Donald Graves, one of the great international leaders in writing research and pedagogy, summed up the importance of ‘putting pen to paper’ when he stated, ‘Writing is extolled, worried over, cited as a national priority, but seldom practised. The problem with writing is not poor spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting. The problem with writing is no writing.’

Writing has been a particular focus at Mount Carmel over the past five years with college leadership, KLA coordinators, and the different curriculum departments acutely aware of the very important role writing has for thinking and making sense of experience. We know that when we write, we write our way into meaning, discovering ideas and generating insights that would otherwise remain unrealised. We also know that every act of writing is therefore potentially an act of creation. The establishment of a community of teacher-writers and student-writers is an important part of the Mount Carmel literacy landscape. 

The Mount Carmel Writing Club has adapted to the COVID-19 restrictions and has continued online in place of the peaceful and contemplative atmosphere of the Carmelite Retreat Centre. Last Thursday afternoon at 3.30pm, teachers picked up their pens and began to write. The prompt that I responded to for my journal writing was a quote from William Faulkner, an author studied in the HSC English Extension 1 course: ‘Memory believes before knowing remembers.’ The knowledge that other teachers were sitting down at this particular time in solidarity and composing a piece of writing, was heartening. A positive sense of community and collegiality was evident. I have asked staff to share their insights about writing, their approach to teaching writing in the classroom, and even their own compositions over the next few weeks as part of my Literacy Links segment in the College Newsletter. 

Today I will leave you with another student response to the COVID-19 lockdown – this time, a student from Year 11. 

During the pandemic I have found myself feeling a deep sense of loss for things that I have never known. I would describe it as a sudden realisation of possibilities. In the last lockdown it was easy to push the thought away, but I suppose now, there is a sense of urgency about it as I feel that I am at a decisive point in my life. To think that there are endless avenues that my life could pan out is a daunting and distressing realisation. Suddenly, even the little things seem so indomitably important, and I look back on my own life up to this point and realise that every choice I have ever made has led me here, to this point in time, to this moment of being. I do not think it’s a sense of discontent, but rather coming to terms with the fact that I can only live one life. I must resign myself to the fact that I will inevitably not see everything, feel everything, or understand everything. It is easy to say that one must live in the moment, but I think we must realise that living in the moment does not come without its costs. I don’t think that living in the moment should cost us our desire to want, as lack and desire are deeply embedded within the human psyche. We must explore desire in a way that does not endanger our sense of contentment, which I do not think many people even achieve in their own lives. This then begs the question: To what extent is wanting allowable? When does it become damaging? Is it reasonable to want things that we cannot have? 

I have also found myself rethinking my relationships with others. This idea that each random person on the face of the earth lives a life as complex and convoluted as my own. It is bewildering to think that seven billion people share the same desires, needs, hopes, and aspirations. We are desensitised to this fact because see people every day, and suddenly being completely isolated from others is both a necessity and a reality. I look back at my own life and think about the things that seem so insignificant to me and how they would change people’s perceptions of me. I also find myself revisiting the different “selves” I seem to have constructed to frame the way I am seen. This has given me new insight into what has authentically and intrinsically been a part of my identity, and what has been fabricated and illustrated for the purpose of image. We all create various “versions” of ourselves for the various circumstances and experiences we find ourselves in. It seems to be second nature to us, engrained in our sense of survival. Is there any merit in seeking to live as one “self”? How would this work in a society like ours? I think that the main thing I have taken away is the idea that each person lives their own life. How amazing it would be to share in those stories and represent them for others. 

Human nature is cruel in that we insatiably seek the things we cannot have. Perhaps it is more a question of whether or not we can reasonably expect ourselves to conform to rationality especially in the modern world. We are expected to think nimbly but not necessarily deeply or emotionally. I think that being away from things that become so engrained into routine is a chance to catch a breath and sit in company with your soul. But it has also offered me the opportunity to reflect on the things that could have been. I think looking to the future is beneficial here as it categorises our experiences into terms we can understand. The future feels like a certainty, but we never really know. I suppose this is another thing I’ve found difficult to grasp. 

Among all these things, the most potent loss is the loss of this future. As a young person I feel that our society is losing sight of what matters. I think that many people my age still expect that when they become adults they will live in a world as prosperous and stable as it was years ago, when their own parents came of age. We inherit a dying world, one of economic strife, social upheaval and most crucially, widespread apathy and dissociation. Who would have thought that a global pandemic would be ravaging the world? I feel as if we are on the closing pages, the final tethers of a world battered by political divisions, bigotry, and that general sense of unease that we all seem to feel. For generations that have come and gone, the future has been ripe with possibility and opportunity. But for us it seems as if we know that it will get much worse before it gets better. 
Gabriel Garcia

Mrs Clare Murphy
English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach