(This Blog also appears as a part of the Hodder Guest Blogger website and can be found at
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.
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| 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 4th
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.
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| 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.
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| 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 40oC 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 (31st 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 1st!
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!
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