Biographies of all the Presidents of the Geographical Association since the founding of the Association in 1893. Researched by Alan Parkinson (GA President 2021-22), with contributions from others, including the former Presidents themselves where possible.
June is the final major month of the school year - for me at least - there are others who have to go on for quite a long way into July, or who have perhaps largely finished by then depending on which country they teach in, and the relative importance of the exam season to their timetable.
The first part of the month was during my half term, which included the Jubilee weekend, but it was certainly back with a bang to the final half term of the year.
National Fieldwork Week ran from 6th-10th of June. We hope it may be back next year.
The latest GeogPod was released on the 4th of June, and features Paula Richardson and I talking about the GA's National Research Report and how that fed into the development of the National Fieldwork Week.
Thanks to John Lyon for hosting - see if you can spot the question I wasn't expecting... :)
Day by Day
6th of June
The RGS-IBG AGM, followed by the Awards Ceremony was on my original agenda, but the tube strike led me to have to cancel these plans unfortunately.
And then the weather on Monday morning was torrential rain followed by a lull when I managed to get outside with one group.
Colleagues in other years also got involved.
7th of June
The sun shone and I went outside with all of my groups.
8th of June
The weather changed back to rain, which started to clear by mid morning. This time I was able to get out with a group and explore changes in Ely.
9th of June
Three groups went out today.
I went on a Cambridge GA Branch Walk through the CB1 redevelopment in the evening.
This was organised by the Cambridge GA Branch and led by former GA President Chris Kington - it was very entertaining and informative. Also attended by another former GA President: Keith Grimwade.
Former GA President Chris Kington led a superb @CambGA tour last week giving geography teachers the inside scoop on redevelopment in the CB1 area. Want to be more involved with your local GA? Get in touch. We'd love to hear from you 😊 #geography#geographyteacherpic.twitter.com/hOJvOgdNRE
— Cambridge Geographical Association (@CambGA) June 13, 2022
10th of June
Southwold
Chris Webster has run the Southwold-based Geography Fieldwork Academyfor a number of years, although he returned to the classroom during the lockdown and mothballed the operation. It is now back up and running and offering NEA and other sessions for students.
They have also created the GeogIt app.
I visited them for the day.
This included a quick tour of Southwold with Chris where I ended up seeing a few new developments in the town and talking to the Mayor as well as seeing the classroom spaces which Chris makes use of when he has groups of varying sizes.
At the end of the day, we had a picture taken with the group he was helping that day. It turned out to be the college where my own children went! (although they didn't do Geography...)
In between this I also found time to have a lovely lunch and a pint of Adnams (of course) in the Sole Bay Inn.
There were many other Presidential bits and pieces that happened in the middle part of the month. I'm missing out all the usual tweets
On the 17th of June it was the start of the planning for Conference 2023 with the first Conference Planning Board meeting for 2023. This lasted for two hours, and as President I chaired this particular meeting. The next meeting will be chaired by Alastair Owens as he will have started his Presidential term by then. Next year's conference will take place in Sheffield between the 13th and 15th of April. The theme is 'Collaborative Geographies'.
GA Governing Body meeting was next up.
This took place at Queen Mary University, London
I travelled down to London on the train on the hottest day of the year so far and ended up (after a detour to Hammersmith) at my hotel in Brick Lane. The evening before was a meeting followed by a curry and drinks at Aladin restuarant on Brick Lane itself.
Can I recommend the Premier Inn Hub hotels if you are staying in the area for an evening.
This was followed by a Governing Body meeting with a very full agenda on a very hot day. There are three GB meetings a year. It was the final meeting for several trustees, including Susan Pike, whose term as Past President is also coming to an end at the same time as my Presidency will. I have three more GB meetings to attend in that capacity before ending my term. There are also co-opted and named trustees and I could also put myself forward for election. We heard the results of the recent Trustee election, which will be revealed later in the year.
I also spent an afternoon talking to the PGCE colleagues at Homerton College.
This was a useful taster of my Prince's Teaching Institute session, which also includes my colleague Claire Kyndt. Booking details were here.
Events continued to appear in my calendar:
- GI Pedagogy meeting where we discussed the progress made so far and planned for the next phase of the project - this also culminated in planning for an event next month in Madrid which took a great deal of my time
- Additional meeting at Homerton College for mentors as well as students to look at fieldwork - this was sadly disrupted by the train strike, so I had to do it virtually for an hour which was a little more stilted as a consequence than a face to face event but I'm told by a few people there that it was well received and very useful for their future roles
- Consultancy over a new resource on the theme of disasters, with an educator currently based in Australia - this follows an earlier resource based on Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
- Discussions over a new Primary resource coming in 2024 which I will work on over the summer, along with a new GIS resource
- Edits for an article that is going to appear in the next issue of the British Cartographical Society's magazine Maplines
- Small input to GeogLive!9 on the topic of fieldwork - mostly to thank everyone who had put together some inputs and who had contributed to the Fieldwork Week itself. It's been great to see the support of the EYPPC in particular for this event.
- Reading minutes of the various phase committees and other groups who meet several times a year to discuss how they can support the Association and fellow members - it's important as President to try to keep across all this activity, and there is a lot of it.
I was going to say hello in person, but instead I had to record a hello message to the student presenters.
- Travelled down to London to see Pat Metheny at the Eventim Apollo - the first time I've seen him since a trip to Hull City Hall before lockdown during the city's time as City of Culture - it was a remarkable concert - I also took the opportunity to wander a bit of West London that I hadn't been to before (or at least for a while) It was a superb concert as well.
We also had a whole late flurry of activity:
- discussions on the ongoing work on the GA website
- ideas for further support for members as the year progresses
- planning for further strategy meetings
The final bit of good news for the month arrived on the last day of the month. We had been waiting for the final report from EPOS: the Belgian agency for ERASMUS projects, on our D3 Project.
The objectives of the D3 project were to: 1. Promote the use digital technologies and open data tools in learning and teaching. 2. Increase the capacity of learning and teaching to integrate democratic engagement considerations into educational plans and strategies. 3. Establish suitable styles of learning to access and integrate open data into schools and 4. Improve educational stakeholders’ response to the need for data and information literacy in schools and teacher training.
We had a very positive final report on the project, and I was particularly pleased to have written a series of lesson blueprints which were featured here, and animated by Greg Donert.
Ending with the usual Twitter stats for the month - a lot of National Fieldwork Week tweeting has upped the number again, and also the impressions - I had almost 100 000 impressions of my tweets during that week alone.
Looking at my stats in the last ten months, it's clear that being President of the GA increases your followers. Since I opened up my tweets from their previous private status at the start of my Presidential year, I've added over 2000 new followers.
I'll be closing my tweets again on August the 31st and weeding out any accounts that aren't authentic.
Just two months to go now. Next month looks just as busy as this one to be fair.
This was another rather busy month all round, and was the start of the second half of my Presidential year.
March sees the build up to the conference and a push to get delegates organised for their bookings - it's pleasing to see the bookings rising through the month, but also a time to keep fingers crossed that this year's budgets and personal circumstances don't mean people fail to book a ticket. The remote option is a useful addition now, although it adds significantly to the logistics of planning the event.
There is a meeting of the GA's Governing Body in the first weekend of the month. This was originally planned to have been face to face meeting finally, but ended up being online again, as it was scheduled just before the removal of some of the legal requirements on meetings and isolating were removed by the Government. This was a very busy meeting which had a great many items on the agenda.
This is a time when the next Vice President (and ultimately President) is ratified, along with other decisions.
There are also decisions made in this week about the GA Publishers Awards and also the GA Awards. Voting closes for the GA Award for Excellence as well.
The results of all these will be announced at the GA Prize Giving and Public Lecture which kicks off the conference.
The following week I was gearing up for a trip - the first overseas trip for over two years. This took place in Gent in Belgium. It was a meeting of the partners of the GI Pedagogy project, and we were delighted to be there. More on that later in the post.
National Fieldwork Week is taking place in June, and there were plenty of meetings and other work around this event. I organised a couple of events for the week.
Thanks to Paula Richardson for her hard work driving this forward, and also to the new website manager Emmalene for her hard work in getting the materials up on the website.
Some other things that occurred this month:
- a great many conversations and other decisions about the planning for the GA Conference, including exchanges around the final stages of the conference. This is getting closer now. There were decisions on chairing sessions to make, and numerous meetings and Zoom calls with Isabel and Becky who are spearheading the conference planning. A huge amount of work.
This offers guidance for all the delegates at our conference, and other events, and explained how we are supporting visitors in many wayss.
- further work to get ready for the National Fieldwork Week in June.
- liaising with and talking to chairs of the GA's SIGs - as President, I have requested that I receive copies of the minutes of all their meetings in case there are things I can do to support them, and to learn about the range of activity going on - these meetings occur almost every other weekend, and there is plenty to learn from colleagues who are experts in their chosen area - there were specific meetings with particular groups, along with Alastair Owens (who will take over as President in September 2022)
- reviewing for Routledge
- preparing for the IGU in Paris in July and liaising over fees and hotel planning as well as preparing a trip to the Place de Saint Sulpice for a Georges Perec pilgrimage...
- uploading resources and ideas for colleagues in the Liverpool alliance of schools I am supporting
- starting to prepare materials for another group of schools I am working with, and ideas for training in the new academic year
- working on the two ERASMUS projects I am completing for my school - one of these is now in the final stages and there has been a great deal of work to do there.
I led a session for the West London Alliance on curriculum making - the 2nd of two sessions.
We also had the amazing news of the discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship 'Endurance' - an expedition I had been following since the beginning and a period of history I have a great many
At the end of the 2nd week of March, I headed for Gent.
Thanks to the partners of the GI Pedagogy project for their company during a sunny long weekend where we were able to complete a lot of work, and also have a couple of nice meals in the city. It was lovely to be able to use my passport and get out of the country for the next 2 years.
There is also a new pathway for the GA Conference, which had been developed by Christine Winter (one of the new GA Research Engagement leads) and Kit Rackley. Many thanks to both of them, and anyone else involved, for their efforts.
We worked on the Geographers' Gaze materials - they will appear in a month or two hopefully.
In the third week, I contributed to a session for the GeogLive! event.
To round off the month, I went for a weekend in Center Parcs to decompress for a while and enjoy time in the woods - the weather was glorious.
The final week included more meetings, and a final event.
I hosted a GeogChat meeting on the theme of Everyday Geographies. Thanks to those who took part in the discussions. Search the #GeogChat tag to see some of the contributions.
The month ended with snow... quite a change after the sunshine of just a few days ago.
This was a particularly tough end to the Lent term. We are constantly thinking that things must be getting back to normal, but they really aren't. There has been a lot of staff and pupil absence due to COVID and at times I have been fairly sure I have had it for a 2nd time, but have always tested negative.
I am very much keeping my fingers crossed for the next couple of weeks. I look forward to seeing you in Guildford in 2 weeks time.
Images of Gent: Alan Parkinson, and shared under CC license
One of the groups of people that operates to 'create' the GA and its day to day decision making and operations is the Governing Body. Members includs the Presidents during their period of office, Named Trustees and co-opted members as well as elected Trustees.
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.
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.
