Filling in the small spaces and finding that the sky doesn't fall in

Primary teacher Gillian Pearson reflects on her NWP experience and how writing in a group seems to be an island of support in the frenetic waters of a busy working life.

I had wanted to join a NWP group for many years. I had loved the creative writing course that Jeni Smith had run while I attended my PGCE course 17 years previously, but I kept putting off joining up again. I was busy learning my teaching craft, and battling life’s battles, and all that business seemed all consuming for many years. Gradually, I started to see small spaces in my life that could be filled with other stuff- fun stuff-life outside of my work, my worries, my family and friends. 

NWP sits very nicely indeed alongside work. The sky didn’t fall in from leaving work early once a month, and joining a lovely little group. I feel a bit sorry for all my friends who haven’t got a Jeni in their lives, as a very special writing mentor. Some people might know lots of people like Jeni - there may be a whole army of these wonderful people out there - but I only know one, and for that I am happy.

The NWP for me is a small gateway into a surprising corner that has special powers, and is almost hidden from everyday life. It is like the school (I love the way many small primary schools are often hidden from the road) and like a book (there is a small perfectly formed world constantly unfolding inside).

Anyway, the group is there. I always go. I never dread going, or feel uneasy about going, or just can’t be bothered going. I go. 

The other teachers there are lovely. I really like them. I feel their struggles and I admire that many are juggling so many things. I like listening to them and sharing with them and making and folding mini books with them. We talk a lot about teaching and writing and life and books.

And in between we write.

We write differently: some in small neat careful handwriting; some after much internal thought and some, like me, all in one go. Get it out, that misspelt scruffy scrawl and read it through later. I see my entire class reflected in our styles. How do I help those writers like myself, and those not like me? These are questions I often ponder.

I quite like writing. I always write with the kids. If I expect them to write something, then I need to feel what that feels like too. What kind of language might be needed? How to engage our audience? What techniques can be drawn upon? If I’m writing with them, then we can have a proper dialogue about the work and share what we have got. My writers aren’t always the best in the world, but they write unhindered, and at length, and are usually very happy to share their work.

I think I am re-learning the importance of sharing from the writers group and from Jeni; to help the children find their voice, to make a mark and create and discuss.

I still have much work to do in learning how to inspire my young followers. My work here is not done. My journey is a long loop. I forever re learn what I have forgotten with new twists and shapes and ripples.

Jeni’s leadership of our group holds slippery answers and golden nuggets. Her flickering inspiration is part of many flickering lights that help shape my teaching, twinkling stars which I dart to and from like I’m forming a dot to dot puzzle of how to teach writing. My little followers might sense this frenetic dance from time to time but that is fine: we are on a journey and NWP is a calm island of support along that long and winding road; one that never judges or asks for evidence or has a success criteria.

It just is - and that for me is enough.

Wellcome Celebrations

The Whodunnit group gathered at Euston’s Wellcome Collection for their regular meeting on Saturday 25th January - where their numbers were swelled by members of other NWP groups, and even some newcomers - to celebrate a decade of the project and to mark the stepping down (but not stepping away!) of one of its co-founders, Simon Wrigley.

Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style coupled with a focus on voice - and then by the exhibitions at the Wellcome: Play Well, Being Human and Misbehaving Bodies - writing was, as ever, varied and distinctive. From Stanislavsky to snails, buckets to bathrooms, cancer to Argos catalogues, writers shared their efforts to say the unsayable. 

Perhaps the dynamic of writing in a space like the Wellcome Collection comes from the disruption afforded by the tension inherent in art and in good museum curation. A disruption that provokes interesting writing.

We raised the roof of the Wellcome’s reading room with diverse voices telling diverse stories on diverse subjects. They were by turns funny, frivolous, far-seeing and philosophical.

The occasion was all that the NWP embodies. It was about using writing as a way of understanding, to explore and to be playful, to permit and to be permissive.

Jeni Smith, the projects’s other co-founder and Simon Wrigley’s partner in crime (this was the Whodunnit group, after all) spoke movingly about Simon’s immeasurable work in setting up and sustaining the NWP: the thousands of miles traversed and thousands of pounds spent in setting up groups up and down the country; a determination to succeed borne of suppressed rage and sadness at the straitjackets imposed on writing teachers in the contemporary educational climate.

Simon was presented, fittingly, with a hand-bound book of writing: of poems, personal messages, stories, and anecdotes from NWP members past and present; each uniquely commemorating the love, esteem, appreciation and gratitude felt for the man and his work. 

So we walk away collectively energised to write - for ourselves first and foremost - and for our students; because the more writing we do, the better we get at writing with them.

Spreading the word

NWP has been spreading the word about Writing Teachers groups at Goldsmith’s University, London.

Co-chairs, Jeni Smith and Emily Rowe received a warm welcome at the University during a recent conference about creative writing in schools. It was a great opportunity to engage with a receptive audience of PGCE students and English teachers. Students and teachers wrote together and spent time discussing how being a part of the NWP can develop individuals both personally and professionally. Jeni and Emily gained a highly positive response, with many seeking information about existing writing groups or how to start one.

“We were reminded of the deep concern felt by many teachers regarding the teaching of English within our current educational system - but we are certainly heartened by the bold and thoughtful teachers and prospective teachers whom we met,” explained Emily.

Happy new year to all, and we hope that the National Writing Project will continue to reach new teacher writers in 2020.

November 2019: Change is afoot

November 2019 Change is afoot at the National Writing Project.

Alongside our shiny new website - and new and invigorated social media platforms - we have plenty of new faces on board to help Simon Wrigley and Jeni Smith move the project forward into its next phase.

At its core, it remains a network of teachers' writing groups, run by teachers for teachers. It is still a grass-roots, not-for-profit, teacher-owned research project that aims to explore writing and find out further answers to the question, 'What happens when teachers gather together to write and share their writing?' But we have done some further thinking about our principles and values, and about how best to promote them.

The first is that we work together to foster and celebrate the authentic voices of teachers and children across all phases of education. That means that in our ‘galleries’ on the website, for example, we will aim to do more celebration of the work that writing teachers and children do. And by ‘authentic’ we mean real writing - writing that diverges from formulaic structures and ‘Lego linguistics’ and encourages genuine independent voices to emerge in the classroom and beyond.

It is taking us a little while to transfer everything over from the old website, but you can still see favourite resources there at https://thenationalwritingproject.weebly.com/ , so fear not, nothing is lost - but please bear with us as we transfer everything over. Meanwhile, happy writing.

October: Sweet Memories

Writing from our own experience is very often a good way to start, and the mixed pleasures of sweets at Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night are a rich vein to tap.

Start with words. List all the names of sweets that you can think of. Refreshers, jelly snakes, Dime bars, gobstoppers…

Read round. One word from each person in turn. Keep going until everyone is out of words. Encourage repetitions. Advise people not to worry if someone has already said something they have on their list, after all, surely you can never have too many sherbet lemons!

Spend a bit of time sharing thoughts and memories about sweets. Remember, perhaps, Roald Dahl’s description of the sweetshop in Boy. Or here is Nigel Slater on ‘The Ritual of the KitKat’. Read the instructions –there is bound to be controversy. And he doesn’t even start on the whole business of eating –nibble the chocolate or bite straight in?

The lost ritual of KitKat-eating: the indescribably enjoyable art tat used to be involved in eating a bar if KitKat before some unimaginative clot decided to repackage it.

Slide the bar from its open-sided wrapper without tearing the wrapper. Do not puncture he gossamer-thin foil. Gently rub your finger over each finger of chocolate to reveal the word ‘KitKat’. Slide your thumbnail down the first of the valleys in between the chocolate fingers, this tearing the foil. (It is important to tear the foil in a straight line, and to keep the edges of the tear as smooth as possible.) Eat, finger by finger, breaking off a new one as you go, rather than all at once.

It must be said that there were some who liked to unwrap their KitKat without cutting the foil Those who did, inevitably also smoothed the foil out afterwards, so that it was completely flat and smooth. They then rolled it up into a tiny ball. Because of its inherent thinness, KitKat foil made a smaller ball than any other chocolate bar.

From Eating for England The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table. Nigel Slater.

Launch into a longer piece of writing. The prompt, really, is the list of sweets and the talk surrounding them. It is a memory of sweets, the buying and the eating of them, the feel and look of them. Whatever comes to you.

Enjoy the stories and memories. More will arise as you read and listen.