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Hear Amy's experience as outreach leader for GeoBus, a mobile outreach project that brings interactive Earth Science workshops into schools across London and the South East.
What is your role and how long have you been at UCL?
I am the outreach leader for the GeoBus, and started working with the project in the Summer of 2019. The GeoBus is a mobile outreach project that brings interactive Earth Science workshops into schools across London and the South East.
What did you get out of it?
I run the GeoBus full-time, taking interactive workshops into schools and teaching students from Year 1 all the way to Year 13. Running events and teaching naturally improves your ability to communicate. Almost immediately I was asked to explain a concept in a different way, I needed to push my understanding to form new links and explain it differently. Even before this was my career, as a PhD student I took part in many engagement events and it was through this experience that I learnt how to explain my research in a way that not only concise, but clear and succinct. Communication skills are not the only boon to taking part in engagement. I always found I walked away with a greater appreciation of my subject, the opportunity to share something you are excited about inspires others and I think it inspires yourself too.
Any advice for someone considering getting into Widening Participation or on the fence about initiating a Widening Participation project?
Make your aims clear with the event or project you wish to run; is it to introduce students to the idea of university or a particular subject? Once you know what the message and the idea you wish your visitors to leave with, its much easier to create an engaging project.
What were you nervous about before doing it?
Before taking on the GeoBus, I was a secondary school Physics Teacher and so I now have a lot of experience speaking in front of groups of students, but I do remember how nervous I was when I started teaching and the worry that the activity I was running wasn’t working/students weren’t engaged. This is always a worry, an activity that could work wonderfully with one group could flop with another, but the key thing is to make sure you have interactive elements and usually if you find what you’re doing interesting, your enthusiasm will show and so the students will find it interesting too.
Highlight moment
There are almost too many to recall a single one. I have run workshops with a massive range of ages and more often than not students will come up at the end of the workshop to ask me more about the subject or the possibly of studying Earth Sciences – it’s an incredible feeling to know you’ve sparked interest in your subject or that you’ve inspired a student.