It’s Thursday morning, 10th March, as I sit writing this blog. This time a week ago, on World Book Day, I was back in a classroom, rearranging the tables and chairs with six Year 8 students. We needed to sit round one large table. All of them had read What we have in common, and I was about to lead them in a writing workshop. So there I was, completing some loop or other on the teaching spiral of my professional life – how could I have foreseen this forty years ago when I started my career teaching biology? And I couldn’t have foreseen how fascinating and satisfying it was to teach using my own novel as a tool.
I started with questions which they had submitted via their teacher, Nicky, and built those into our discussion, and into their each imagining a protagonist and a story that they would write. They were eager and quick learners, their curiosity and readiness to ask more questions about my writing process and novel reminding me of that feeling of how thrilling and joyful it is to work with learners in this way. I didn’t feel retired.
Starting with questions was how I’d also prepared for the talk I gave to the whole year group beforehand. That was such a lot of fun, too, and I was very impressed with the range and depth of the questions I’d been given. “Do you think the characters always make the right decisions?” and, “How did you know that you wanted to start writing?” See what I mean?
I’m honoured to have been invited into the school to talk to Year 8 students on this World Book Day as a local author, and that they had had my book read to them in their daily reading time in tutor groups – all within three months of its publication! The feedback was wonderful to get, and the opportunity to contribute to WBD was a huge privilege. Could I pick out one highlight? That’s tricky. One from the year group assembly, and one from the workshop, yes. Making the year group laugh, obviously that was one. And being told by the workshop group – six keen readers agreed on this – that they had never read a YA story dealing with the main subject of Portia’s storyline, and that it was good that they now had. That felt as important as being told they’d enjoyed reading it.
Thank you to all of the students in Year 8 at Minehead Middle School, and to staff, and especially to Nicky Gibbs, Head of English. Your costumes were marvellous, and your questions, your attention and your responses combined to shine a powerful light on why stories for children and young people matter so much.
About the main photo
Why this photo on WBD? This blue plaque is in St John’s St, Wirksworth, where most of WWHIC is set. It commemorates Elizabeth Evans, George Eliot’s aunt, who lived and died there in 1849. George Eliot based the character, Dinah Morris, in ‘Adam Bede’, on Elizabeth. The other main female character in ‘Adam Bede’ is called Hetty…
Jane Allsopp Writer 