NWP director Jeni Smith reflects on a recent writing workshop for student teachers.
It’s late September and we are well into the autumn term. I have always loved this time of year – a crispness in the air, new shoes and new pencil cases, a new start without all the portentousness of a New Year. Across the country, students are starting out on the voyage to become qualified teachers. This always seems to me a time of great promise. The commitment and enthusiasm that each new cohort brings to teaching is an important point of growth for schools and the children we serve. So it is always a pleasure and a privilege to be invited to run a writing workshop for student teachers. This week I zoomed into a class at London Metropolitan University where twenty-three student teachers were gathered at the beginning of their year of training. It is the third time I have visited. This group were as impressive as ever: willing to take part and mutually supportive. In teaching, our professional friends are worth their weight in gold.
They had already heard about NWP so we plunged straight in. Writing is learned from the inside out. Our own writing and reflections on writing can be a powerful influence for young writers. Our writing voices come from many places, from our family and community, from our reading and listening. Our own language is where we start. And we began, as ever, with a list of words -always surprising, always a pleasure: words from languages other than English, words redolent of home and of a new term. ‘Barbie’ was in there. ‘Grubby’ wasn’t far away. Then I read Naomi Shihab Nye’s wonderful ‘Gate A-4’ (published by Bloodaxe in Tender Spot. 2008). You may well know it. You can find it here.
It’s such a wonderful story, one that touches us in many different ways. It led into us into making a list of familiar family stories: stories told in certain places; at particular times in the year; about parents, siblings, friends; stories they tell about us; stories we tell when we introduce ourselves; stories we only tell ourselves…. We give each story a tag –‘the story of the brass curtain ring’; ‘the story of Lucy and the stoat’; ‘the story of my grandmother’s wrists’. Our list of stories might become a poem. When we hear others read their story lists aloud our curiosity is roused. How we love stories! We chose one of our stories and free wrote. We made little origami books and tried out ways of representing our stories in the book’s six pages. We were together for such a short three quarters of an hour, but at the end of that time, writing had changed us.
Students spoke about the surprises inherent even in the writing of a list of words. They revelled in the detail that emerged as they wrote and the way that the writing had reminded them of forgotten events, reminded them of who they were. They will bring themselves to the lives of children in important ways. I feel sure they will find ways to make it possible for writing to touch children in these important ways. It is wonderful to know that there are teachers like Rachel Booth, who recognise the value of writing in this way and who encourage their students to travel hopefully.
Thank you, Rachel, and to all the students who are working with you this year. It is the voyage of a lifetime. Take your pencil and notebook. Write with the children you teach. Listen to what they have to say.