South Downs NWP Convenor and secondary English teacher, Theresa Gooda, discovers more about what happens when teachers write together.
The model of NWP meetings is very simple: you meet somewhere, (mostly online at the moment) and you do some writing, along with other teachers.
The benefits of NWP meetings are difficult to articulate - and I’m very appreciative of writing teacher colleagues who try to capture quite what is so special about them. There’s camaraderie, of course, and there’s something powerful about the collaborative creation in the writing process, and being part of a writing community seems to translate into classroom confidence.
Many teachers who participate talk about it as being ‘transformative’, and I’m coming to understand that the transformation comes through understanding more about the process of writing through the experience and the reflection. I asked my writers at South Downs NWP what it is that they really know about writing from regular ‘doing’ of writing together. This is what they said.
They understand more about:
The importance of selecting experiences (in prompts and stimulus material) that students can draw on.
The value of being able to anchor writing to memory to generate rich response
The power of sharing words together and using them as building blocks, like Lego
What a benefit there is from the process of hearing your writing read aloud: how it becomes a form of drafting
How a greater focus on craft and metacognition in relation to writing leads to a far deeper understanding of how language works and richer writing results
We tried to go further and pinpoint ways that classroom practice has changed as a result of this different kind of ‘knowing’ about writing. A selection of the ideas:
Increased empathy: It’s easy to forget what it feels like to write. Teachers could more readily see and celebrate ‘little wins’ with individual students
Bringing more, and more diverse texts into the classroom to enrich the curriculum
Introducing shorter bursts of creative writing more regularly: several times a week for most
A greater use of freewriting, creating an environment where writing is relaxed and not pressured.
Encouraging students to begin by writing lists of words (rather than starting with the dreaded ‘plan’)
I’m so grateful, as ever, for the experience of writing with reflective teachers - both for the joy of hearing their words but also for insights like these.
It was also uplifting to hear that NWP Islington managed to meet in person last month. Let’s hope that others can follow suit and meet ‘irl’ very soon.