Geography Support Blog

Geography Support Blog now open...

If you have an idea for a post, please get in touch...

More support...

Many thanks to those colleagues who attended, or contributed remotely to, the meeting today in Derbyshire.

The aim of the meeting was to discuss (and we certainly did lots of that) the support that is currently provided by the GA to teachers, and also those who support teachers, and whether there were areas that could be developed further.

Some discussion points were raised from the results of a survey of Suffolk teachers carried out the week previously, and also from some of the comments on the blog post, and also some personal e-mails, plus a few tweets...

Thanks also to David Rayner for the CfBT update as well.

Some discussion points that I think it would be worth sharing to see what you think of them: all comments are very welcome !

There is also currently a 'related' thread on SLN started by Stuart Hitch. More to come on this next week...

Supporting Geography Teachers

Tomorrow, an event will take place in a hotel in Derbyshire to discuss some key issues for geography teacher support.

The Geographical Association has supported geography teachers ever since it was formed, but the nature of that support has to reflect a rapidly changing educational landscape. This means that it is perhaps time to consider the nature of the support that teachers want, and how the GA can provide it.

Some questions to think about:

What additional support do Geography teachers want / need, and in what format is this best delivered ? 

What kinds of support are possible / practical / desirable ?

How can this support best be provided ? 

What are the barriers to this ?

How can we let the ‘hard to reach’ know that the support is available and encourage them to make use of it ?

We hope to produce a resource to use by members of SGNG, which will hopefully evolve during the day as discussions are captured, and then be available after the event as an interactive resource...

You can contribute to the meeting in several ways – importantly, this can be done by those who can't attend in person.

1. Add a post to Twitter with the tag #sgng giving your thoughts on any of the questions that have been suggested – feel free to retweet (don’t worry if that means nothing to you...) 

2. Log in to the ETHERPAD document which has been created and make your contributions – remember to add your name and choose a contrasting colour: E-MAIL ME FOR THE DOCUMENT's URL

3. Join the Supporting Geography Network Group on the GA’s NING (http://geographical.ning.com) , and you will see some discussions which have been started around the key questions. Feel free to add a reply to one of those discussions

4. Add a comment to this blog post.

5. E-mail me for an invitation to the FLASH MEETING that has been booked for the afternoon session, when hopefully things will start to be pulled together to form a statement of aims for the new group.

6. Keep an eye out for the new GEOGRAPHY SUPPORT blog, which will continue to grow as the support develops.

Supporting Geography Network Group

A week to go until the meeting of the group to discuss ways of supporting geography teachers further...

You can contribute to the meeting in several ways – importantly, this can be done even if you can’t attend in person.

1.       Add a post to Twitter with the tag #sgng giving your thoughts on any of the questions that have been suggested – feel free to retweet (don’t worry if that term means nothing to you...)

2.      Log in to the ETHERPAD document which has been created and make your contributions – remember to add your name and choose a contrasting colour. You will need to request a login for the Etherpad document - if you are in the group, you should find this on the draft agenda that was sent round last week.

3.       Join the Supporting Geography Network Group on the GA’s NING (http://geographical.ning.com) , and you will see some discussions which have been started around the key questions. Feel free to add a reply to one of those discussions

4.       Add a comment to the blog post that I will put on my Living Geography blog the day before the event: http://livinggeography.blogspot.com