Dip your pen in; writing's lovely

Alison Jermak, secondary English teacher, NWP secretary and NWP Wembley convener writes about her NWP journey and and the value of belonging to a writing group.

I have become quite determined to make space for my writing in my life, because it is one thing that I do for me – that was why I started writing independently at home again really, to make some time for myself between teaching and raising my children.

I write for many reasons: to gain clarity and perspective, to calm myself, to challenge an idea, to connect with people, to throw something out there and gauge the reaction.

Our NWP Wembley group grew from the Whodunnit group that I am a member of. I started the group because I was leaving my first teaching job and before leaving, I wanted to introduce my colleagues to NWP. Meeting regularly once a half term has turned out to be a good way of keeping in touch.

I value the support, the attention, the wisdom and the experience of my fellow NWP writers. We all bring so much enthusiasm for writing, the conversations are always rich and the reading recommendations are good. 

I write in a notebook – I normally have two on the go so that I write in one and then redraft in the other. I reread my writing a couple of days later and highlight anything that interests me. Some of it will then make its way into a piece that I type up. On my laptop I have collection of short stories, life writing and poems that I like to think are fermenting. I then revisit pieces that jump out at me and I will redraft and redraft.

Currently I write for at least ten minutes every day. I’m better in the morning, but I will squeeze it in where ever I can. I write in whichever room in the house I can be alone in; noise at home bothers me, family members – they normally want something.

There have been times where I have taken a short break from writing – a couple of weeks when nothing really calls to me or I’m stuck in a piece and I can’t see where to go next. When I come back to it, the muscle memory kicks in and I’m off again. Once you start, I think you can’t help but think like a writer. I have a notebook by my bed and phrases in the notes section of my phone that have floated in when I’m out and about.

I enjoy the process of coming up with ideas, the unpredictability of it. I like researching and coming up with new ideas for prompts to try out with the group. If it excites me when I try it out, then I know it will work. I’m curious to see how the writers will respond. The variety of writers’ responses is also interesting. I’d like to do some research into the benefits of writing as a group in this way.

Students I teach know that I teach writing differently. Some get excited when I introduce free writing, they enjoy the freedom of it and ask, “When are we going to do free writing again?” Some are confronted by the blank page: “Tell me what to say.” Individuals like it when I talk to them about pieces that they have written.

Being part of the NWP has kept me in teaching. It’s the type of learning experience that I had growing up and that made me want to become a teacher. It’s something that I have a genuine interest in, I can practise writing, begin to master it by myself and together with the group. There’s plenty about writing groups to delve into research wise, it’s unexplored territory. 

I would like to encourage more of the teachers in my department to give writing with NWP a try. There’s so much else that’s in the way, but I would say, “Dip your pen in; writing’s lovely.”  

Writing by hand during online teaching

Theresa Gooda, South Downs NWP convener and secondary English teacher, writes about the value of writing slowly with a notebook and pen.

‘I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth a gloss and lends half-baked thoughts the mask of tidiness.’

This appears on the first page of Barack Obama’s preface to A Promised Land, the recently-published memoir in which he has attempted an ‘honest rendering’ of his time in office as president of the USA.

It resonated with me straight away.

I too am a fan of the humble notebook and pen, and I encourage fellow writers at NWP meetings to join me in ‘physically’ writing, even while we are meeting virtually during lockdown. Some, of course, prefer technology: a laptop, or even tapping into a mobile phone, but I love the sound of writers writing together, the scratchy noise on paper.

I’m also convinced that there is something about the physical act of hand writing, the slowness of it, that makes my writing better. I’ve never been able to articulate quite why, but I think Barack is onto something - the illusion of ‘polish’ that typed words on screen bring can bring is problematic.

Part of that problem comes from the fact that writing, for me, is always exploratory in the first instance. Whatever kind of writing I am undertaking, whether it is poetry or prose, fiction or non-fiction, academic or creative (and what, really, does ‘creative’ mean - all writing is surely this), my first marks on paper are a form of ‘working out’. I never know quite what’s in my head when I begin.

What makes writing particularly powerful as a mediator of knowing is, first the possibility it allows for the writer to make an extended, fully worked-out contribution, and second, because of its slower rate of production, its facilitation of a more reflective and self-critical stance (Wells, G. 2001. Action, Talk, and Text: Learning and Teaching through Inquiry. p186)

I came across Gordon Wells’ words while researching something entirely unrelated, but like Obama’s they rang true.

I worry that in our online teaching world we are physically writing less, even if we are typing and tapping away at a keyboard more.

As I plan my ‘synchronous’ and ‘asynchronous’ online lessons, I am forcing myself to find more and more opportunities to invite students to pick up a pen during the course of a session. The chat functions and sticky notes are all great for interaction, but ‘jotting down’ and ‘freewriting’ are important too. I’m also encouraging my students to write in longhand on first drafts and upload photographs of their draft work alongside the final draft to emphasise the sense of process that is easily lost at the moment; to avoid ‘too smooth a gloss’.

After all, if it’s good enough for Obama…

Taking a selfish risk

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.

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.

Curriculum Constraints Can't Stop Creative Minds

Rebecca Griffiths, an Early Years teacher at a Norfolk primary school, writes about belonging to an NWP writing group and the impact it has had in her classroom.

Attending the NWP Writing Teachers group at the University of East Anglia for the last 8 years has provided me with a network of educators who share a passion for writing. The group consists of EYFS practitioners to A level teachers, and everyone in between. The groups change monthly, with some attending regularly and some coming when they can free themselves from school life. This provides an ever changing dynamic; supportive yet challenging, always inspiring.

The group has taught me so much about the way children write throughout their journey in education. It enabled me to see beyond Early Years. NWP has provided many opportunities and supported my research for my MA Advanced Educational Practice. Each month we are excited to take the new ideas from the group back into school and to explore them in our own way. It is always refreshing to see how the same writing prompt can be explored across all age groups, and challenging to think about how you will make it work for your own class. This stimulates creative thinking, teaching and writing! We often overlook the feelings of young writers, we can easily forget the terror a blank page can ignite! When writing ourselves, we reconnect with the pressure, frustration and pleasure writing can bring. Therefore connecting us to our students and their barriers and successes as developing writers. 

I write with my class daily and in Early Years, this writing takes many forms. Too often the monotonous struggle toward ‘becoming a writer’ overshadows the enjoyable process of developing emerging writing skills creatively.

As a practitioner, I find myself immersed in the world of progress with little time to observe the multi modal forms of writing which flourish in the classroom. However, it is apparent that the curriculum constraints cannot stop the creative minds of our youngest writers.

Through drama, role play, drawing and making marks, writing takes it form in ways that are purposeful to the individual child. It is through these experiences that I most enjoy writing collaboratively with children; finding and utilising writing opportunities through play. The classroom provides a unique research environment, a place to explore new ideas and experiment with ideas based upon current research. It is also a place to celebrate the accomplishments of all writers! This is where I write most, and this is where I love to write.

Membership of an NWP group has shaped me as a writer and a teacher of writing. I am honoured to be part of it.

The future of the NWP belongs to you, the teachers of writing, the lovers of writing! Are you interested in writing CPD? A writing retreat? Or joining or starting a Writing Teachers group? You are in the right place.

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. 

Back to School: September Writing Prompts

Through lockdown and over the summer I have managed to establish some good writing habits. My journal is never far away and, consequently, is bursting full.

Every year, though, September hits me like a train and those writing habits evaporate - generally alongside taking in the first pile of marking. It really shouldn’t be so hard to find the ten or fifteen minutes in a day to sit, reflect and allow the pen to talk to the page, but somehow it always is. Even though I know that it is good me, not just for my energy and well-being but as ever-present, brilliant CPD that will make a difference in the classroom.

Because our month of lockdown prompts proved so popular, Jeni Smith has been busy putting together another series of ideas to carry us all through September and the start of the new year.

Jeni explains how important it is to find that space for our own writing:

Writing is often the thing that we set aside for other things, for other people. We make appointments for the dentist, to see an anxious A level student, to help a colleague. Make an appointment with your writing. If you have a calendar write it in there. Colour code it. Put it on your phone and set the alarm. You need only fifteen minutes. If that is all you have between one thing and another, set a timer just short of the time you have available and get going.

The prompts for September are a mixed bag. Most of them should just set you going for a fifteen minute workout. Some may grow into something more extended so you may not wish to do a new prompt each day, but continue from where you left off. Many of the prompts have your professional life as a teacher in mind. I am inviting you, if you are so inclined, to use writing to reflect on your teaching. You may find you use just a few prompts over the course of the month. Many can be revisited daily. In the end, they are only prompts. Use them however you wish. You may even find that you use them as children do when they tell you they are bored. After you have listed a number of things they don’t want to do, they suddenly say, ‘Oh, I know what I’ll do.’ Go ahead!

So, no excuses. Keep your writing habit going through the new term, or cultivate a new one.

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.

Lifting off with Zoom Writing

Meeting together to write is such a core principle for the NWP that it has been difficult to know what to do during the lockdown. The answer is, of course, to do what everyone else has been doing and meet virtually.

Inspired by Marjory Caine’s work with the Whodunit NWP, the Southdowns group borrowed the format of some warm up writing exercise together and then a little break to write independently before returning to share work.

As 'Dalloway Day' was earlier in the week, we took inspiration from the RSL and Write and Shine Dalloway Day Celebrations. We began with a simple listing of everyday pleasures: ‘What she loved: life, London and this moment in June’ Woolf says of Clarissa Dalloway. So we listed the everyday things that were giving us joy, or making us smile now. 

Lie-ins in freshly laundered sheets, not having to drive for hours to work, al fresco meals, cuddles with puppies, and the luxury of handwritten letters all featured.

Next we thought about walking. Clarissa Dalloway walks through London to buy flowers for a party. Her walk encompasses the exterior geography at the same time as her interior thoughts and perceptions. At one point she experiences a moment of revelation: her skill is in knowing about people. ‘If you put her in a room with someone up went her back like a cat's or she purred. So we began walking in memory, noticing the detail of a familiar route and what we saw and heard. - with a moment of revelation if one occurred.

For a longer prompt we looked at two very different extracts - Mrs Dalloway entering the flower shop, and Kathleen Jamie in Findings seeing an unfamiliar bird. One fiction and one non-fiction, contrasting 'nature' in urban and rural environments. After some discussion of what was interesting in each piece we set off on a more developed piece of writing retaining the idea of walking as the prompt, with a challenge to consider one of the following: Interior and exterior worlds, something encountered and 'researched’, or playing with unexpected images

As ever, there were delightful results. Two writers mixed images from school with natural ones. A gull that was 'RAG-rated' as amber, and a bindweed whose trumpet flowers heralded the end of term. There was powerful personification in teasing skies and conversations with gate posts, and some metaphysical contemplations on a beach. And, as important as the writing, the pedagogical discussion and thoughts about writing and sharing in the classroom.

So although I was nervous about the workshop, I have discovered that I like virtual writing in the company of others. Of course, I look forward to the time when we can meet in person once more, but for now, this writing is sustaining and continues the collaborative sharing of pedagogy and writing revelation so that to quote Jamie, we can ‘bring it home intact’.

National Writing Day 2020

Here at NWP we shall, of course, be celebrating and supporting National Writing Day, which takes place on Wednesday June 24th this year.

The underlying principles of this celebration of writing absolutely accord with NWP aims. In particular, the idea that students feel what it’s like to be a writer, and get on with doing writing. Young people can develop their own voices by choosing what they want to say and how they want to say it. National Writing Day gives students the impetus to write, first and foremost, for themselves.

Free resources and ideas are available from First Story here, and the BBC will be promoting National Writing Day in all their daily lessons on the 24th. With many schools having extended their opening beyond vulnerable children and the children of key workers now to Reception, Year 1, Year 6, Year 10 and Year 12, this could be a great way to kickstart writing in the classroom once more.

Let us know what you are doing in the classroom for National Writing Day.

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.

What matters...about teachers writing

A benefit of lockdown has been the time and space to read widely, coupled with the release of a number of interesting books about writing and education generally - one of which is What Matters in English Teaching; Barbara Bleiman’s new book published by the English & Media Centre, collecting together Bleimna’s blogs and speeches and other writings from the early nineties up until the present day.

This perspective enables a rich overview of the way that different trends, concerns and battlegrounds in English have changed over time. Bleiman pinpoints 2001, around the time when writing frames were being introduced, as coinciding with the first moment when students started to be told that they must ‘include’ certain elements in their writing as ‘proof of knowledge of the genre’. Persuade, she observes, was different from argue or inform, ‘despite the fact that in the real world, no non-fiction writer would set out to do one of these things in isolation but would almost certainly have many overlapping purposes and techniques to fit his or her intentions’ (p121).

On what makes good writing, she is clear that there is no rigid, set pattern or approach as there is for the write-up of a science experiment or an answer to a Maths problem, because ‘creative writing cannot be reduced to a formula’ (p119).

Bleiman explicitly acknowledges the role of the NWP in helping to shape writing debates. ‘In the UK, Simon Wrigley and Jen Smith, under the aegis of NATE, have been running teacher/writer groups for many years, where teachers write for themselves and then share the implications for their teaching’ (p123).

She is clear about the way in which teachers writing for themselves empowers them in pedagogical approach. In relation to the role of planning, she observes that ‘teachers asked to write can sometimes surprise themselves by how little they use the planning structures they impose on their students’ (p124).

Also, because the role of drafting and redrafting has shrunk in the absence of coursework or controlled assessment When teachers write themselves, they become aware of how much more can be done to a first draft to sharpen it up and develop it’ (p124).

She explores the ways in which being a writer enables readers to read differently, ‘and better’ (p125), noting that a key element of both reading as a writer and writing as a reader is the idea that ‘small experiments, tests, trying things out, having a go, being playful, taking little unrisky risks, is extremely valuable, regardless of the ‘success’ of the end product’ (p141).

It was wonderful to read something which resonated powerfully with many of the principles of NWP.

So, I’m heartened, and inspired - and just off to have a go with some unrisky risks in response to some of our lockdown writing prompts.

Theresa Gooda

Musings of a writer/web admin/teacher/gardener under quarantine

Stephen Jacklin, NWP web administrator, wrote, on the 7th April:

I am currently wondering why…

1) …I have so much to do, yet it’s technically the Easter holidays and our social life is mainly reduced to WhatsApp, FaceTime, the occasional game on Zoom and other proprietary software that we’re reliant upon.

2) …The dogs seem to be requiring more attention/fuss and how they simultaneously are annoyed we’re at home in the day time.

3) …Even though I have all of this opportunity to write, I’m resisting it somehow. I shouldn’t be working (really, though I do have bits to do for school), and things around the house and outside in our garden can be done in stages, yet getting going seems to take ages.

4) …Therefore, as nothing needs to happen immediately or for a specific deadline, there is all of this afore-alluded to pressure and guilt that we heap upon ourselves.

I’ve also realised that, in my attempt to contribute to NWP’s pages, I’ve actually done some writing. It counts, right? When I started, I knew I wanted a list, but I didn’t realise how that list would turn out. Half of my mind was encouraging me to hurry up so I could post this and get some lunch. A significant proportion was thinking about the mess in the garden and that I need to continue relaying the lawn. The rest somehow managed to write all of this, edit it and wonder if it’s good enough. Why do we do this to ourselves? It doesn’t matter where you start, but a start is exactly that. Now, I’m going to make some lunch and sing ‘Do-Re-Me’ a-la Julie Andrews. Now, “Let’s start at the very beginning…”

Permissions that our workplaces don't provide

NWP secretary Alison Jermak discusses her evolution into a writing teacher:

‘It is felt that you would benefit more from this (training) after your return from maternity leave.’

It is not discrimination or financial limitations imposed upon schools that I will write about here, but the decision that I made in response to the above: if the school that employed me was not going to invest in developing me professionally, then I would do it myself.

The pursuit of this led me to a LATE conference where I was introduced to NWP UK. 

From Blob to Blog…

You see, I never read the papers when Michael Gove called us ‘the blob’, but in my workplace I knew that teachers were angry about it. By naming my profession in that dehumanizing way, not only did it give him license, but also management to treat us as they chose.

What resulted in my school was increased fear, anxiety and anger. Established teachers, staff that I looked up to, I found crying in the staffroom, holding whispered conversations in classrooms at the end of the day, being ‘supported’ (bullied) through capability measures – they were disappearing.

My reasons for teaching: I wanted to work with young people, to share my passion for my subject. But as Kahn points out, ‘in the absence of care felt, when other co-workers communicate a lack of caring, respect, or appreciation for one’s work, meaningfulness decreases.’

Let’s consider other anxiety-provoking features introduced into our workload over the time that I have been teaching: data deadlines, the threat of Ofsted; both a distraction from the tasks in hand.

Teachers are innovators. We recognise that ‘creativity and innovation are necessary for organisational adaptation and survival.’ (Reiter-Palmon) We seek out universities, libraries, cafes and museums; places that will stimulate us intellectually and creatively. The writing group provides what psychologists call a ‘holding environment’ (Kahn, 2001), creating feelings of safety where a teacher can feel able to show and employ one’s self in the discussion and writing.

Writing can be a way to exercise emotions, but can also be a vehicle for generating purpose and direction (Speara, Morin, Buhifeind, Pennebaker, 1993). Writing together allows us to explore the possibilities for writing in the classroom, but also for ourselves; giving me the confidence to write as I am now.

At NWP we give each other permissions that our workplaces have yet to provide. 

Why join a writing group?

NWP co-chair Emily Rowe explains how she first joined the project - and the power of a writing group.

“I first came across the National Writing Project when I was training to be a primary school teacher at the University of East Anglia. Through attending Writing Teachers groups firstly at UEA, then Ipswich and now recently with my fellow schools in our academy trust.

“I have found my teaching of writing in the classroom to be enriched through my own experiences of writing within a community of teachers. I have grown to understand the delicate nature of learning to write and how the experience of writing for yourself enables you to understand and teach writing at a much deeper level.

Writing from February 8th NWP Meeting at the National Portrait Gallery

“Most importantly, I’ve seen first-hand the impact that this has had on my pupils. I find the sessions invigorating – with space to experiment with my own words and to also consider how activities and ideas can be adapted to suit the needs of the children in my class. I particularly enjoy meeting with teachers who work with a range of children from Early Years to A-levels, of whom all give and take from the sessions in equal amounts. It has been the most influential form of CPD during my three years of teaching, with each session I have attended being led by the co-founder of NWP – Dr Jeni Smith.

“It can be hard to explain to teachers why they should come along to a Writing Teachers group, particularly if they are not from an English background and feel nervous about the prospect of writing, but once they’re through the door I’ve always known them to come back!”

Join a Group

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.

10 Years of NWP

The National Writing Project is now a decade old in the UK: a worthy achievement and a significant milestone deserving of celebration.

At its heart that is ten years of encouraging and supporting teachers to become experts in the teaching of writing through a network of teachers’ writing groups. London’s ‘Whodunit group’ is one of the oldest and well-established of these, so it is fitting that it is their meeting this month which is being taken over to mark this special anniversary on Saturday 25th January.

We will meet at the Wellcome Collection, a museum on the Euston Road in London, in the cafe at 10am. NWP co-founder, Jeni Smith promises ‘writing fun and games’ between 10am and 1pm. The current exhibition at the Wellcome is called ‘Play Well’ and considers the transformational impact of play in our lives, so prompts will, of course, be appropriately playful!

All are welcome to join us. If you are an NWP member past or present, or considering becoming one in the future - and you are in London that weekend - come out and play! It will be the perfect opportunity to meet up with others from the NWP community, to write, to share, and to celebrate how far the project has come.

Started back in 2009 by Jenifer Smith, University of East Anglia, and by Simon Wrigley, English adviser for Buckinghamshire, 2004-2013, and chair of NATE, 2004-6, the UK’s project built on the long-running, successful US National Writing Project. Since then it has evolved through exciting partnerships, research and collaboration, carefully cultivated by the huge commitment, creative ideas and winning inspiration of Jeni and Simon.

Here’s to the next decade!

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.