Helen Atkinson, Convener of the London Free Spaces NWP Group, writes about a ‘selfish’ choice that led to the greatest change in pedagogy and practice.
It’s the end of June, 2008 and I breathe a guilty sigh of relief as I climb into a teacher friend’s car and begin the drive from London to Cambridge. It’s been another long academic year – when are they not? I’ve had by first taste of middle leadership with an Acting Head of English job in a tough North London school and I’m not certain that I have the energy to get through those final weeks. I’m on my way to Cambridge for the LATE summer conference where I should have elected for a useful weekend workshop on using digital sources when teaching Shakespeare, something that will provide a bank of activities that I can take back to the Department, proof that the CPD budget was a worthy spend. Instead, I have taken a selfish risk and ticked the box to attend a series of workshops called Teachers As Writers that will fill almost all of my time at the conference. The blurb promises that I will spend my weekend on my own personal, reflective and creative writing and this sounds both glorious and very self-indulgent. Ironically, at the end of this weekend, I have not only rediscovered my passion for writing but have experienced the beginning of the greatest and longest lasting influence on my pedagogy and practice.
For over ten years now, the principles of the National Writing Project have run though everything that I’ve done. It is a series of professional networks that explore the way that we teach writing in the best possible way: by writing ourselves and by discussing not only what we write, but how and why it was written. Against the backdrop of endless change and the barrage of ever-falling edicts from above, it has given me the confidence to state that I am my own expert, that I have the agency to change the way that things are done, to make the experience of writing better and more enjoyable for the children that I teach. It’s given me the confidence to argue (and win) the case with Head Teachers for some writing to take place that is not marked for SPaG and a snappy WWW / EBI, to build new ways of teaching and feeding back on writing into the curriculum.
There have been so many Saturday mornings where I’ve lain in bed, as tired as I was on the way to that first conference. It’s felt a super-human effort at times to drag myself to a museum, gallery or park in Central London for the half-termly writing group meeting, but I know that, by the time I leave in early afternoon, I will be wide-awake and brimming with energy and ideas about new things to write, new ways to write, new ways to teach writing.
And I know, from the positive feedback that has come from the NWP Conferences where I’ve run workshops, that I am not alone in feeling this way.