GA Presidency Month 12: August 2022

OK, the final month of the GA Presidency arrives, and with it comes the annual meetings and work on the moderation for the Primary and Secondary Geography Quality Marks.

I started this month during the summer holidays, enjoying the break from the classroom down in Devon. 

Topsham is a place we return to each summer. During the week I caught up with some old friends - Dan Raven Ellison and Noel Jenkins. 

With Dan, I walked one of the Slow Ways routes.

I'd previously worked with Claire Kyndt and Kate Stockings to create some ideas for geography teachers to engage with the Slow Ways project. Perhaps you have walked one of the routes this summer?

SGQM is the Secondary Geography Quality Mark. I have been involved in the moderation of this since the beginning of the award. Moderation meetings were done online this time round. I had nine  schools to moderate in the first round of moderation and then took another look at several others in the second round of moderation. There were some excellent applications this year. Those who have applied will find out the results at the start of the academic year.

I spent quite a lot of the month reading - a mixture of books for future teaching and others on topics of personal interest. I also spent quite a lot of days at home rather than out and about because of the climate change induced heat we experienced this August - which will hopefully trigger some sort of policy response amongst politicians. I won't hold my breath though.

Sheffield is where the GA's HQ is located. I haven't been up there as regularly as almost all GA Presidents due to the advent of Zoom. Previously, regular visits to Solly Street were part of the Presidential year, but this is no longer the case, which potentially broadens the range of people who may be able to apply.

I was able to get involved with some early conference planning decisions.

I also helped with the plans for some new features for the GA website - an updated version of which is coming at the end of the year all being well. There are thousands of pages on the website.

I also looked at applications to join the GA's register of consultants. This is a list of people who can be approached to potentially work on projects with you if you are business or school and need help with writing resources, or some other sort of staff development. I've completed quite a lot of consultancy work over the years on behalf of the GA.

I also wrote some text for a new GA Blog, which is going to be launched soon to help share what the Association is up to.

A GI Pedagogy meeting was also planned to take place towards the end of the month and was pushed to the very end of the month, when I started to prepare for the return to school for the start of yet another academic year. I had been due to go to Iasi in Romania this month as part of the project but that has now been postponed and we may end up going later in the year, or perhaps to another location closer to home.

I have several things already in the pipeline for the next year to fill the gap:

- mentoring a new GA Trustee as well as supporting other members of the Presidential team as Past President.

- going back to writing my Everyday Geographies book which I had made a start on before it got overtaken with other projects this year. It's taking shape quite nicely.

- I've joined the GeographySouthWest team. I had a meeting with Simon Ross and John Davidson who started the website and are now developing it a little more. I am going to be working with Emma Espley to create some resources and also 

- I will be completing my Fawcett Fellowship which I have received funding for - there are six other Fawcett Fellows and I look forward to working with them and Alex Standish over the year ahead, researching Everyday Geographies and the curriculum.

- I have some final work to do on the GI Pedagogy project.

- I also have some writing projects to complete

Best of luck to the new President for 2022-23.

Twitter stats

Later on, I shall post a biography of Professor Alastair Owens.

I will move on to a year as Past President.

Also welcome to Denise Freeman as the new Vice President of the Geographical Association - possibly the first serving female state school President I believe... we have had a few other female teacher Presidents including Pat Cleverley, Sheila Jones and Wendy Atkins (Morgan) but they were either working in Independent schools or had retired when they became President I think from my research.

It's important that we have teacher Presidents and it would be lovely for them to be more diverse than previously.

GA Presidency Month 11: July 2022

July sees the end of the school term and the start of the summer holidays which are a particular focus for teachers.

For me, the month started with a flurry of activity and continued to be busy for most of it.

The first main event was the PTI Subject Enrichment Residential.

This is an annual event (now back after several years when it could not take place).

It is hosted by Cambridge University, and takes place at Downing College, which is close to the city centre, and runs across three days.

Claire Kyndt, my colleague also presented her ideas which were based on the Dear Data project: data visualisation.

This was followed by a trip to Parker's Piece to carry out some fieldwork. This included a range of options for collecting data or interacting with the place.

Interestingly, the area was occupied by the stalls, stage and other elements of a free weekend Mela event. This included an observation wheel which Claire and I went on for a good view of the area, across the city, and with a distant view of Ely Cathedral on the horizon. There was some good feedback from the delegates.

It was then down to Stansted to catch a flight to Madrid. Thanks to Claire for giving me a lift to the airport. Thanks also to Miguel-Angel for picking me up. 

I was there for 4 days to lead a course for the GI Pedagogy project. We were hosted by UNED.

The GI Pedagogy project had received an extension of four months from the British Council.

I've previously blogged about the nature of this project, and the one that predated it. I co-presented the introduction to the 3 day course, and multiplier event with my colleague Michaela Lindner Fally from Borg Obendorf school in Austria.

The training course at UNED took place on Monday to Wednesday.

We are grateful to the delegates who joined us from a number of countries. There were also quite a few online delegates.

Luc Zwartjes, one of my colleagues was leading quite a few of the sessions, and was then heading off to the ESRI User Conference in San Diego where he also presented our project to a good audience. 

GI Pedagogy presented at #Esri EDUC 2022 pic.twitter.com/WfgmDpc3hJ

— GI Pedagogy (@GIPedagogy) July 9, 2022

Final days of term then followed, which were also hot, and included the Powerhouse Games with John Willis and the team.

A Governance Working Group meeting also took place, where there were several important items to consider for next year. This is part of the strategy work which the President is involved in. It took place in London as a 'central' location for most of us.

There were also plenty of submissions to look at from the GA's two Quality Marks: Primary and Secondary. This has been part of my summer routine for over ten years now. There were plenty of entries, which is great to see.

The PGQM is the Primary Geography Quality Mark which schools can apply for. I have been moderating applications for some years now, and this year there were a growing number of schools as some had deferred 

I was involved in a Zoom meeting with a school which had opted to go straight to an application for Gold. This was a lovely chance to find out more about the way that a few individuals can make such an impact within a school.

The IGU Centenary Congress took place in Paris, following another related event in Rennes the week before.

The GA has been connected with the IGU for some time now, with the work of former GA Presidents such as L Dudley Stamp and Norman Graves.

Sadly, this coincided with a heatwave and unprecedented heat and my travel plans were thwarted at the last minute as trains were delayed and I missed the Eurostar, which it then turns out was delayed by over three hours and took about six hours to make the journey. The heat in Paris was a factor, along with vandalism of the power lines.

The return journey also looks like being problematic.

This was a bit of a disaster as I'd spent weeks working out my itinerary of various adventures around the IGU sessions that I was involved in, with some Georges Perec fieldwork to carry out.

The paper I'd worked on can be viewed and downloaded from ResearchGate.

It was great to see that our GI Pedagogy project was presented at the IGU however, and with a great turn out for the session.

We also had some unprecedented heat, so instead of suffering 40 degrees in Paris I was present to experience 40 degree heat in the UK instead, which led to fires destroying houses just 20 miles from where I live.

This map highlights the places that are forecast to be hotter than the UK on Tuesday.

It's about 1.2% of the planet's surface. pic.twitter.com/1CW6krIOtb

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) July 16, 2022

There were other jobs to do this month:

• looking at applications to be added to the GA's list of consultants and checking the references and credentials
• working on ideas linked to the GA Conference 2023 and tweaking the format to reflect changing nature of CPD and the wishes of teachers
• further work linked to the Governing Body and following other strategy meetings - much of this work goes on behind the scenes and is not really public but is important
• contacting new trustees to welcome them to the Governing Body
• work on website developments - this is ongoing work
• continuing work on projects related to the GA's Strategy: Advocate, Connect and Empower.
• started the moderation of SGQM with a meeting of the moderation team. I've been involved with this since the start of the Award.
• some final work on the D3 ERASMUS project
• more work on the GI Pedagogy project.

I also had some good news towards the end of the month.

I have been successful in my application to receive a Fawcett Fellowship for 2022-23 from the UCL Department of Geography/Institute of Education.

This will involve me in some research and writing and offers a fund to pay for related expenses. My focus will be on the everyday and how it forms part of curriculum making.

I also met up with Denise Freeman, who will be GA President in 2023-24 to talk through some of the work that Presidents have to do.

The month ended with a long awaited holiday.

Topsham in Devon is a place which we have been visiting as a family for many years and we generally stay in the same place, which sits right on the River Exe. It was great to be back again.

Here's the Cobb at Lyme Regis:

The month ends with the usual Twitter stats, which show a busy month but one which had fewer tweets than usual - a pattern likely to be continued next week. 

This leaves just one month to go and then my year as President will be over all too quickly. 

I hope to pass on my experiences to future Presidents and I hope my Presidents blog project will be a legacy that I will add to when I get the chance to visit the GA Archives.

Images: Alan Parkinson, Sophie Wilson, Luc Zwartjes