Mrs McPhail (Geography Teacher)

Last week, BGS alumna Keira Perkin got in touch. Keira started at BGS in Year 7 in 2018, but returned to USA with her family last Christmas. Her classes in the USA had now finished for the summer, and she wondered if she could surprise her old classmates by popping into our remote geography classroom via Google Meet. With a bit of ICT magic, a plan was set up!

 This term in Geography Year 8 have covered the vast topic of tourism starting first with why people want to visit certain places and the growth of tourism. We have looked at the rise and fall and the rise again of UK seaside resorts such as Blackpool, and the impacts of tourists visiting UK National Parks.  We have also been thinking about external factors impacting tourism especially in the current pandemic which has been thought provoking!

On Wednesday 8CAB were introduced to a new tourism project. To launch it, I asked Keira to get involved and she showed some slides that she had put together of a trip to Mammoth in Arizona earlier in the year. She talked about the geographical features that she had observed and considering the photographs were taken from the car, they were pretty good! It was such a lovely surprise for the girls to hear Keira’s voice and then to see her on the screen. It brought home the extended world of BGS and the ease by which we are able to keep in touch and the importance of this in this period of lockdown.

Keira said: “One of my favourite things about BGS was the variety of lessons.  At my school in the US we have the same lessons every day. It was really fun to see my old classmates in 8CAB and they don’t seem to have changed a bit!”