On Sunday 12th June, two Norwich School pupils had the unusual opportunity of speaking at the Ninth International Congress on Arctic Social Sciences, held at the University of Umeå in Sweden.
Addressing an audience of academics and post-graduate students, Lauren Reid-Edwards (U6V) and Tom Brandford (L6N) described their experience participating in the Norwich Model Arctic Council (NORMAC), first hosted at Norwich School in July 2016 and then again in April 2017.
NORMAC is an experiential learning initiative in which pupils play the role of Arctic diplomats seeking consensus on the issues faced by this unique part of the world. It was developed by Dr Speca, who was a civil servant in Arctic Canada before becoming a teacher at Norwich School. Dr Speca was present at the Congress in Umeå, and he spoke about the NORMAC concept before introducing Lauren and Tom via Skype.
One of the academics in the audience later told Dr Speca that it had been one of the most interesting speaker panels he had attended. Lauren and Tom were praised for the reflective and articulate way in which they expressed their views and answered questions.
Dr Speca would like to thank both of them for taking part, and for serving with such maturity as ambassadors for the school.
The next NORMAC conference is scheduled to take place at Norwich School in February 2018 – for more details, please see http://www.normac.org/.