The GA Conference, a lost bag and pre-term training

The highlight of my last week has been the Geographical Association Annual Conference in Manchester. It is simply the best INSET a Geographer can do. Everyone who is everyone in the world of Geographical Education is there. This year's conference was no different -some 750 delegates from over 40 countries including a big contingent from Texas. The theme of the conference was ‘Geographies of Difference’.

Thursday 12^th April – Day 1

The first part of the conference is the Association at Work - activists from committees and branches meet on Thursday lunchtime for a couple of hours when they are involved in discussions about the GA -this year we considered the new Geography Education Annual Monitoring Report - a first for the GA where the overall condition of School Geography is examined. We also looked at the GA's proposals for the National Curriculum Review. As a member of the Royal Geographical Society's National Curriculum Working Party, I observed this with interest as in essence the two organisations proposals weren't too far apart in their ideas.

The Annual Meeting of the Association then precedes a public lecture – this year it was the award winning author Marina Lewycka, whose novels such as A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Two Caravans, and We Are All Made of Glue deal with geographical issues such as migration and conflict. Despite the fact I am not a great reader of fiction, I found her lecture fascinating as she spoke of  the difficulties of writing about cultural differences in fiction and have made a resolution to buy a couple of her books to read when the Morris Clan go on their annual pilgrimage to the sun after school finishes in July.

After the Public Lecture, the awards ceremony took place and I was pleased to see a couple of friends pick up awards for resources they had helped to write. In the evening I attended the drinks reception and conference dinner that gave me the opportunity to do some more networking.

Day 2 – Friday 13^th April

The second day started early with sessions commencing at 8.45am and I attended a most informative session on Africa. I tend to go to the subject update lectures as they enable me to keep on top of the latest thinking in academic geography and this lecture by Prof. Tony Binns and Etienne Nel from the University of Otago certainly fit the bill. I am anxiously waiting for the PowerPoint to be published on the GA website so I incorporate it in to my teaching especially at A2 level.

This year’s president Fran Martin, in her presidential lecture, spoke about how important it is to be open to having our world views challenged. She used a variety of maps showing the same location in the world but sourced from a range of perspectives showing the same thing in many different ways. She also emphasised the perils of teaching from a ‘single story’ using a TED Talks film featuring Chimamanda Adichie, the award winning Nigerian author, called ‘The Dangers of a Single Story’. A link can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=D9Ihs241zeg

Fran’s lecture was really thought-provoking (as indeed most were) and had delegates talking all day even if she had admitted that she failed A level geography – TWICE!

Before lunch, I went to another subject update lecture from Professor Emeritus Michael Bradford (of Bradford and Kent fame for the older geographers reading this). His lecture on the regeneration of Manchester was outstanding and I have booked him to come to Shrewsbury to talk to our GA branch in 2012/13.Lunch involved a meeting with my colleagues on the GA Independent Schools Special Interest Group (ISSIG) and coffee with my co-author Dr. Janet Speake from Liverpool Hope University. To discuss our next collaboration –this time for the GA’s Geography publication.

After lunch, I attended another subject update lecture looking at Global Energy Dilemmas with Professor Michael Bradshaw. In the lecture, he examined recent trends and future predictions, defining terms including ‘energy security’, ‘globalisation of demand’, ‘embedded carbon’ and the ‘Kaya Identity’ – a measurement of the impact of energy.

Another topic I teach at A2 is Water Conflicts and the lecture on water security from Professor Tony Allen. Although much of the content was not new to me, having attended a similar lecture in Derby in 2010, it was a useful focus and introduced a few new terms such as  ‘food water’, ‘virtual water, ‘embedded water’ and ‘water footprint’. Professor Allen spoke at length about water in the food chain and the important job farmers have in managing nearly all the green and much of the blue water in our environment.

After sometime looking around the exhibition, I went to a lecture to promote the Digital Earth project, presented by Alan Parkinson, John Lyon and Dr Michael Solem from the AAG. I have worked with Alan and John and Michael is a colleague of a good friend who works in Geography Education in Colorado. The term ‘geo media’ was introduced and the three speakers showcased different projects they had worked on.

By this time, I was feeling ‘lectured out’ and headed back to my hotel to freshen up ready for further more discussions with ISSIG firstly in the bar of the McDonald Hotel, then in the Mongolian BBQ in the Gay Village and then finally at the GA Beermeet in the magnificently-named Peveril of the Peak pub close to the Bridgewater Hall. Thanks to Richard Allaway (of Geography All the Way fame) for organising the event, and providing free goodie bags for all those who attended- the Blue Lagoon moisturiser is great by the way.  It was also good to get the chance to meet the Priory School, Southsea Geography team who were as enthusiastic socialisers as they are Geographers!

Day 3 Saturday 14^th April

After a poor night’s sleep, I concurred with Mike Bradford’s view of Manchester being a 24-hour city (drunken revellers at 3am and delivery lorries at 6am). As a result, I missed the first session of lectures and spent more time speaking with exhibitors. The exhibition seemed a little sparser this year as there seemed to be less stands compared to previous years, I came to the conclusion that as publishing houses merge and in turn take over exam boards, there will be inevitably less exhibitors.

Armed with enough mugs from Pearsons to provide my department with a new one each and enough freebie pens from ESRI to sink a battleship, I headed off to the keynote lecture from Prof. Gill Valentine on ‘Living with difference: making communities out of strangers’. I found the references to sociological theory interesting such as Allport’s ‘contact hypothesis’ where prejudice is reduced through increased contact between diverse groups as well as the opposing views of Puttnam, who suggested that as social diversity increases, trust declines. Again, this was a thought provoking lecture and over a coffee with Bob Jones, from the North Staffs GA Branch, we found ourselves discussing points that Professor Valentine had raised.

After an early lunch, I was running a fringe session on IGCSE Geography that had been omitted from the original programme due to a clerical error. Although, we had a small audience (who included Prof. David Lambert), we were able to attract at least one more school to our number. It was at the end of this session, my low-point of the conference occurred.

Having carefully collected a bagful of mugs, pens and other useful resources, someone picked up my delegates bag by mistake and left me with a bag of primary resources that were little use to me. My heart dropped though hopefully Jon Wolton of Edexcel is sending me some Pearson mugs to replace those that were taken by mistake. If the person who took my bag is reading this, I hope you enjoy your tea and coffee!

My last session of the conference was delivered by the admirable David Rogers from Priory School, who along with Simon Ross has written resources on the Eyjafjallajökull eruption for Discover the World, the company we went to Iceland with. Attracted by the inducements of wine and Icelandic delicacies (that turned out to be Sirius chocolate and liquorice but not the putrid shark meat and pickled ram’s testicles I was hoping for), I went along for a very informative and entertaining talk from a really enthusiastic geographer who was inspirational even though he was on the graveyard slot.

And so another GA Conference ended and I headed back to Shrewsbury for the start of term. Once again Lucy Oxley of the GA provided a first class programme and I would like to thank her on behalf of the Geography community for all of her hard work and also to her helpers from the GA.

Monday 16^th April

Our first day back was spent doing INSET. After a brief staff meeting, we settled down to listen to Ed Smith. Ed was a former England cricketer who is now a writer and journalist, despite both grandfathers being headmasters and both parents being teachers. Ed was a voracious reader despite playing professional cricket and got a double first from Cambridge even though he devoted his time to playing cricket. His talk was interesting and although not directly relevant to education was fascinating to me as a one-time wannabe professional sportsman. He likened INSET to being like pre-season training for a sportsman; a view I can certainly empathise with.

Since retiring from cricket in 2008, he has written a number of books on sport and life and I have added these to my Amazon wish list and will buy a couple to read when Lanzarote beckons at the end of term. When I was getting ready for a Year 9 parents evening last night, I was listening to Radio 2 as I tend to do these days to find out he was Simon Mayo’s guest at 6pm last night talking about his latest book ‘Luck: What it Means and Why it Matters’. The Times described is as an 'An exceptional book: lucid, thought-provoking, informative and fair. Outstanding' I can’t wait to read it.

Revision, writing and a spectacle of nature

This Blog also appears as a part of the Hodder Guest Blogger website and can be found at  

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As I sit here writing this, looking at the rain streaming down our patio windows, my eldest two children should be revising hard for their A2 exams? Although there is some 21 months between them, they are both doing their A2 exams this summer (as my daughter gave up doing IB after a year).  Already we are talking about performance-related payments for results –they are both going on holiday with friends after results come out. My daughter may cost me a lot of money – she already has achieved enough UCAS points for her first choice university as a result of some excellent January module results and retakes on of some papers taken last year. My son, on the other hand, doesn’t quite have the same work ethic but is gifted at languages. He is however, also a talented sportsman and hopes to spend a gap year coaching sport at a school before university in 2013, while my daughter is following me in studying Geography

Despite my ramblings above, I spend a lot of time actively involving myself in their revision. My daughter is doing the same Geography A level I teach and as well as giving her extra sessions, I have been into her college and given her friends revision sessions. The two other A levels that are subjects I have taught in the past, so helping with revision is easy. My value to my son is limited as he is doing mainly languages.

In the run-up to the holiday, our academic deputy head spoke to all our exam candidates and along with a briefing on regulations, he spoke about the expectation to revise during the holiday period as exams will soon be upon us after Easter etc.  Modular exams have led to retake culture in many schools like mine, where Year 12 pupils think along the lines of why bother now when I can do it another time. Despite this talk, I have had a procession of emails from concerned parents, whose offspring where switched off when I spoke about revision and where to find the materials needed to revise. Our faculty tend not to give out sheaves of printed past papers but instead post all of the material our pupils need on our Virtual Learning Environment and they print off exactly what they need. Although the VLE has been around for a few years, it came into its own after the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in 2010 when around a third of our pupils (and some staff) where marooned overseas at the end of their Easter break. Despite this, relatively few pupils appear to use it though it is a useful tool to have on board when parents attempt to point accusing fingers (as they sometimes do in schools of our type).

Recently as a school, we have been debating the pros and cons of our pupils doing all of their modules at the end of the 2^nd year of the A level course (possibly doing Pre-U exams in preference to A levels.)  Now, I read that the move away from modularity to linearity is likely to take place with universities taking a greater role in the setting of A levels. But wait, when I first started marking A levels in the days of the Mullet haircut and Borg and McEnroe reigned supreme at Wimbledon, Edexcel were known as University of London Examinations and we had linear exams.  All I hope is that we don’t return to having study two world regions (North America and South-East Asia were my specialities) or dreadfully tedious topics like central place and isodopanes (as suggested by Dr Alex Standish.)  Universities really could take the bull by the horns and introduce new, exciting topics that could inspire students to take Geography into the 6^th form and beyond.

For most of the last 15 years, I have spent part of my Easter holiday in London working in tutorial college teaching revision courses. This is year however has been different. Numbers wanting to do Edexcel Geography A level revision courses seem to have taken a bit of a nosedive in recent years. Is this a sign of the times as far as the economy is concerned as these courses are not cheap? Probably not, according to the Director of Studies who organises these courses at the tutorial college  – that occurred around 2009/10. The more likely reason is that teachers in the schools, where most of the customers come from are teaching Edexcel AS and A2 so well, their pupils are getting good results. Instead I have spent time writing for publication in my holiday.

I always tend to have a couple of writing projects on the back boiler. My pupils seem to think that I am raking in the extra cash from various writing projects in a “David Waugh-esque” fashion. If only that was true! They are always very proud to show their parents the revision guide I contributed to and one group asked me to sign their copies. Another asked why I bother doing it all, if I don’t do it for the money. My answer was that a) I enjoy doing the research and writing and b) I invariably write about topics that will enhance my teaching and their learning. After around 5 or 6 different variations on a theme based on the Liverpool Rebranding for the 2008 Capital of Culture for various publishers, I am now researching my last Liverpool piece for the time being on ‘Managing Social Inequality in Liverpool for GeoActive. I will be then moving on to write about Rural Rebranding in Shropshire for Geography Review. A comparison of the success of rebranding in Ludlow and Wem is the plan – two places that seem miles apart in how they have tried to regenerate, but in fact are very similar. I have also written a couple of pieces for the GA Independent Schools Special Interest Group occasional newsletter that will be available at the GA Conference in Manchester later this week.

I would encourage all Geography teachers to publish. The likes of GeoActive and GeoFile are always looking for new authors – believe it or not the reason why the same authors always seem to crop up is that there are not many people willing to research and write. Geography Review is similar; the human geography editor told me there is a shortage of articles and asked me to a) write more and b) encourage as many people as I can to contribute.  While you are never going to be mega-rich, it does you get you noticed. I have had a number of requests to do talks at schools, colleges and GA branches on various topics as a result of published articles along with the member ship of a RGS-IBG working group. A section on your CV entitled ‘Recent Publications’ is impressive for prospective employers and shows academic rigour on your part. My head also sees the value of his teachers writing as it is all free marketing for the school.

Finally I can’t blog without reference to my greatest passion! With the start of the first class cricket season last week, the weather took a plunge this last week and snow was recorded in Shrewsbury (but not where I am spending my holiday in West Lancashire). With nothing to do on Easter Saturday, I decided to go and watch our local club play a pre-season friendly game at Neston, just north of Chester. Having heard that this weekend we have exceptionally high spring tides, I checked the tide times and found that high tide was around midday, I left an hour early than I needed to watch one of nature’s greatest spectacles at nearby Parkgate. Parkgate used to be a major fishing port on the River Dee, but since the estuary silted up around the 18^th century, the port was abandoned and salt marshes now come right up to the old waterfront, while an eclectic mix of fisherman’s cottages and inns face the old wharf.

When there is a high spring tide, the spectacle of seeing various small mammals and birds fleeing the encroaching sea water is something not to be missed. I parked my car at the cricket ground and walked the short distance down to the estuary to be greeted by hundreds of people doing the same.

A description of what happens can be found here- http://www.deeestuary.co.uk/news1201.htm, while a you tube video (from BBC Coast) can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_XjmXoERfU

This week I am attending the GA Conference in Manchester- come and find me to say hello and have a tea or coffee Next week I will be blogging about the conference and my return to school.

Some reflections on Iceland Field Trip and Climate Change & Cricket

(This Blog also appears as a part of the Hodder Guest Blogger website and can be found at

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Reflections on Iceland

Teaching in the independent sector, we are fortunate to have a week longer than the maintained sector for Easter, rather than our pupils use this time to revise many of them are off on school trips of various kinds. The end of term letter from my head to parents estimated, 30% of our 750 pupils would be doing some form of educational visit, expedition or sports tour during the first week of the holiday. The Geography Faculty too were busy; 4 colleagues and I took forty Year 9 to 11 pupils to Iceland.

Gulfoss- the spectacular double waterfall - a must-see for all
visitors to Iceland

After a change of head last year (to a geographer), we were encouraged by him to do overseas fieldwork. Our previous head was not keen on promoting overseas trips and with other members of the faculty having young children, the opportunity to go abroad was never taken previously. It was my 4^th trip to Iceland, but as the first two never involved leaving Keflavik Airport, I suppose they don’t really count. My previous trip being an inspection tour last May, where I visited the various sites and experienced the Midnight Sun coming out of a bar at 2am – well it was like dusk really as it was overcast. We originally wanted the trip to be an ‘awe and wonder’ trip but many of the Year 11 pupils were keen to look at the trip as a way of extending their knowledge of case studies. Certainly, the locations we visited lent themselves to new case studies and I will certainly be using Iceland both in the Energy section of the Edexcel A2 course and in the Economic Systems and Energy unit of the Edexcel International GCSE course.

As most of our pupils following the Common Entrance syllabus in Year 7 & 8 at their feeder preparatory schools, they study Plate Tectonics for the exam and therefore doing the Hazardous Environments unit at IGCSE would be too repetitive. Most of our pupils were quite knowledgeable about the formation of Iceland and this made explanations of spreading ridges largely redundant that was probably quite opportune given the howling winds and heavy rain we experienced. It was a little galling that each evening that my wife told me about the glorious weather back home. Needless to say, once I was back at home, the grass was cut, roses and shrubs trimmed and seed potatoes planted all within 48 hours.

Our pupils on the Solheimajokull Glacier

One of the highlights for our pupils (and the staff) was our glacier walk. We originally were supposed to be doing this on our first full day, but a deterioration in weather conditions meant this was postponed for a day – when the weather was little better –though the wind had dropped. As an alternative activity, we visited the Eyjafjallajokull Erupts! Visitors Centre. When I visited Iceland last May, this didn’t exist (neither did the café and toilets at the Solheimajokull Glacier). What it did represent was a wonderful case study of resilience and enterprise, where a farming family who were faced with ruin after their dairy farm was engulfed by volcanic ash, when Eyjafjallajokull erupted, used adversity to their advantage. They recorded the whole episode on video and have used this as a part of an excellent exhibition. I recommend the exhibition at Thorvaldseyri on the main Highway 1 between Selfoss and Vik to any school group going to Iceland.

The Blue Lagoon - always a surreal experience

The Blue Lagoon is always surreal and this year was no different, but visiting an Icelandic swimming pool, late on a Sunday afternoon was a truly relaxing experience and something all teachers taking trips MUST do. A hot tub with a temperature of 40^oC is a must after a busy day of coastal scenery and glacier walking – we even thought about suggesting that we convert one of our faculty offices into what the Icelanders call a ‘Hot Pot’.

Is it Climate Change causing this?

2012 sees the earliest ever start to a first class cricket season. Last Saturday (31^st March), five counties took on five MCC University Centres of Excellence (with another game starting on Sunday) and while the weather was generally dry and fine, it does seem too early for the purists like me. I consulted a copy of Wisden (the cricketer’s bible) from the 70’s to find that the season started in 1978 some 3 weeks later. An earlier edition from the 30’s indicated that the season started a whole 4 weeks later. Is this the impact of climate change?

We do seem to be having earlier Springs with dry warm weather in recent years and pitches appear to ready earlier (our head groundsman at school reckons we could have played cricket at school at the beginning of March). Alas, there is no meteorological reason why the season has started so early as  I have been assured that the reason for the early start this year is related to the Olympics, as  there will be little cricket taking place during the period of the games.

One of my academic interests is Meteorology and I look after our school weather station. Our head groundsman regularly consults me for monthly updates on weather data. Our automatic weather station provides a daily read out of stats for him to use. It’s a also a useful tool for him to use when calculating the amount of extra irrigation needed to water our fields to make then look at their best and provide good surfaces to play on. Incidentally, our Bursar questioned him as to why one area of the playing fields were looking threadbare last Autumn. He was able to quote the rainfall amounts for the period from March until the beginning of October when we had less than 150mm of rainfall. Bizarrely, the warmest weather last year was after the cricket season had ended at the start of October; I recall having a barbeque and all the trimmings at home on October 1^st!

Our winter in Shrewsbury has been remarkably benign, little rain – the Severn only flooded once (for 24 hours) and apart from a three week period at the end of January and beginning of February, frosts were non-existent and we saw only an hour of snow that soon went.

Over the course of the next 4 weeks, I will be blogging weekly and hope to look at a variety of topics including writing for publication, the Geographical Association conference in Manchester, revision exercises and techniques, and of course, my take on my great passion, sport and how it is influenced by, and itself influences our awe-inspiring subject. I shall try to avoid writing about Michael Gove!