Four of the writers articulated a clear personal sense of purpose for their role as writers in schools. One writer downplayed the teaching about writing and emphasised instead the experience for children of seeing the human face of being a writer. For another, it is about helping children to recognise ‘that everyone can tell a story’ and ‘that every child is capable of
writing something that’s unique and that could be really, really good – they’ve all got that within them.’ The distinction between being a writer who has ‘no agenda’ and a teacher who
has to worry about ‘marks and all the rest of it’ can mean that the author visit is positively positioned as a ‘fun day’ although this same writer did also note that he had to try to make the teachers ‘feel like you’re not a threat.’
Closely linked to the idea of a purpose for writer visits to schools was the theme of writing as
empowerment as an expressed specific aim for what the writer visits might achieve. Five of
the writers made some kind of reference to a desire to enable children to see ‘how interesting
and rewarding writing is’. One writer described how the teacher he worked with grew from
being not very sure of herself as a writer to someone who was able to share her writing and see its personal impact: 'when she read her writing out she broke down in tears … it was very
powerful.’ The sense that writing is strongly about social justice and ‘a kind of tool towards equality’ was very important to one writer, who felt that writing was ‘liberating’. The
potential of writing to empower was both at a very personal level, writing for ‘their own
pleasure and benefit’ about things that matter to them, but also about realising the power of
the written word.
Linked to these comments about the purpose of the writer visits to school and the desire to enable to children to see writing as empowerment, was a clutch of reflections by writers on the success and satisfaction derived from school visits. These comments all related to witnessing change happening in a classroom: one writer found that one class’s ‘engagement
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was really exhilarating’ and another recorded her pleasure when ‘children who haven’t really written much poetry before suddenly realise they can do it … and it’s so exciting to see them being inspired.’ Or as one writer put it: ‘I’ve managed to unlock something.’
The final two codes in this section relate more to reflections on the nature of their visits to schools. Four of the writers talked about the idea of their ‘visits as a show’, characterised by a fairly routinised approach to each one that is often repeated, which they ‘tend to deliver in a
similar way’ each time. There was a recognition that ‘it’s very easy after a while to go into an act when you’re being the writer.’ In these comments was an underlying sense that this is not
the best way to work with schools. One writer reflected that if visits are not ‘planned properly
and they’re not done in collaboration with the teacher, they can be more show.’ For another,
this model was little more than ‘a nice wallpapering job where people come out with a nice
piece of work’. These comments are both self-critical, in terms of treating a writer in school
visit as a stand-alone performance, but also critical of schools in approaching a writer visit as a special but disconnected event, and not embedding it within any kind of curriculum continuity.
The most frequently occurring response in this writers in schools set of codes were comments which refer in some way to the temporality of the visit. To an extent, this set of comments links closely to the previous code reflecting on the one-off show visit. There was a sense of some frustration at this, on one level because ‘you go into a class you haven’t met […] before’ or because they usually work with ‘many year groups’, meaning that there is no time to build relationships or to understand the context of the students. Underpinning these comments appears to be a concern that the potential of writers’ expertise is not being fully realised in the way these visits are arranged and handled. In the light of this, perhaps it is not surprising that the remaining comments on the temporality of their in-school experiences related to the time involvement with teachers on the project itself. Unusually, the project did create more sustained opportunities with writers attending the professional development days, co- planning with the teachers, and having two co-teaching lessons. All of these comments indicate that they would have liked ‘more time and space’ alongside teachers and in classrooms.
8.5
Discussion
Most essentially, writers on the Teachers as Writers project gave voice to their very strong writer identities. The story of each writer is of course individual, but common to many was a belief in writing as a therapeutic act, even a ‘life saver’. Several also spoke of needing to in some way write from their hearts, explicitly positioning their writing as a way of understanding themselves as people. Not surprisingly, this influenced the model of writing that they proposed to teachers and students in the classroom, speaking of writing as an
‘important way for children to understand more about their relationship with the world and their sense of their place in the world’. Far from a romanticised view of writing, however,
107 writers on the project also emphasised the messiness of the writing process, including the importance of revision and rewriting ‘I re-write all the time … almost sentence by sentence’. They also stressed the importance of freewriting to liberate ideas, which one writer called ‘a
principle of experimentation’.
In a similar vein, writers also underlined that for many writing was something of a struggle, which often felt more like a hard slog requiring ‘sheer bloody mindedness’ to get things finished. They spoke explicitly of writing as ‘practice’, ‘discipline’ and challenge. Nevertheless, at the end of this not always smooth process, they spoke of their commitment to a new process of being judged by others. They spoke of editors as being ‘ruthless but also very
encouraging’, a nicely weighted and gently paradoxical phrase which summarises the realistic
appraisal of the entirety of the writing process that they so relished. Central to writers’ identities was their extensive craft knowledge of writing. This hinges on something of a paradox. There was limited articulation of craft knowledge when asked directly, but substantial evidence of in-depth craft knowledge in their answers to other questions, for example the ‘learning curve of working on plot structure, rather than just randomly jumping
down absolutely everything that was in my head’. Each of these constructs of writing is
complex and owned by individual writers after years of practice. It is encouraging to note that writers took this enthusiastic yet realistic model of writing into the project classrooms and that they were at pains to present it to the teachers and students they worked with.
One of the more challenging aspects of the project for the writers was the co-mentoring element. For many, it stimulated significant re-thinking of their roles, surprising some, and forcing a reconceptualization of the role of the writer in schools. As one put it, co-mentoring turned out to be ‘a much more important experience than I expected it to be’. The ‘very
careful dance’ of collaboration noted above was common to many writers’ experience,
prompting them to favour a shift away from previously tried and often successful working practices such as one-off events. One writer aware that she was able to create a great atmosphere and enjoyment over the course of a single day, also acknowledged post the project that she was perhaps not achieving much in terms of changing students’ thinking about writing: ‘the show might be all glitzy and they all might go oh/ah but actually what are
they taking away?’
Another impact was to encourage writers to think differently about how they worked alongside teachers and become ‘open to a bit more collaboration’, establishing ‘more
involvement from them.’ Parallel to this change in writers’ thinking was a greater awareness
and understanding of teachers’ roles and pressures in the current high stakes context. Finally, writers gained greater understanding of the benefits of being ‘direct’ with students about how to improve their writing, including the ‘grittier’ aspects of drafting such as cutting favourite passages of description which were not germane to the plot or character development. Taken together, a shift can be seen in writers’ perceptions of teaching, of working alongside teachers and students, and of the role of professional writers in school. It is one of the more interesting paradoxes of the project that this shift took place whilst writers’ own identities remained as strong, even fixed, as ever. This work has much to teach the education profession about the potential benefits of schools working with practising artists.
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Panic
“I’m in no hurry”
Sidling closer, dragging his chair, “I can wait”.
A twisting knot of tension I try to quell, Pulse of my heart’s pounding in my ears, I long for a steadying hand on my shoulder.
Exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale.
What’s the worst that could happen? That inner voice.
That mealy-mouthed misery.
“They’re all dead you know – every single one…..” Panic sits stoically in the corner, biding his time.
No light seeps through the windows,
No respite from the morbid visions marooned in my mind’s eye, No sounds distract the rising urge to pace.
My clammy hands fidget. Kettle boils again,
Cup Tea Milk
Clanking spoon on china
Fridge shut – my skin briefly cooled Phone
His voice
Warmth surges back through vein to capillary, Nerve endings alive again
I drink my tea and hum.
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