Location, Location, Location

South Downs NWP convenor and secondary English teacher Theresa Gooda remembers the power of space after lockdown and restrictions.

During 2021’s October half term I was lucky enough to escape west in my very rusty, old camper van for a few peaceful days in Dorset (we won’t talk about the alarming noises the engine made on the 350 mile round trip from Sussex). What a forgotten pleasure after repeated lockdowns and no travel for so long.

Each morning I woke up green hills and pheasants crowing, and was able to fling open the doors (on the non-raining days at least) and the luxury of writing my morning pages from bed - with the landscape in touching distance. It was awesome, in the old-fashioned sense of that word, and got me thinking about the importance of space and location in writing once again.

The South Downs NWP group has always favoured environment and landscape. Our very first meeting, back in 2013, took place on a busy summer’s day in the Pavilion Gardens in Brighton. Since then we have written along the banks of the Arun, on beaches, in museums, in tea shops, pubs, and once in a lifeboat rescue centre. Location seeps into the writing, sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes slipping in quietly like the gentle chatter in a cafe. I’m fascinated by the ways that the character of writing changes depending on where we are.

Each NWP group has its own way of working, and most of us are enjoying remembering and rediscovering those ways as we revert back from more than 18 months of online meeting and writing. For now, South Downs NWP are continuing to meet via Zoom, but I’m looking forward to planning our next adventures in different spaces.

Gathering the Clans

NWP secretary and Wembley group convenor Alison Jermak explores the different ways that writing can be performative.

Reading Rebecca White’s poem ‘Dear Gavin’ makes me think about the performative elements of writing as a member of a writing group, or as a member of a class in which everyone (including the teacher) is writing together. Why is it important that the teacher is writing with the class? Because they become a participant, not a judge or a critic.

When starting to write we enter an ‘uncertain space’. This can appear as the blank sheet of paper, or when writing in a group or class, we are also conscious of the people in our writing environment. What characterises the kind of writing that NWP UK practices is the spontaneity of the writing (unplanned) and the performance of sharing this writing by reading it aloud to the group.

Although Rebecca’s poem is addressed to our current Education Secretary, she is really writing to her group in her time: herself and her colleagues. Through writing together, she is able to redefine who teachers are in our current context of politicians using the media to try and manipulate public opinion of teachers. Upon reading her writing aloud to her teachers’ writing group for the first time, it’s dramatic, disruptive, it’s being right in the middle of the action. In my experience in a classroom, when children begin to write together for their audience and read it aloud, this is when writing really comes alive for everyone present.

Sharing writing aloud within a group or class is also the importance of being listened to and acknowledged; not only that the meanings that you are communicating matter, it is also the meanings that you are reaching for, for this is culture in the making.

Let’s also consider the performative element of teachers repeatedly gathering in public places and writing together:

What teachers are doing is practising writing in the way that they would like to teach it.

Celebrating the Spread

South Downs NWP Convenor and secondary English teacher, Theresa Gooda, shares her experience of writing as part of the UKLA Teachers’ Writing Group.

As we pass ‘Freedom Day’ and the heightened messages about ‘stopping the spread’, it has been wonderful to welcome a different sort of spread: the proliferation of teachers’ writing groups. It is heartening, in these troubled times, to know that the practice of teachers writing, the opportunity for personal reflection about writing, and the possibility of changing practice through regular dialogic conversations with colleagues about writing, continues to spread.  Because we know, of course, that voice (in writing as well as speech) is ‘created’, both unconsciously but also deliberately constructed, in dialogue with other voices (Bakhtin, 1986).

As well as being privileged to lead the South Downs NWP group, and recently been invited to be part of the wonderful UEA NWP group, I have also lately participated in a new venture at UKLA: their Teachers’ Writing Group, run by Ross Young at Writing 4 Pleasure. They share similar principles with NWP about being part of a community that promotes research-informed writing teaching, and about the importance of being a writing teacher generally. 

Like much of our lockdown and post-lockdown life, meetings are remote, via Zoom. In the first meeting, in early June, participants were invited to experiment with dabbling as an idea generation technique alongside the reading of a children’s book. 

In July’s meeting, the work of writer-teacher Peter Elbow was championed, and in particular the value of free writing. 

Mostly though, the group achieved that joyful, valuable thing we all need: of carving out space and time to write. I’m already looking forward to August’s meeting.

Giving voice to the things inside

Teacher Writer Katie Kibbler shares her NWP journey - and tips for curing a hangover…

I joined NWP’s Whodunnit group towards the end of 2017. I had known about NWP since I was a PGCE student in 2014, when Simon Wrigley had been to give a workshop on book-making at the Cambridge Faculty of Education. I hadn’t attended a group because I’d always found an excuse: I’d start when I’d completed my NQT year; I’d never be able to make 10am meets on a Saturday morning; I didn’t have time, I didn’t have energy, Friday evenings in the pub poisoned all my creative juices and I couldn’t write on a hangover. After three years at my first school, in 2017 I had decided to leave and join the Children’s Hospital School at GOSH and UCH. The move gave me the freedom, time and sleep that I just hadn’t had as a newbie teacher in a high-octane inner London academy. 

A few weeks into my new job, I stumbled onto the NWP website while trying to find some creative writing prompts for a student and found the list of teacher writing groups. I emailed Simon, the group leader for Whodunnit. This wasn’t the first time - I’d emailed him a year before, and chickened out of attending. Apparently forgiving my previous flakiness, Simon was very warm in his reply, and gave me the joining details: I was very welcome, writing expertise was not a prerequisite, and in a lovely twist of chance, the group would next meet in the Wellcome cafe - a twenty minute cycle from my home, purveyor of excellent cakes, and promisingly friendly in name. I told myself I’d just turn up, do one session, and if I was terrible I could just abandon it on the pile of my other failed whims, along with rocket yoga, jam-making and knitting giant snoods. 

I arrived sweaty and windswept, slung my bike up on Euston Road and pushed through the revolving doors into the shiny calm of the museum. Saturday sluggishness became a nervous fizz, as I found most of the group already set up, cafe tables pulled together, hands wrapped around frothy coffees in thick turquoise cups - and my new colleague, Emma, perched on a stool. We hadn’t discussed the group together - neither of us knew the other would be there - and the coincidence was confirmation that I had come to the right place, both in terms of the group and my new school. The session ended with the group sharing our morning’s writing upstairs in the reading room and being told off for too much giggling. I had approximately zero regrets about attending, and since then I’ve tried to attend every meet (even during a hiatus in Uganda last year, I used the prompts remotely). Completing my journey from scared, sheepish, semi-coherent-on-a-Saturday starter to fully-fledged NWP enthusiast, I jumped at the chance to double my writing group attendance when Alison, a Whodunnit stalwart, invited us to join her Wembley group too. 

In the groups, we take time to reflect on the process of writing as a person and as a professional: a teacher, and a human. What I knew but didn’t understand was that I had always written (from painful teenage poetry to spoof features in a university newspaper to silly blogs about early-career car crashes in the classroom) - but nothing I’d regard as ‘proper’ writing. If I couldn’t be Dylan Thomas or Zadie Smith, what was the point? What NWP has shown me is that the point for us (as teachers, as humans) is the same as it is for our young people: to give voice to the things inside that we don’t always find the place or time to say; to do something we find creative, good and challenging; to feel part of a supportive community; to look closely at and set in context the small and extraordinary and banal and enormous things we don’t have time to in the rush of an ordinary timetable. Nobody cares if it is 'good' or 'bad', or agrees on what those qualities look like. Whenever I find the mean voice of necessity trying to stymie the pure, free-wheeling pleasure of a free-write, or the unpretty bloom of an idea, I speak to myself the words of reassurance I’d offer a student: writing is not self-indulgent, it is being alive to the world around you. It isn’t egoism to write; it is empathy.

It sounds dramatic, but being part of the NWP groups has changed my teaching and my life (and made me see how much of our life we put into teaching, and how much teaching gets into life - how porous that boundary is). I am now teaching in the mainstream classroom again, and credit our NWP writing groups with helping preserve my sense of self when I’m at home (or away, as I was last year), and when I’m standing firm about the type of teacher I want to be in school: the type who runs Creative Writing Club using the same format as our teacher writing groups (albeit in slightly less stately surroundings than a London gallery, with less caffeine and more crisps); who tries to model creative writing as a point about courage, process and spontaneity, instead of precision, assessment objectives and attainment. I have recycled whole NWP sessions as two-hour writing workshops for my Year 10s in a bid to avoid death by GCSE practice papers - the students’ writing was miles better than normal, and so was my lesson planning. And in a less soaring-strings orchestral epiphany kind of way, being part of NWP has improved my (wait for it) marking, feedback and analysis, too: it’s so much more natural and genuine for me to say what I think is interesting about a piece of writing, why it is working, how it is working and what it is making me feel and think, now that I’ve started to regularly get inside writing myself and drive the car - and now it’s not the sleek ride of self-reflexive non-fiction, but the honest, unfinished chaos of a soapbox racer. It’s made me simultaneously more rigorous about teaching writing, and more compassionate; speaking from a position of ‘I do this too, and we are in this together’ is so powerful for the students. The teacher gets to be the person who writes with us, not the master who presents the task of writing to us. 

Please, go and find your own NWP group - and if there isn’t one close, make your own! Whatever excuses you’re making for yourself, stop. For what it’s worth, I’m pleased to report that there’s no hangover a coffee and a communal writing session won’t help. 

What writing has done for me

Sam Brackenbury reflects on his NWP writing experiences

Prior to this year, I had found it difficult to commit to regular writing; meaning, aside from note taking and planning, I only wrote when attending a writing meeting each month. Work and keeping up with friends or family had prevented a habit forming but this year I have managed to keep to writing at least four times a week in the evenings, which has been extended to almost every night during this period of lockdown!

The spaces I use for writing depend on the weather and the task at hand.  Usually, I’ll write at the centre of the house or out in the garden facing the apple tree and blackberry bush, always surrounded by background noise and the quiet goings on of others so that part of my brain that refuses to rest is slowly guided into stillness and focus.

The writing for myself is usually splurged and instinctive, responding to thoughts, words or prompts. In the best moments, I tend to keep my pen busy in the knowledge that the act of writing will eventually help me produce the words I need: an established idea, a thought explored or a turn of phrase I am happy with. It is often messy, with asterisks or shapes signalling revisions and after thoughts, and rarely will I look back at a piece of writing a day later. Once it is written it is written!

When in groups, the writing I enjoy most is the creation of lists. I like the free-writing and the many directions this takes your thoughts before the discussion of words, listing and listening; enjoying the connections and sounds as collections are shared.

The wonder when a random run of words incidentally creates something interesting, funny or poignant is always magic.

The best lists always include carefully chosen words, based on sound, shape or personal meaning, or highlight the hidden magic in everyday language, never the fabled ‘wow words’. Much of this is in the performance of a word or phrase as the words that are used.

When writing at length or by myself, I find memoir by far the most interesting and successful form of writing. I think this is because there is always something specific to latch onto, something about good food or “A time you have itched (physically or metaphorically)” for instance, which helps you start. For me, memoir also guides my brain and thoughts to link the past events to present matters through the people, events or sentiments in each piece. It might be something trivial, usually surrounding a want for food, or something more meaningful like something to be done or avoided, a connection to re-establish or a useful reflection to guide future decisions.

Having recently committed to setting aside time in the week to write for myself, I want to try and continue to do so consistently. I know that the act of writing improves the teaching of writing so I hope I can sustain the habit in the knowledge that this will enrich my practice.

Writing teachers has formed a key part of my professional development for the past six years. Just as the act of writing stimulates writing (Elbow), the act of writing with other teachers develops your teaching of writing and your role as the chief facilitator in a community of writers. The sessions improve your awareness of the complexities and emotional investment that come with creating, meaning that you are more empathetic when listening, appraising and establishing routines for critique. A ‘thank you’ has always become a custom response at any level of critique after so all contributions feel valued and I endeavour to explain how an idea has made me think or feel as often as possible. This level of sensitivity extends to offering how much someone might like to share, even if it is usually the whole piece! Equally, word and sentence level discussions exploring how words work together occur almost daily so that children get regular opportunities to orally compose and explore whilst recognising the strength in shared composition. Until recently, I found these functioned best in shared or guided writing however a small project involving paired writing with rather young writers demonstrated that the climate . Attending writing meetings contributed to developing the courage to let the children go, believing they could talk well, splurge and then refine independently just as we had done so when together.

It is these writerly conversations, and a focus on the process of writing over product, that has had the biggest transformation on my practice and ultimately the outcomes for those I teach – those that can be easily measured and those which are perhaps more difficult.

Teacher writing groups also demonstrate how we must think carefully about task design, being mindful to find aspects that are open ended and allow children to play, self-embellish and invest. This awareness is developed through listening and partaking in the appraisal of an exercise when writing alongside adults, discussing whether the brief was too open or pitched well and aspects that led to blank spots. These thoughts translate well into the classroom as you design learning opportunities, becoming aware of how much structure you should offer and recognising the need to balance exercises that are structured and those invite complete ownership over an extended period of time.

The conversations are another powerful aspect of joining a group. It is an opportunity for honest reflection about how writing works in our individual schools and classrooms, to find antidotes for problems with cohorts or strategies for adding in what you know works amidst the constraints of the curriculum. In this way, it can help you self-select aspects of your practice that could be improved.

Attending a group regularly reminds me of the need to include more low stakes, high investment opportunities as I know from the experiences of fellow attendees that these are powerful in allowing children to develop their own sense of voice and perceive themselves as a writer. I also know through anecdotes from group members that I need to write more regularly alongside the children as well as teach, so that they see this development as important.

It is very hard to summarise the value of attending to someone thinking of joining but, once started, you just know it is good stuff. It feels right and though you might not wish to replicate the exercises themselves in class, the process of writing, perhaps rediscovering writing again, is invaluable and unbelievable informative for teachers of all stages and levels of experience. Through attending, I would hope that the children I teach see me as someone who is passionate about exploring and playing with interesting words or phrases; choosing these carefully so that a listener appreciates how they were thinking, creating pictures and feelings. That a writer is a good listener and I am someone who carefully, sensitively appreciates their written work and shows it has value. I would hope they would see I value the development of their own written voice as important.

I hope the reach and influence of the project grows tremendously. The sessions are valuable to experienced and newly qualified teachers as they help to develop those who attend in different ways, the way that they need at that time, and this manifests in the learning opportunities they deliver to young people. This might owe to mimicking an activity used during a session or encouraging a way of thinking and being when writing after attendance over time. Consequently, the NWP could play a really key role in re-shaping the understanding and conceptualisation of writing in schools across the country, resulting in a teacher-led change to how it is taught and experienced in the classroom.

Sam has taught throughout KS2 across two schools since completing his PGCE in 2014. Currently, he is a teacher and Senior Leader in a two-form entry Primary in Norfolk, where he is responsible for a Year 3 class and English provision across the school. He is a secretary for the NWP.

Writing Spaces

The Writer’s Desk by Jill Krementz is full of wonderful images of writers at work in their writing spaces. My favourite is Jean Piaget who claims a ‘living order’ to what looks to the outsider like utter chaos.

At the NWP we’d like to celebrate our sacred writing places, too. Do you have a dedicated place to write, or are you a writer on the move? The idea is to share the secrets of our writing spaces in all their chaotic, cluttered glory or meticulous organisation. You can see the first few on our Writing Spaces page in the gallery. We’d love to see more.

We also hope that you enjoyed the Thirty Days of Writing Prompts provided by Jeni over these lockdown days. If you have written anything in response that you would be happy to share in the Teacher Writes section of the website, let us know.