Unidade formativa 2: mecanizado, soldadura e metroloxía

An important theme which emerged from the final interviews was the significance of

students’ identity as a writer, the degree of agency they enjoy and their ownership of their work. This was often expressed in terms of choice, enjoyment and particularly freedom. In some cases, other forms of freedom are associated with the new pedagogy, from ‘shoes off,

on the floor’ (Ann) to ‘I allow the children to go off and write wherever they want in the school.’ (Rosa). While freedom to choose may have been challenging to students at first –in

Ann’s words, ‘… they’re like, what do I have to do? How many pages do I have to write?’ – learners seem to have adjusted their idea of what it means to be a writer in school and free writing was universally reported to be highly popular.

Enjoyment was frequently linked to freewriting and also referred to more widely. Tina argued that children who enjoy writing will ‘do more’ and ‘get better at it’. Emily contrasted her class’s eventual enthusiasm with their attitude at the outset: ‘telling the kids they were going

to be doing a writing project, that was like telling them they were going to the dentist for a week.’ Several talked of the importance of ownership. For Tina, this meant, ‘….the ideas are more coming from the children rather than me.’ Charlotte linked this change back to her

Arvon experience: ‘I think the different techniques and things that were used on the Arvon

residency that we then tried to employ in our classrooms gave that ownership back to the children.’ For Molly, learners ‘taking ownership of their writing, and then feeling like writers and being writers’ was a turning point and it is noticeable how several of the teachers

positioned their students as fellow writers at this point. Emily believed that parents’ reports of students writing from choice at home is ‘about them seeing themselves as a writer’.

Charlotte and Ann both talked of a growing writer identity in terms of confidence in one’s own abilities. Beth said that her own confidence as a writer makes her comfortable to see her students as writers too. The inclusion of personal experience within the writing regime –both

59 in freewriting and in planned activities- promoted the inclusion of personal identity in the text: in Rosa’s words, ‘If children can bring little nuggets of their own experiences in life into

their writing it brings the piece of writing alive.’ Molly saw the fostering of writer identity as

her key responsibility as a teacher of writing: ‘My role as a teacher I think is to inspire children to want to write and to be writers.’

4.7 Discussion

Before their engagement with the Teachers as Writers project it is clear that, in many ways all the teachers in the study felt themselves to be very capable at the task of writing and they were also easily able to explain their skills, knowledge, dispositions and experiences. Normally this would be enough to allow us to say that they all had a writer identity. However, at that time, fewer than half were prepared to declare that identity and many expressly denied it. It may be that there is a distinction to be made between an enacted identity and one which is personally acknowledged. Alternatively, the discrepancy may be due to the teachers’ view of what a writer is. Perhaps at the pre-intervention stage the majority were best considered as latent or incipient writers.

At the same time, all were comfortable to see themselves as teachers confident in explaining their teacher role. Almost all, expressed enthusiasm for teaching writing, and most could link their personal experience as writers to the way they teach writing.

By the end of the Arvon experience, the elements of a writer identity discernible in the pre- Arvon interviews seem to have been consolidated by the residential week; almost all were willing to at least accept and in many cases embrace the title ‘writer’. In part this was due to a shift in the way being a writer (and in some cases, identity itself) was understood, but there was also, overwhelmingly a greater commitment to this identity. The supportive writing community played a significant role in this transformation.

How the purpose of writing was seen had also changed. In the early interviews the majority of writing mentioned was for clarifying ideas, communicating and teaching. After Arvon, the power of writing to encapsulate and express emotions gained greater and greater importance.

Teacher identities were maintained through the residential. Furthermore, all talked of ways in which the Arvon experience can be said to have developed or extended their teacher identity. Many spoke of ways of bringing what they had learnt during the week into their classroom. This was not just in terms of what might be seen as ‘skills’ and ‘activities’, but also of how they would frame the task of writing, of creating an environment for writing and of building a supportive community of writers. Several talked about how they empathised more strongly with the young writers in their charge. These statements appear to have been more than good intentions, as those teachers who were interviewed more than a term after the project’s formal conclusion spoke of many ways in which they had put them into action. In fact the evidence of these interviews was that not only had writer identities been maintained, they had been strengthened and enriched by further writing and teaching.

The doubts some expressed in the initial interviews about the value of grammar-based teaching resurfaced more strongly, partly in opposition to a renewed commitment to

60 approaches seen as more ’creative’, and some suggested ways in which the latter could be fostered without disruption from the demands of the former. Creative approaches to writing were far from new to the teachers, but as with many other aspects of ‘writerly’ teaching, for many of them they had been lying dormant, thanks to other demands. Evidence of this tension persisted into the final interviews, but again the intentions to accommodate ‘creative’ and ‘free’ writing activities alongside the required curriculum seem to have been realised. Only a small number of participants talked explicitly immediately after Arvon of bringing their writer identity into the classroom, though there was much talk of using Arvon-style activities and also of empathy with younger writers. The final interviews, however showed that all in some way were bringing that identity to bear in their teaching.

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Leaving

I walk through early morning streets, I’m up before they can worry me, make my way down Sheepmarket Hill past the early morning taxi queue. The sloping churchyard cemetery wall, familiar to me now,

seems to have shrunk in size from when my four year old feet trod it bravely, unwarily.

Coffee shops not yet open,

Spar, centrally place by the Corn Exchange, a meeting place, the market square

devoid of bustle this early.

Up Salisbury Street the bus trundles almost passenger less at this hour the steepness of the hill

exaggerated by the engine’s pull. I remember mum climbing this hill at the end of one of her cycling jaunts body upright, pushing on the pedals. I pray not to belong to this town To stay here, live here, die here in this green, smothering valley.

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