It is so good to be back. A significant teacher shortage in the English faculty this year – particularly in Term 3 – necessitated the teaching of additional classes and the setting and marking of multiple cohorts’ work. Given the opportunity that this situation afforded – taking a range of classes from Year 7 through to Year 11 – it is useful now to revisit the very critical aspects of Mount Carmel’s literacy landscape. Literacy is essentially about meaning making. It involves the ability to read, write, speak, listen, and view for different purposes in a range of contexts. Students become literate as they develop the knowledge and skills to use and understand language confidently and competently. Literacy is fundamental to a student’s ability to learn at school and to engage productively in society. Whilst not a subject in its own right, literacy is central to all areas of learning.

Reading and writing are the two most vital parts of the literacy picture. These two processes are exceptionally important and powerfully interrelated. Reading has the capacity to initiate writing, and writing has the capacity to promote deep and close reading. The American poet Charles Bernstein asserts ‘To create good writers you need to create good readers. There is no shortcut’. Stephen King’s advice put simply is ‘to read a lot and write a lot’. When writer Paul Auster was asked what inspired him at school, he listed American writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and J.D. Salinger. He then moved on to Russian writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the French-Algerian writer, Albert Camus. Finally, he mentioned the Irish writer James Joyce who, when Auster was eighteen, ‘towered over everyone else for me.’ For Auster, ‘books are a world unto themselves – and that world is richer and more interesting than any one we’ve travelled in before.’

In my reading of academic material on literacy, I have encountered the term ‘wreading’. This concept has developed as a way of envisaging and enacting a mutual relationship between reading and writing as supported by writers such as Auster, King, and Bernstein. The underpinning principle here is to get students to interact with existing texts in productive and creative ways in order to create new ones. In every English classroom, teachers are seeking to create a culture within which students can learn to read like writers, and equally, to write like readers. My experience teaching the different classes over the past three terms has shown how necessary and exciting it is to create responsive, literate communities of young people.

Clare Murphy

English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach