas on curriculum making, and also drew on David Gardner's new book.

As always, here are the Twitter statistics for the month. A reasonable return on the tweets that I've sent, and a lot of the numbers came in the last weekend when GTE Conference was particularly busy tweet wise.

This was a very busy month, and the next month starts promptly, with 2 sessions in the first 2 days.