A new emphasis on the place of writing in the secondary classroom puts the focus on the teacher as writer. Probably the most important influence on the student writer is the teacher-as-writer who writes alongside the student. If teachers are going to fulfil this role, they need to believe in themselves as writers and to reflect these beliefs in their classroom practices. 

Three teachers have contributed to this week’s Literacy Links article. Ms Monique Young has composed a reflection on writing, Ms Victoria Zullo has written a commentary on the writing of American novelist Flannery O’Connor, and Mrs Madeleine Maulguet has included a poem she composed a short while ago prefaced by a brief introduction. 

Putting Pen to Paper
For a long time, the writing process for me was purely academic discourse – years of submitting essays and papers to lecturers and tutors and before that, teachers. It wasn’t until I became a teacher myself that I started to truly value the craft of writing. Like building a house, painting an artwork, or even baking a cake, writing takes time. It takes patience, perseverance and I think, a belief in one’s ability. Ask any carpenter, artist or chef and I am almost certain they will say the same of their craft. 

As a teacher, it is a belief in one’s ability that I feel is often the most difficult to harness in my students and so remains at the forefront of what I try to do in encouraging them to pick up a pen and write. A past student recently said to me, “I often think that our Year 9 class was the place where I learned the most about myself as a writer”. He didn’t know it, but those words underpin my joy and passion as a teacher, in having my students value writing not just as the academic discourse I viewed it as for so long, but as a process that builds skills, understanding and reason in a world that is becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of.

When faced with the question of ‘why write?’ from a sea of teenage faces – some apathetic, some confused, others eager and excited, Terry Tempest Williams says it best… “I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honour beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure. I write against power and for democracy. I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams. I write in a solitude born out of community. I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that keep me complacent. I write to remember. I write to forget.”

Ms Monique Young

Old Wart Hog – A theological commentary on Flannery O’Connor’s Revelation 
In a highly secular world, revelation appears to be unobtainable; some elusive myth that only fervently religious adherents may grasp. Revelation is commonly referred to as the unveiling of God in some capacity, where our belief in the trinity is strengthened from this newfound knowledge. However, this anagnorisis of sorts isn’t always the pleasurable experience one may assume. Revelation, in the literal sense, is the uncovering of something previously hidden. These revelatory experiences may be humbling, disconcerting or unnerving and have the capacity to invoke a change in the way we think and behave in the world around us.  Whilst some may evade confession or church to avoid this uncomfortable experience, engaging in literature may send one through this transformative process. 

Flannery O’Connor, an American novelist and writer, depicts revelation as an experience that offers us a glance into ‘the very heart of misery’ to bewilder us with a new knowledge of God and ourselves that unsettles our very being. In her Southern Gothic short story, Revelation, the character Mrs. Turpin, a ‘respectable, hardworking, church-going woman,’ who can recite hymns and who regularly consults Jesus in hypothetical dilemmas about if she weren’t herself, would she rather be ‘a nigger or white trash,’ enters into an altercation with an ‘ugly’ teenage girl in a doctor’s office (‘Mrs. Turpin felt an awful pity for the girl…’). The incessant, passive aggressive bickering, with veiled insults being thrown back and forth, was interrupted when the girl thew her book at Mrs. Turpin and followed it with ‘Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.’ She meditated on this pejorative, outraged. It was only until ‘a visionary light settled in her eyes’ that she saw her destiny: groups of clean, white trash people, ‘bands of black niggers,’ and ‘battalions of freaks’ tumbling towards Heaven, together. At the back of this procession, was herself. 

Mrs. Turpin’s internal monologue revealed that, whilst a fervent Christian, she was consistently judging those around her that she perceived as being lesser. It was only until being referred to as an ‘old warthog’ that sent her into a forced contemplation, as a ‘visionary light settled in her eyes’, and she realised her shortcomings. This revelatory experience did not confirm what she already knew but provided her – albeit uncomfortably – with ‘abysmal life-giving knowledge’ that demands the death of the old self, in order for the new to live. When we read great literature, we critique, empathise, and adjudicate characters’ successes and pitfalls, whilst subconsciously reflecting on our own actions and inadequacies. The next time you read, you may be forced to answer the question: are you, unknowingly, an ‘old wart-hog’ disguised as a model Christian? 

Ms. Victoria Zullo

Writing and Poetry
Students often assume that as an English teacher, writing comes naturally to me. While yes, I have more practice at it than they do, sometimes I struggle to find the right words to express myself. 

Writing is a skill that is developed like any other in life and it has only been over the last few years that I’ve really felt comfortable at all with myself as a writer. Comfortable enough even, to share my creative writing with my students. Many students will already know that I write poetry in my spare time. I love the freedom and fluidity that the form allows. I often think about this quote from my favourite author, Neil Gaiman: “Know safely what the rules are, and then break them with joy.”

The poem below is a piece I wrote a few months ago. It is my favourite piece that I have written this year. I wrote it at a time when I needed to reassure myself. After writing it I felt an overwhelming sense of relief and satisfaction. Now when I reread it I am struck by those same feelings. That’s really the power of writing, its ability to affect us. 

Ceaseless is the climb
she keeps to herself.
Nothing deters her, 
the loose rocks shift beneath her feet.

She cradles nothing - 
but the thrum of her patient soul. 
She is good enough
this only affirms her resolve. 

Mrs Madeleine Maulguet

Mrs Clare Murphy
English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach