Looking at writers - does he ever stop smoking?

Today, I am writing a eulogy for someone very close to me. Like most people, I’ve put things off. For example,  I’ve been tempted to search the history of using ‘a’ instead of ‘an’ when forming the phrase ‘a eulogy’. I won’t bore you with the details. And, of course, writing this blog is another way for me to put off the inevitable. Anyway, a eulogy is about creating a sense of a person and what they mean to you. 

This sense of a person is something I feel we have lost within English. I’ve been part of lots of discussions around how English should change and what’s the problem with its current form, but I’d argue that our sense of humanity and our sense of humans has been lost. Texts have become collections of techniques to find and catalogue. Texts have become things to highlight and pick out things. Texts have become these things that float in nebulous space that have no relevance or currency in the real world. 

Texts in the English classroom cannot escape being picked apart and overly scrutinised. It isn’t the obsession with knowledge that is at the root of the problem. It is this default method that everything we do in English has to be linked or connected to the spotting of something. How many lessons go by without there being a highlight or comment on a technique used? We’ve got to the point where we are our own worst enemy. We only feel comfortable if students are talking about techniques. 

The writer has become a forgotten entity. 

Instead of reading texts to discuss a writer’s ideas, we are seeing things through the prism of techniques. And, to be honest, that is such a narrow view. It strips the person away from the discussion. We are thinking about things rather than people. 

How many times do we show pictures of writers? In fact, how often do students see images of the writer? For most of the time, we don’t show a picture of the writer. We want students to make inferences, assumptions, opinions about the writer about the text, yet we don’t actively show writers. We don’t actively help students co-construct a view of the writer. A person that thinks and feels something. 

For the past year, I have actively made students actively construct a writer in their head. And, the key way to do that is to constantly remind students visually of the writer. Instead of making the writer this shadowing figure that they have to construct like a séance and the techniques are a form of a Ouija board, we’ve put photos against every text. They can see who wrote it and that seeing the writer is important. 

Here is one such poem I recently discussed in lessons. 

The Dunce 

He says no with the head
but he says yes with the heart
he says yes to what he loves
he says no to the teacher
He's standing
we are questioning him
and all the problems are posed
suddenly he felt a crazy laugh come over him
and he erases the whole thing
the numbers and the words
dates and names
The sentences and the traps
and despite the master's threats
under the boos of child prodigies
with chalks of all colors
on the blackboard of misfortune
it draws the face of happiness.

Jacques Prévert

Interestingly, Prévert is never photographed without a cigarette in his mouth. For me, that just typifies the rule breaker he is. 

Once we started introducing photographs alongside writing we saw other interesting things. The building up of an interpretation of the writer. But, also, a personal dimension to the discussion. He must think … He feels … It is interesting that a long time ago one strategy we used was a ‘character on the wall’. On a big sheet, we’d have an outline of a body and we’d write bits about the character as we read a text. It seems a shame that we never did that for writers. Because, by the end of the text, a student should know what a writer thinks or feels about something, yet often they don’t. We’ve placed the emphasis on the character, the plot and the themes. Dickens bludgeons you over the head with ideas. Shakespeare is a bit more subtle. Our obsession with the text means that we work on the students’ understanding of the text and not the students’ understanding of the writer through the text. Just look at how students think in terms of texts and not in terms of writers. That speaks volumes. The text dominates. The writer is hidden. Students will talk about Macbeth and Charge of the Light Brigade,  but they don’t talk about Armitage or Weir. In fact, they barely recall the writer’s names at times. 

One of my favourite activities to build on this is to look at this poem about Rosa Parks. 

Rosa 

How she sat there, 

the time right inside a place 

so wrong it was ready. 

That trim name with 

its dream of a bench 

to rest on. Her sensible coat. 

Doing nothing was the doing: 

the clean flame of her gaze 

carved by a camera flash. 

How she stood up 

when they bent down to retrieve 

her purse. That courtesy. 

Rita Dove 

After reading the poem, I ask students to discuss these things: 

What does Rita Dove think of...

...what happened? 

...how Rosa was treated? 

...the people moving Rosa? 

… the other people on the bus? 

And, then, I flip it with these questions: 

What does Rita Dove feel about ...

...what happened? 

...how Rosa was treated? 

...the people moving Rosa? 

… the other people on the bus?

Students naturally talk about devices and words around the poem, but first and foremost they are talking about the writer. Making inferences about what they think and feel. From the beginning they explore the poem through the writer. The writer is a clear and strong presence. And, not some random faceless unknown. We are getting students to construct an interpretation from the beginning and not as an afterthought or as something that has to be taught as knowledge. 

Every day students are making inferences about the people around them. Their friends. Their teachers. Their parents. We are constantly thinking about what the other person feels or thinks. That’s what English is partly about: understanding people, situations and events. If we don’t work hard to make the subject about people, then it won’t be a subject for people. 

Thank you for reading. I have digressed enough, but you’ll probably be able to make some inferences from reading this about me as a person. 

Xris 

Safe and dangerous creative writing

Teaching students to write with effect is quite a tricky thing. Over the years, I have seen writing reduced to tick lists. The problem is that no two good pieces are really alike. You could create one tick list for one piece and then you’ll need a different list for the other piece. Both are widely different. 

Presion, subtlety and nuance are not things you can easily put on a ticklist. They don’t work in terms of easy to easy and therefore easy to mark aspects. You can spot a student who has used a simile. You cannot easily spot if a student has used a verb precisely and subtly in a sea of other words. The best writers might not use a simile, but the worst writers often do - continually. 

I have said for a long time that students are better writers when they are writing for effect. In the days of ‘Sexy Sprouts’, I approached non-fiction with this idea. The best non-fiction writing is written to make us feel. Emotions force students to make intuitive choices in their writing. They automatically make subtle and precise word or grammar choices when the effect is clear. Sadly, we often find that students are not so good when it comes to writing fiction. There are often the large few that read on a regular basis and have absorbed those nuances and specific elements of storytelling. 

We’ve recently been looking at creative writing with Year 8s. They are all planning to write a ghost story for an assessment. We looked at things in a much different way. We asked students to see if they could decide where the writer is making things safe and where the writer is making things sound dangerous. 

Extract from ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker  

Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the roadway ‘til we passed as through a tunnel; and again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side. Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket… The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from either side. 

  

We then asked students to decide on what percentage of the writing is safe and what percentage of the writing is dangerous. The problem often students face with writing is the balance between moods. It is either all dangerous or all safe. There’s none of that nuance to the writing. Students suggested that the percentage was 40% safe and 60% dangerous. What makes it safe? What makes it sound dangerous? Students were able to pick up that the ‘blanket’ of ‘powdery snow’ helped to contribute to this feeling. They picked up the ‘hemmed in’, ‘rising wind’ and ‘trees crashed’. They also picked up the ambiguous ‘frowning rocks guarded us’ as being something safe and dangerous. Students notice that the mood switched between the two and ended with a sense of danger because of the wolves. 

We then approached another extract. Where does it sound safe? Where does it sound dangerous? 

[1] In thirty-five feet of water, the great fish swam slowly, its tail waving just enough to maintain motion.  

[2] The boy was resting, his arms dangling down, his feet and ankles dipping in and out of the water with each small swell. 

[3] The boy stopped for a moment to rest.  The signals ceased.  

[4] The time it needed to lock on them, only an instant, for it was almost directly below the boy.  

[5] It rose, slowly at first, then gaining speed as the signals grew stronger. 

[6] The mouth opened, and with a final sweep of the sickle tail, the fish struck.  

Extract from ‘Jaws’ 

Interestingly, both of these extracts have safe and dangerous elements to them, but they convey them slightly differently and it is the balance between two moods that students need help on. Mood is never just one thing. It is far more complex. This complexity of mood needs spelling out and for the most a binary viewpoint of mood is helpful as you build up that complexity. Safe and dangerous. Superior and inferior. Calm and agitated. Confident and insecure. 

Students need to see that there are several ways to make things seem safe such as snow or a lack of movement. They need to see the different ways to make things seem dangerous. The reason why they tend to resort to cliches, when writing, is because of this lack of knowledge and experience. Plus, they also need to see things for themselves. 

From working on these two extracts, the students created a plan for their writing using the following questions: 

• What is going to create the elements of safety in the extract? 

• How am I going to suggest through clues that there is a danger lurking somewhere? 

They went on to create some really effective pieces of writing with the construction of two tones to their writing. With the mood / purpose in mind, their writing was much better than a previous draft they have done. Students love plot. In fact, the love plot more than anything and plot dominates the style of writing - and then… and then … finally …. I always say that the plot of a piece of writing should be small and powerful. The style around it makes it powerful. The opening of a letter can be more effective in storytelling than a group of zombies chasing some school kids. 

To be precise, detailed, subtle and nuanced, we need students to shift their emphasis in writing. We need to be more precise. Precise with ideas around mood. How many times do we ask students to write for a mood or moods? We need to shift their emphasis from plot and excitement to mood and feelings. 

Thanks for reading

Xris 

Narrowing those feelings

Effect is such a funny thing to explore when reading texts. It is wrapped up in so many things. What has happened previously? What does the reader think will happen next? What is really going on in the story? A lot of what we expect from students is precision. Precise identification of a mood or a feeling.The best students are those that can identify a range of precise moods and even some of those moods are conflicting moods. Take the ‘Life of Pi’ paper and the conflicting disgust and comical moods surrounding the description of the hyenas. The problem is that we are expecting teenagers to articulate feelings, which, in all fairness they are struggling to identify in themselves and not just in an extract from a story. 

The biggest problem we have in English, aside from apostrophes on everything ending with an s or the fact that a lot is two words, is oversimplification of overgeneralization. I had to write some curriculum documents and the word ‘oversimplification’ was the one I used in every box and on every page when it came to misconceptions. Knowledge isn’t the problem. It is how that knowledge is used in context that is the problem. It is the fact that it can be used in other contexts but it isn’t precise or appropriate. Take the students who use the word ‘discombobulated’ in their writing. They use it in every piece of writing, including essays. The same is seen with quotations from key texts that appear in creative writing. Or, voltas applied to non-fiction texts. 

For this reason, I have been looking at how we can support precision around thinking in texts. Effect is such a nebulous concept and it is hard to pin down. That’s why I explored if I could group the feelings around something more precise. 

• Is the feeling related to power? 

• Is the feeling related to the place? 

• Is the feeling related to a character in the text? 

• Is the feeling that the reader feels differently to the characters in the story? 

It is alright asking students what they feel in response to a text, but it takes quite a bit of skill to hone those feelings down. Quite sophisticated readers could do that easily, but most students can’t. That’s why I think it is important to think about what is causing the feeling before a student even grasps for words. 

That unpicking of feelings is really important for understanding stories. Otherwise we get generalised comments. It feels creepy. It feels sinister. Take the Hartop paper. The car has a claustrophobic setting. Hartop is dominating the car. The women are powerless. Once we have established the different feelings. We can explore the subtext. Why is it claustrophobic? Why is Hartop dominating? Why are the women powerless?  

Within any text, there are competing sources for our feelings and students need to see that there is a level of plurality in texts. We feel opposing feelings for different things in the text. Weaker students tend to generalise this fact and blanket everything with the same feeling. The better students pinpoint the differences in feeling. 

Once students have the idea of opposing sources of feelings, we can then explore the what and the why behind them. To start that discussion, I used this table this week. 

 

Size /Power	Mood /Place	People	Reader
Intimidating	Sinister	Confined	Uneasy
Superior	Tranquil	Imprisoned	Pity
Domineering	Boredom	Ensnared	Confusion
Dominating	Monotony	Alienated	Amused
Overpowering	Foreboding	Isolated	Relate
Unrelenting	Menacing	Detached	Fearful
Inferior	Dreary	Outcast	Anxious
Fragile	Claustrophobic	Overwhelmed	Concerned
Vulnerable	Suffocating	Suppressed	Unsettled
Feeble	Idyllic	Ecstatic	Surprised
Overpowered	Harmonious	Inspired	Expecting
Defenceless	Magical	Determined	Unexpected
Helpless	Perfect	Hopeful	Empathise
Powerless	Lifeless	Connected	Sympathise
Timid	Chaotic	Appreciated	Intrigued

 

This week we explored Rosabel and discussed the claustrophobic bus compared to the magical outside. We further discussed the level of detachment she felt in her situation. We often have word bingo behind tables like this, but the students used this to narrow their thinking. The narrowing down on meaning is key. Instead of throwing everything out including the kitchen sink, we were refining and narrowing. How would we describe the mood of the bus? How would we describe Rosabel’s feelings? 

We need students to be self-refining their ideas and words when approaching texts. That's what makes the best responses. They have sifting through their brain to be precise. They have picked out the right word and not the first word that comes to mind.

English is a massive subject and lots of things lead teachers to explore and grapple loads of things at once. The longer I teach, the more I come to the idea that exploring should be happening on a microscopic level. We should be refining and narrowing the ideas to be clear. As teachers, we should be working constantly on refining and sifting through things to get to the kernel of a idea. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris