A cross-posting from LivingGeography.
From Practical Pedagogies over the half term holiday...
Toast, juice and coffee then off to get the coach to St. George's School which is in the countryside just outside Cologne.
Met Russ the organiser again, and registered for the event. Check out Russ's websites here.
The opening keynote was given by Hywel Roberts, who was once again a wonderful speaker with great humour and touching stories as well as a reminder of the importance of our stance with the young people we teach. He did the same job at the previous event six years earlier, and set up the two days perfectly.
I headed to set up for my session and make sure the technology was working for me.
You can view the slides on this link all being well. Contact me if you want to know more.
There was a good group of people in the room, including Hywel, who was generous in his comments.
One of the sections connects a recent book by Alan Garner called 'Powsels and Thrums' with the idea of a palimpsest, and then attempting to link that to the idea of scraping back to a curriculum that makes sense.
We tend to have small elements of previous curriculum decisions lingering, even though we have papered over: a little like peeling back layers of wallpaper in a house to see the different colour choices of previous decades. These surfaces, which can be scraped back and reused are named palimpsests after the vellum used by monks.
Over 31 years you accumulate a lot of ideas, pass through a lot of educational fads and sometimes need to strip back to the bare wood.
For those unfamiliar, the powsels and thrums are the bits left over after a weaver has completed a piece of work. Garner's family were weavers and they were able to keep the bits and weave them into something new. Curriculum is tapestry, and also as Eleanor Rawling said a mixture of careful organisation and thinking... plus serendipity.
After that, I went to a session organised by my friend David Rogers. He is writing a book about Enquiry and he shared some of his own ideas on what geographical enquiry is and how his ideas have shifted as he has moved through his career. It was good to see David back presenting.
I look forward to his book, which is due out in 2023.... or will that be 2025?
Top image: Russel Tarr
Bottom image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license on Flickr
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