GeoLincs - 18th March

GeoLincs is the South Lincolnshire GA Branch. I visited when it was in Bourne, back in 2015 in an early meeting of the branch. I'd just taken over as Head of Geography at King's Ely Junior (now Prep) and took a drive over to speak to a good group of teachers. I'm heading back there next month.

Via LinkedIn from Dr. Aidan Hesslewood, who is a fellow moderator on the GA's Secondary Geography Quality Mark moderation team.

The second Geolincs session of this academic year is approaching, and we have Richard Bustin and Alan Parkinson coming along to share lots of important ideas: Wednesday 18th March, from 1400-1700 (light refreshments included) at Spalding Grammar School.

I’m really excited to welcome Alan back to the branch (he last spoke in 2015) and to Richard for the first time, and I hope you can join us for a stimulating afternoon of geography curriculum discussion, particularly in light of upcoming reforms. This session will be suitable for all: student teachers, teachers, subject leads, and senior leaders.

Feel free to message me here if you'd like to come along.

Geolincs (the GA branch for South Lincs and surrounding counties) aims to sustain excellence in geography education in Lincolnshire and the surrounding counties. It is a non-profit network that provides opportunities for professional growth and events are completely free to attend. 

It endeavours to:
· Explore and develop teaching expertise and subject knowledge
· Share ideas through participation and networking
· Provide a forum for debate and discussion

Here's the title slide from my presentation. Hope to see some of you there.

Cath White Memorial Lecture 2024

I am honoured to have been asked to give the Cath White Memorial Lecture for the GA Tyne and Wear Branch, which is based at Northumbria University or a local school at Tynemouth for most of its lectures - a place that Cath invited me to speak at several times when I was a little more mobile and active speaking at GA Branches.

Cath was involved with the University and active in so many ways and spheres. She is remembered fondly.

Here's the details of the lecture.

Title: 'Professional zest and pedagogical longevity: the importance of everyday geographies'.

Blurb:
Alan will explore the importance of everyday engagement with the discipline, and how his ongoing interest in technology, travel and photography have influenced his teaching and resource projects. Drawing on Michael Storm's notion of the importance of 'professional zest', he will explore what has kept him teaching for so long, and share some current work. This includes curriculum development, and textbook writing, so there will be plenty of interesting ideas and stories to take away, whether you are an educator, student or just curious about geography's potential for explaining our changing world.

Here's the poster advertising the event.

If you're in the area it would be lovely to see you.

If you're a teacher, please bring some students.

GA Conference 2022 - full Delegate Handbook now available

The final GA Conference Handbook for Delegates is now available.

Printed copies will be available for those who join us face to face in Guildford.

I can't wait to collect one. Thanks to everyone who was involved in 

Visit the conference page and download the handbook by clicking the PROGRAMME link.

You can also book your tickets if you haven't already done so. You can see the REMOTE sessions in the handbook too.

GA Conference 2022 - first 25 sessions previewed

I'm going to share a little preview of all of the sessions at the 2022 GA Conference in the coming weeks over on Living Geography. and will also update them after the event with links through to the conference resources that are shared.

You can book to see them here. Early bird available until the end of the month.

Here are the people involved in the first 25 sessions in the programme, which have now been added to the blog.

• James Cheshire x 2
• Alice Mollison
• Josh Payne
• Laurence Matthews
• Jo Harris
• Charlotte Foster x 2
• Steve Brace
• Stephen Scoffham
• Steve Rawlinson
• Chris Hoare
• Damien Scott-Masson
• Chantal Mayo-Holloway
• Nona Anderson
• Damini Sureshgar
• Paul Turner
• Kit Marie Rackley
• Catherine Owen
• Jake Shepherd
• Becky Kitchen
• Anthony Barlow x 2
• Karin Doull
• John Wilkinson
• Bob Digby
• David Holmes
• Joanna Norton
• Alan Parkinson
• Dion Burgess
• Andy Funnell
• Lauren Hammond
• Mary Biddulph
• John McKendrick
• Simon Catling
• Catherine Walker
• Simon Ward
• Margaret Roberts
• Alice Matthews
• Charlotte Milner
• Sarah Trolley

GTE Conference 2022 Presentation

I was pleased to be the first speaker at this year's Geography Teacher Educators' Conference.

My presentation, with a few redactions can be seen here.

It is linked to my work on the GA Presidents blog.

Out of the mouths of Presidents from GeoBlogs

GA Presidency Month 3: November 2021

The 3rd month of my Presidential term started with the 2nd week of my half term. Previously this has been used for overseas trips: Iceland or somewhere in Europe and occasionally returning from SAGT conference. This time it was more home based, and involved quite a lot of writing and work on ERASMUS projects.

I had the usual mix of events large and small which I had signed up to present.

Planning and emails regarding the GA Conference 2022 continued of course with speakers to add and additional work around that.

I attended the AGM and Committee meetings of my local GA Branch: the Cambridge and District GA branch. I will be speaking in 2022 on my conference theme.

COP26 began at the very start of November. The GA has been involved in a range of activity around the themes of the conference, and the importance of the decisions taken there. COP took place during the first couple of weeks and there were various links, including the arrival of my DressCode shirt.

I spoke to some students in Scotland as well, while standing in a wood on the UEA Campus. This was then used in some way at COP26.

Our COP26 Climate Emergency Newsroom team were delighted to interview Alan Parkinson, President of the Geographical Association today in preparation for their week in the Glasgow University newsroom next week. Thank you, Alan @GeoBlogs pic.twitter.com/YGzzs6DPwq

— Lesmahagow High School (@LesmahagowHigh) November 5, 2021

We also had some good news that a proposal we had put forward for the UGI-IGU in Paris was accepted. This is based around the work that the GA is doing in the area of curriculum thinking. This is an area I used to work for the GA in of course.

I will be sharing more on this through GA channels as we will be looking for possible contributions and e-posters in this area for our session in July 2022.

Eleanor Rawling is leading the work on the curriculum framework for the GA, and we will be putting out a call for papers in a few days time.

In the 2nd week of the month, there were a few other events which I took part in.

GA SIG Wales - I had been invited by Gill Miller, President in 2019-20 to take part in an event on transition around the new Curriculum for Wales.

Check out the work they are already doing on the curriculum frameworks on the SIG Wales page of the GA website.

I did a small input and was then followed by some other speakers:

You have a month from the time of this post to catch up with an event which I presented at on Wednesday this week for the SIG Wales Volunteer Group.

https://t.co/5IOA8ecjd0. Available for 30 days. Find out more about the Welsh Special Interest Group on the GA website, including details of the Curriculum Scaffolds mentioned in the webinar. You can also follow them on twitter @GASIGWales. 🌍

— Laura Gilleland (@LauraGilleland) November 11, 2021

You can watch me speaking from 4 minutes in - the sound gets a little muffled toward the end - which seems to be happening a little at the moment with my laptop.

The presentation slides are here:

Building a transition Curriculum from GeoBlogs

If anyone has any questions, please get in touch...

One key event happened in November, which happens three times a year: a meeting of the GA's Governing Body. Governing Body meeting takes place face to face where possible, alhough my last face to face one took place in February 2020 over in Preston Montford in Shropshire.

The President joins Governing Body (GB) for the duration of their Presidential journey. This now lasts for three years, but I was the last person for whom this was a four year journey.

It was good to meet up with new staff members at Solly Street and actually have the whole Presidential team in the building for the first time ever (in our case) and for several years in general.

The following weekend was my own daughter's graduation.

Earlier in the week I was interviewed by Dorian Brown of Teachers Talk Radio. It was a good chat about the power of Subject Associations and my journey to being President. Click here for the link.

Wednesday the 24th of November was the Oxford GA Branch Lecture - 'Your Place or Mine'  as well: the David Pilgrim Lecture

This is a variation of a lecture which I have done before at a nnumber of venues. It was hosted by St. Edwards School (Teddies) in Oxford - a long drive over and back.There was a really good crowd of students - the largest audience of the year, although Tim Marshall is doing next week's lecture. It was my first face to face event for quite some time as well.

There were also one or two issues with conference as speakers pulled out and I had to work to find replacements. Work also continued with visits by colleagues to the conference venue to scope out the hybrid nature of the event.

The month ended with delivery of the new GA textbooks for KS3 which have been created and which are excellent as well.

Here are the Twitter statistics for the month to finish:

I am now a quarter of the way through the Presidency. Time is going quickly, and I will be half way through before I know it I'm sure.

Wishing everyone a restful Christmas break in advance. 

December's monthly update will appear in early January 2022.

GA Birmingham Branch

One of the aspects of the Presidential year that I always planned to do was to speak to as many GA Branches as wanted me to be there...

I won't be making thelong journey across country to Birmingham next Wednesday but will be joining the GA Branch there by Zoom to do a session at the end of the day.

Details of the session are here:

Wednesday 1^st December 2021 4-5pm

"A day in the Life: Enquiring into Everyday Geographies in the curriculum" 

Teacher talk

Mr Alan Parkinson, CGeog, FRGS, FRSGS

Head of Geography at King's Ely (Junior), author & freelance geography consultant 

President, Geographical Association 21-22

RSGS Tivy Medal winner 2013

@GeoBlogs

Alan Parkinson is an inspirational geographer and teacher who is the current President of the Geographical Association. This talk will be of great interest to all Geography teachers whatever their experience of teaching from trainee teachers to teachers of many years. This is a highlight of this year’s talks.

I hope it's a highlight :) Looking forward to finding out what I'm going to say. I may just talk about Peppa Pig World...

GA Conference 2022

The conference theme is  Everyday Geographies.

Yesterday was a good day as the first emails went out to those who submitted a proposal for the GA Conference in April 2022. Immediately there were some very excited people on Twitter sharing the news.

Along with the submitted proposals there's also a whole programme of invited speakers who will be announced in the coming months.

There will also be some other emails coming out as well next week, so if you submitted a proposal and haven't heard from us, please check your spam (depends on the sensitivity of your work systems) or wait until the end of next week. There are still a few slots to be filled. The President is always involved heavily in the conference, including choosing the theme. For many decades, there were conference organisers, who have featured on the blog in previous posts.

Here's a sample of the tweets that were sent out on the day:

Thrilled to hear proposal for @The_GA conference 2022 has been accepted. We are thrilled to share our lively, practical workshop #PlaceMotifs linking place, colour & everyday geographies. Come along to share ideas of curious practices and geo-response-abilities 😊#GAConf22 pic.twitter.com/cVJhoxbJTo

— Clarke&Witt (@Attention2place) October 22, 2021

Really excited to be hosting a session at the #gaconf22 with @SusanJPike on transitions in geography! 🌍

— Denise Freeman 🌎🙋🏻‍♀️ (@geography_DAF) October 22, 2021

Delighted to have news from @The_GA & @GeoBlogs that proposal for @RGS_IBGschools on 'What do young people actually think about geography' accepted for #gaconf22. Be sharing research with 500 YP on why they did/didn't #choosegeography, views on the subject & options re. careers

— Steve Brace (@SteveBraceGeog) October 22, 2021

Great to see all the tweets this afternoon from folks getting emails of approval for presentations @The_GA conference next April. And I got a couple too, including one where I'll be presenting with @HafsaBobat on tectonic misconceptions & how to address them in geography! pic.twitter.com/IkEknauszm

— Alistair Hamill (@lcgeography) October 22, 2021

@DrCNayeri & @RushtonDr will be contributing a workshop at #gaconf22 ‘Supporting students to publish their ‘everyday geographies’ in #Routes - excited to continue to conversation 🌎🌟📚📘🖌🎞🎨

— Routes Geography Journal (@routesjournal) October 22, 2021

Turkish International Geography Congress

One of the aspects of the Presidential role that has not changed is that the President receives lots of invitations to speak at events, both in the 

This morning, I spoke to 200 Turkish geographers at the 3rd International Congress on Geographical Eduction along with geography educators from a number of other countries. This is my presentation.

The presentation was also broadcast live with simultaneous Turkish translation on Facebook. Here is a link to the presentation if you want to watch it, and the answers to the questions that followed.

I also took the opportunity to network over possible international projects to connect the GA with other international organisations.

GA Presidency Month 1: September 2021

I've now completed the first month of my year as President of the GA, and it's been an interesting and very busy one, along with the return to school for another academic year with new groups and a new timetable to get used to along the way. I can see why it's been a while since we had a teacher as GA President, but that's not to say we shouldn't have another one asap, following on from the tenure of Alastair Owens for 2022-23. 

I plan to post an update here at the end of each of the 12 months so you can see what I get up to, and the range of activity that a President is involved in.

I received an article that I had written for Routes Journal back from the peer reviewers with some comments on changes to make ahead of publication in early 2022. This is one job I've been looking at. The article explores the research that I did for the GA Presidents blog over the last two and a half years.

Given my theme of everyday geographies there's certainly been something to do everyday: emails to answer, queries to answer and conversations with many of the GA's staff at Solly Street - the HQ in Sheffield. I've had messages and some lovely messages via Twitter DMs, email, Facebook, WhatsApp and various other means.

The first week involved a field trip with Year 4 students to the Norfolk coast - a great day and a reminder of the value of fieldwork. 2022 will see our planned National Fieldwork Week which I am involved in. Look out for more on this in the GA News for Autumn 2021.

There was also the hosting of a one hour session on COP26 with a range of guest speakers - see earlier on LivingGeography for all the links to the presentations. Thanks to all those who presented, including former GA colleague Paula Owens who closed the event.

The second week started with the release of the results of the moderation of applications for a number of funding opportunities that the GA offers. Some of these are for members of our volunteer groups, others are for everyone.

There have been discussions and emails and Zooms around a number of projects and areas:

- the GA's Governance Working Group and smaller groups

- the Geographers' Gaze project to open up the archives a little, with former President Peter Fox involved

- a publication I'm working on for release in 2022 which has been much changed from the original format and now requires a little reworking

- items for GA journals now and in future issues - my Webwatch column for January 2022 is already underway, for example along with a piece for Primary Geography 

- National Fieldwork Week planning and thinking

In the third week, focus moved to Conference Planning, and Conference 2022. This is a huge undertaking and there were lengthy meetings with the whole Planning Board to look at the sessions which had been submitted - well over 100 - along with those who I had personally invited. It was the first look at the overall possible format, and some planning ahead for the hybrid conference. Isabel and Becky are pulling things together for another chat in a week's time.

I'm really looking forward to letting people know some of the exciting people we have presenting at the event.

I also completed a presentation slide deck for an education conference in Turkey at which I am an invited speaker, so that it could be sent for translating ahead of the event - the theme is 'Everyday Geographies' and I'm also mentioning my book 'Why Study Geography?' which has been reviewed in RIGEO recently and also elsewhere. I also continued to work on my slide deck for the Scottish Association of Geography Teachers' Conference next month on the theme of 'rewilding'.

We traditionally exchange fraternal greetings at our respective conferences and I've been attending regularly since 2004. 

Alongside that I also planned a 3 days ERASMUS+ meeting to take place at my school and worked on some of the resources that are required for it. This will be a chance to welcome international colleagues for the first time in over two years. We had Zoom meetings for the 2 projects. Plenty about those on LivingGeography.

There was also a meeting of the GA's Education Group. This is the main group that supports the Governing Body and staff at HQ with key thinking. It is chaired by the President and this involved rather a lot of preparation and reading and knowledge of the ByLaws and other aspects of the GA's operation. I know almost every member having visited their groups or worked with them in some way.

The final week included further discussions over conference and funding, and follow ups from the EG meeting. There was also a chat with Olwen Lintern-Smyth: Chair of the GA's Trustees.

I ended today by submitting an exciting proposal form for an international conference in 2022, connected with an important GA initiative that is currently underway.

Preparations are also being made for our next meeting of the GA's Governing Body. This will occupy some time in tomorrow's meeting, which I shall tell you all about at the end of October when I share my month 2 update. The full list of the Governing Body is in GA Magazine. 

I'll also start the 2nd month by hosting and presenting at an eConference for Early Career Teachers all day on Saturday, and re-recording a bit of audio for my involvement in a well known Geography podcast to be released next month.

If you think that the Presidential for 2023-4 might be you, check out the opportunity here and in the latest GA News. Also feel free to get in touch - I've had a few conversations in that area too.

Quotidian Geography

I gave much thought of course to the theme for my own Presidential conference in 2022 for some time. This is important as it leads to a particular range of lectures and workshops and invitations to particular speakers that are the choice of the President, and the overall aims of the event. 

The theme I chose is Everyday Geographies.

The public lecture and the other main events are tied to the theme. For more on the theme, check out other posts over on LivingGeography.

There will also be a chance for you to win one of 100 specially-made enamel badges for participation in a curriculum project I will launch in the first week of September.

Also watch out for the hashtags #potga21 and #everydaygeographies in use through the year here and over on Living Geography.

Everyday Geographies

Plenty of mentions in the latest GA Magazine, and also in 'Teaching Geography'. Details here of how you can get involved in next year's GA Conference. Far more to come on this over the coming months of course. 

GA Conference 2022

The details of the 2022 GA Conference are now up on the GA website.

The theme is EVERDAY GEOGRAPHIES. Geographies of the every day, and encouraging thinking about geography every day.

Everyday geographies

‘Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace’ – Elbert Hubbard

My theme for 2022 encourages exploration of everyday geographies. We are all living geography. Our diurnal routines connect us with places, people, environments and cultures. Repeated exposure means we sometimes forget how significant these are in shaping our identity and impacting the planetary emergency we all face.

Our quotidian experiences are both individual and shared. Speakers and delegates will be encouraged to revisit the stories of the commodities, cultures and landscapes that shape all our lives, unpicking the geographical connections behind them. In recent challenging times, some of those connections were temporarily severed or amended, and others deserve reassessment.

The 2022 Conference will be an occasion where we can once again come together and take the time to celebrate what makes us who we are: now and in the future, and explore how revealing the powerful hidden magic in these everyday stories can enrich our personal curriculum journeys.

Alan Parkinson, GA Vice President 2020-21

I hope to see you there, but more importantly for the time being, I hope to see you next week for the GA Conference 2021.

A few days left to book.