Geography

Getting to know Miss Stannard nti-Idling Campaign

I loved Geography all throughout school and university, especially physical geography! After working for few years in a normal office job, I missed interacting with geography every day, as it’s such an interesting and dynamic subject. I therefore knew I wanted to teach geography to get back in touch with the subject I am passionate about.

As some of you will know, I used to live and work on a super yacht, and I also spent some time traveling around Australia and parts of Asia when I finished University. My favourite place however has to be Mallorca. The main town Palma has amazing historical architecture and cool tapas bars, and the island itself has beautiful hidden beaches and cute small towns that you can spend days discovering and exploring.

I once spent a few months skiing in New Zealand and stayed in Queenstown on the South Island. This area of new Zealand is so incredibly beautiful, with crystal clear lakes that reflect the surrounding mountains, cool ski slopes and also a world renowned burger restaurant, Fergburger!

I would love to go to India and spend some time as a yoga retreat.

I think the most pressing issue we face as a global community is climate change. One of the first things you can do to help is make sure you understand what is going on; keep up with what is going on in the news and learn as much as you can. Other than that you can make small changes such as riding your bike to school instead of driving or having ‘meat free Mondays’ with your family to help cut back on your meat consumption, as this is one of the leading contributions towards greenhouse gas emissions.

Martha Price, Year 12 The week of 13th May at NHEHS and across the country was Anti-Idling week. One of the biggest problems currently facing us all is the poor air quality caused by car exhaust fumes. As the most vulnerable to the poor air quality are children and young people, it makes it ever more important to switch off our engines, particularly around schools. Despite many cars now having stop-start systems, cars still sit with engines idling, releasing tiny particles into the air which are then inhaled. Around the world, air pollution is the fourth largest killer, causing over 6.5 million deaths annually.

The week consisted of raising awareness for the need to switch off our engines, making people aware of the effects that idling in a car can have. To start the week, we held a poster competition, and put the winner’s poster up near the school, to help raise awareness of this issue. Congratulations to our winners Eleanor Ritchie and Olivia Harris both in Year 10. We also held an assembly to educate everyone in school about this issue, and to promote our anti-idling campaign. We hope everyone will join in and help to improve Ealing’s air quality, and please remember, turn off your engines!

Sophie Levison, Year 11

Geography

rexit Lecture

The Geography department were so lucky earlier this year to welcome Professor Danny Dorling from Oxford University to come and speak to years 10,11,12 and 13 about Brexit prior to the expected date of Britain’s exit from the EU in March. He currently is the Halford Mackinder Professor in Geography at the University of Oxford. He was previously a professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield, and before then a professor at the University of Leeds. Dorling has written many books most recently including in 2018 and in collaboration with Sally Tomlinson explaining how and why different parts of Britain voted to leave or remain in the EU.

Dorling’s lecture was on Brexit and what type of Brexit could occur - hard, soft, or even a last minute cancellation and staying in the European Union. He spoke about the long-term effects on the public, and the questions that especially those in today’s university and school students (who had no vote) are going to be asking about why this has happened and what it means for many years to come.

He also argued how Britain’s geographical status would be affected and whether the UK leaving the EU will damage the image of Britain in the eyes of the rest of the world, or if the British will learn a great deal about themselves as a result of having voted to ‘Leave’. Not least that Britain, and even Brexit, has its roots in the British Empire. He spoke about how Brexit may well be the point at which the English, in particular, finally learn about the importance of geography. Geography is central to Brexit from the Irish border through to the modern day priorities of India. Dorling ended by suggesting that living with the highest rate of income inequality in Europe was our real problem, not being in the EU. The source of our woes was not immigrants or some perceived lack of sovereignty, but of our own making; however many other views are also available and some are even plausible.

The response to the lecture from the students was very positive as Danny Dorling explained the arguments for and against Brexit helping our students to understand the both opinions. Fortunately Brexit has been pushed back to October 31st 2019 allowing the government to come up with a better deal for Britain before our departure from the EU.

Martha Price, Year 12 To our surprise, he only mentioned it once (what a humble man), but he did explain the role of megacities and how growing numbers of these are built in areas of high seismic risk, potentially causing a larger impact to the growing population.

Following lunch, despite starting to become quite tired from sitting for 3 hours, we received a talk from Dr Thorbjorg Agustdottir, an Icelandic Earth Scientist and Senior Geophysicist at Iceland GeoSurvey. She explored the geology of Iceland and volcanic monitoring whilst referring to 3 recent events, Eyjafjallajökull (or E15 for short), 2010, Grímsvötn, 2011, and Bárðarbunga-Holuhraun, 2014-2015.

Following a short break, we had our last lecture of the day conducted by Sue Warn, another Former Chief Examiner; experienced teacher and author. She examined the impacts of more recent earthquakes, like that in Christchurch, New Zealand, addressing concerns about New Zealand’s future, especially their economy. Having studied this during lessons, we found that it helped further our understanding of the event and allowed us to gain greater knowledge of the impact caused.

All in all, it was a very insightful day and my thanks to Miss Stannard for the millionaire’s shortbread, as well as Martin Degg for that questionable group photo.

Tectonics Conference

On Friday 30 November, the Year 12 geographers embarked to Euston Square. We visited Friends House for a day full of lectures orientated around our first A Level physical geography topic, tectonics. From the viewpoint of a geographer, learning about earthquakes, volcanoes and their associated hazards plays a vital role in understanding the reason why countries with varying levels of development deal with disasters in different ways.

Our day began with Iain Stewart, Professor of Geoscience Communications at Plymouth University and specialist presenter with BBC Science. Having travelled the world, Stewart shared his first hand experiences of several natural disasters. These included the Bam earthquake in Iran, during Christmas 2003, and an earthquake in Istanbul, Turkey. As well as explaining the causes of the events, he also expressed how the lack of development in Bam affected their methods of aid and response to the damage caused, in comparison to Istanbul which had slightly better earthquake protection.

Having studied Martin Degg’s (the Head of Department of Geography and International Development at the University of Chester) model as a part of our syllabus, we were excited to see what he would say about it in real life.