Tag Archives: school visits

Book Week

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There’s a parental saying I recall from childhood that arose whenever I asked/proposed something apparently unrealistic, unreasonable, inconvenient or inappropriate. The reply was along the lines of, “What do you think it is, Bush Week?” I quickly came to interpret this as meaning there was no chance of my request/idea eventuating.

Today I Googled the origins of the expression. Seems it refers to a week when wide-eyed bushies visited the city and fell prey to unscrupulous urban scams and rip-off merchants. My parents clearly cast me in the role of the scammer, despite my rural origins.

I’m reminded of the expression mainly because it sounds similar to Book Week. And, yes, this is a time when authors (often introverted and naive like bushies) venture, blinking, out of their garrets and into the wide world to proselytise on the magic of reading and creative writing. For those of us writing for children and young adults it can be the busiest week of the year.

My Book Week kicked off early, chatting to Yr 7 students in Pakenham on Friday. Yesterday I was in Wyndham Vale, as the (kind of) local storyteller accompanying Melina Marchetta, Elizabeth Honey and insideadog.com.au’s Adele Walsh. Tomorrow I’m in Fitzroy, followed by Greenvale (Thurs) and Berwick (Fri).

The following week I’m chatting in Mentone and also chuffed to share a Melbourne Writers’ Festival stage with Alice Pung. Last but not least, I’m trundling down the Western Highway for the Ballarat Writers’ Festival – a brilliant line-up focused entirely on literature for children and young adults. (Think Kirsty Murray, Penni Russon, Kate Constable, Steph Bowe, Leanne Hall, Karen Tayleur, Gabrielle Williams, Maureen McCarthy, Corinne Fenton and many others.)

September promises some other big adventures (details another post) but I’ll round off the month with the A Thousand Words Festival where I’m doing a couple of sessions including, gulp, the keynote address. As I blog this, I’m still open to suggestions on what folks would like to hear about. (At the moment I’m thinking about tackling ‘risk’.) This fledgling festival also puts writing for children and young adults in the spotlight and has some sensational sessions in store. If you’re interested in mingling with authors and illustrators it’s an opportunity to meet the likes of Sally Rippin, Cath Crowley, Fiona Wood & Michael Pryor. The Little Monkey and I attended in 2009 and had a great time.

Come the end of September I reckon I’ll be ready to self-medicate and/or become a hermit. Actually, I’m expecting to be overflowing with ideas and inspired by all these creative encounters. Locking away some rare writing time should be a must.

Speaking of which, folks keep ask me what I’m working on and I give necessarily vague answers. I’m not sure where the current ideas will go when they find water, fertile ground and fresh air. What I can say is my latest piece of published work arrived in the mail last week – a short story in a collection called The New Paper Trails. I was rapt to be asked to submit a story for this textbook and was honoured to find my work surrounded by tales from established authors like Garth Nix and Carole Wilkinson. The book is designed for English teachers with students aged approx 10 to 14. Hopefully it will find its way into teacher resources and a library or two.

Have a great Book Week and watch out for scammers.

Road warriors

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According to this piece in Britain’s The Guardian, authors need to be road warriors to raise awareness of their work and promote reading generally.

That means travelling to schools, libraries and anywhere else we can peddle our wares and pump our own tyres without being socially inappropriate. I must admit to feeling somewhat staunch talking to 500+ students in two days last week, at urban schools situated far beyond my usual haunts.

So I’m liking this idea a lot. In fact I reckon I should buy a leather jacket and turn up to schools Mad Max style … possibly without the shotgun over my shoulder.

Thanks to a fellow road warrior, the very intrepid John Danalis (@JohnDanalis), for finding the article. I mean this is an author who travelled interstate by air then boarded a Metro train and then unfolded his bicycle and cycled the rest of the way to an outer suburban school visit. That’s commitment.

Seen in schools

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Conducting writing workshops with students can be an intense experience. Secondary students are often on timetables already crammed with activities. Adding something extra can trigger complex and, I sense, protracted negotiations between specialist teachers reluctant to cede a second of their allotted timetable. I wonder if this is partly due to the new, data-driven approach to education. I’m guessing every department has KPIs in place, along with boxes to tick to prove they have covered sufficient kilometres of curriculum.

As for the students, the older they get, the deeper they are funnelled into the results machine. They know they’re competing with each other at a school, state and now national level for tertiary entrance scores. If they can’t see the direct benefit of an activity (‘Am I going to be marked on this?’), I wonder if it becomes an irrelevance or curiosity before they tackle the next mandated and benchmarked activity.

I worry that this results-centric attitude to learning might stifle creativity. Do students opt for a safe approach to writing and problem solving, and avoid taking any creative risks, in order to get a solid mark? My hunch is that they do – even though I still see some fantastic ideas bubbling up to the surface.

Putting that aside, I work with students from Grade 5 up to Year 12 and, most of the time, it’s great fun. My philosophy is that creative writing doesn’t have to be daunting and that there’s never any excuse to say “I can’t think of anything to write about”. Story ideas are all around us and it’s simply a matter of opening our eyes and ears.

Whenever I’m at a school for consecutive days I’ll hang around in the library whenever possible and encourage students to drop by for a chat, show me their writing, tell me what they’re reading and so on. In my experience, younger students are more likely to take me up on this. Those in Year 10 and beyond often seem too stressed, busy or both.

When I mingle with the students I get a sense of who they are and where they’re at in their development. Maybe it’s the obsessive compulsive storyteller in me but I start to build a picture of what these children’s lives might be like outside school. And sometimes the signs are worrying.

Three students are stuck in my mind from recent school visits. I worried about them as I drove away and still do. In one case, a writing exercise I led resulted in demonstrable proof of a student with self-esteem so poor I referred their work to a teacher immediately.

What do these school visits teach me? Teaching is one tough gig. In each class you have kids who are uber-confident, kids with good ideas who are afraid to express them, kids who are palpably needy, kids so busy trying to be cool that they’re not in the room, and kids truly interested in what you’re trying to tell them… And they’re all hoping, secretly or otherwise, that you’ll catch their eye and focus on them. It must be exhausting to be counsellor/educator/disciplinarian/inspiration/motivator and more to each of these personalities.

It’s one thing to swan into a school as a visitor. It’s another to be there day in, day out, busting a gut trying to teach and care for students.

Respect.