It’s been a while since the Conference, and I’ve been on some annual leave and playing catch up with work afterwards. But I thought I’d share some reflections and learning – and now that the session downloads are starting to come through, I’ve got time to explore some of the sessions I didn’t get to.

First, congratulations to the whole team – from President to Chief Exec and all at HQ. I think it was a pretty packed conference, and it was delivered smoothly. There were a lot of amazing sessions and speakers, and I felt that most of the timetable blocks had four or five people that I could have easily gone to see or hear. Making decisions was hard – the pathways were nice, but there’s so much going on that it’s easy to feel like you’re missing out, even when you’re there!

It felt like there were some emerging themes across a number of sessions: the concepts of power, representation and ‘whose Geography’ have now firmly established themselves at the heart of the conference conversation. It also felt like there were a lot of conversations about sustainability – embedding the curriculum, the actions and the attitudes in to schools beyond just the geography classrooms; and there were also powerful themes of inclusion in terms of literacy (oracy, perhaps, next year?) and supporting EAL learners, as well as inclusion for the financial context of many schools and learners. I’m fascinated by the dynamic of what appears at Conference – and whether it drives the conversations in schools, or is driven by it and the wider circumstances. Clearly, there’s elements of both – a dialogue between Conference and the rest of the community and wider school geography.

There was a lot to love about the venue and the conference delivery, although there’s always considerate reflections (e.g. from Salaam Geographia) on how we can include more people, and make our spaces and community more diverse and inclusive. There are definitely better and more expert voices to listen to on how we improve our attendance and inclusivity of the whole community (perhaps even above and beyond the GA’s membership!), but one of the key elements that I’d reflect on is the discussion of cost. Clearly, the rail strike didn’t help anyone’s travel to and from Conference – though I guess Alanis would be proud at how many conversations happened about transport at a Geography event. But ticket prices are high, and travel and hotels put the conference out of reach for a significant proportion of teachers – particularly in a world where neither schools nor universities are likely to be subsidising professional development in the way they perhaps used to! I’m lucky to be able to come to conference – but how do we work together to make sure that everyone can, who wants to?

Learning Highlights:

For me, conference is always a space where I get to learn lots about things from expert practitioners. This year, I was really keen to learn more about literacy and supporting students in the classroom – and was delighted to be able to hear from real experts!

Emily Chandler’s (@ChandlerGeog) work is something we’ve already incorporated in to our training programme, but her talk this year on using a range of texts in the classroom will be incorporated in to our training as soon as I can make the edits. The need to look at reading as a fundamental driver of success in assessment (GL Reports, 2020), as well as the beating heart of the lesson was a really powerful message. As well as learning from other practice (e.g. Scaffolded Reading Experiences (Graves & Graves, 2003) drawn from English pedagogies), Emily’s session was also an awesome reminder of the *use* of texts to create, inspire or reimagine geographical worlds, rather than simply to read and download information.

As a bit of an old cynic about some of the hype around generative AI and tools in education (are they cool? Yes. Are they as smart as they claim? No. Are they going to revolutionise everything? Probably not… see interactive whiteboards), the modelled use of ChatGPT and specific tools to support literacy accessibility was actually really impressive. I’ll be taking away Diffit (https://web.diffit.me/) and Wordsift (https://wordsift.org/) as tools to scale up and down text for different reading ages, and to simply and powerfully create resources that serve the learners’ needs and development of the vocabulary and structures of learning! So thank you, Emily – not just for the demo of tools, but also the reminder to challenge my own cynicism at times!

Briley Habib (@Map_Addict) & Bethany Aldridge (@msaldrgeog) followed that up with another  masterclass on supporting EAL learners in the classroom, that’s also going to be incorporated in to our training programme as quickly as I can edit it! I loved the practical examples and work, balanced against the academic and researched rigour – delighted to learn more to support some of the techniques and ideas that Emily’s session had raised earlier. The worked examples showed the full effect of breaking the link between reading comprehension and success Ricketts et al. (2014) and the balances of cognitive science thinking needed in a Cummins’ Quadrants & Matrix.

Presenting Highlights:

Although a number of expert colleagues from phase committees and special interest groups were leading sessions, my presenter involvement was relatively limited this year. I was delighted that a number of my Teach First colleagues were able to lead sessions at conference, and I’m delighted to see Jessica and Helen’s expert thinking on supporting non-specialists and Stefan’s discussion of how we support and encourage Geography candidates for university on Friday. Well earned dinner on the Friday night for the presentation team, and it’s always great to talk to colleagues about what we’re doing in Teach First’s training programme and how we can learn from others.

Rather unusually, my highlight of Conference was being hugely proud (and a tiny bit of tech support) for my wife, Marianne, who spoke as an expert in the offshore wind sector. Although I’m sort of used to hearing some explanations at home, after a day of hybrid working, to see her expertise and knowledge in a lecture theatre in a geography conference was a really unexpected Saturday experience. I think it encapsulated the Presidential theme for the year beautifully: there’s so much geography in other spaces, if only we can connect with the people doing it to see inside their worlds. Thankfully, she was willing to come and volunteer at this event – we couldn’t have afforded to pay her normal speakers’ fees and charge-out rates!

Conference is a brilliant event to bring friends together, and renew one’s love for geography and the community – but I’d love to support and see that bring more people in every year. We’re a big tent of ideas, perspectives and approaches – and the more people and experience we hear from and share, the better our community is.

I take that mission as part of how we approach our training programme too – and so if we connected at conference, or if you think you’d like to work with us, or find out more about what we’re doing in Teach First Geography, then please do get in touch with me! Look forward to seeing you next year!