Alicia Hoad shares her reflections on January’s writing meeting.
A lovely treat in the drab month that is January, Writing Teachers’ Norwich met on Saturday 25th January 2025. I arrived in my usual fashion; in a rush and late as they come. Internal conflabs were firing as I ran/walked to the cathedral of whether to choose Jeni at table 14 or Mark at table 25. Luckily, they’d combined with Sam at a large table by the time I arrived, notebooks scattered and pens ready. A small but solid collection of writers promised some interesting writing and chatter.
Discussion flowed and we started (as always) with words around the table with some very humorous combinations. Always great to start with a chuckle.
We next discussed the concept of carpenters versus gardeners, beautifully captured in ‘The Gardener and the Carpenter’ by Alison Gopnik. We seemed to unanimously agree that as teachers, it is much better to be like a gardener, supplying the children with tools and watching them flourish in their own way. This idea seems to be completely encapsulated by the Early Years curriculum, then peters its way out further up school as pressures like exams creep in and leave less room for true creativity.
The idea of being a gardener wove its way through the meet as each writer made their way on a tangent for at least one of the tasks given! Starting with ‘I Remember’ by Joe Brainard, we dove straight in. The word remember quite obviously takes you to a point in your past, for me, as often happens, it was back to Dad. The memory of him always provides me with great fuel for writing, and this occasion was no different.
The next task was simply a question: where does writing come from? Jeni admitted that she had been thinking about this a lot of late, as she has been spending an afternoon a week in my own EYFS classroom. It has been interesting from my point of view to watch as the children’s relationship with Miss Jeni has grown in line with their understanding and ability to read and write. Her value in the classroom has increased for them as they realised their own capabilities – they finally ‘get’ her. Following this discussion of the literal birth of writing for a child, came our own experience, as seasoned writers, of where it comes from. In short – life. Once you are past the mechanics of letter formation, grapheme-phoneme correspondence and spelling it is rather the content you occupy yourself with.
The final task, following on nicely from this, was completely open.
The only restrictions were the shape of paper you chose: a small circle, a larger circle, a stubby rectangle or a long rectangle. I chose the larger circle and the long rectangle and immediately wrote about my experiences of a meditation evening in a yurt the night before.
You see? Life. All of your life’s experiences provide fuel for writing, and THAT is where mine comes from.