Workshop with secondary school teachers
In June 2024, I ran a workshop for secondary school teachers, teaching English at all secondary years, at Wootton Park, Northampton. We discussed several poems that are on their syllabuses, some which they had taught many times and others which were less familiar. I discovered that the challenges for teachers included teaching students why they should love poetry beyond having to write about it for their exams or coursework; trying to convey the importance of poetry and to defend its relevance; and trying to steer students away from merely identifying poetic features (rhyme, imagery, form) and towards an interest in what the poems might 'mean'. The largest challenge, indeed, seemed to be to encourage the students to read for 'meaning' first, and then for 'methods' (i.e. showing how the formal techniques informed their reading of the poem).
Teachers were concerned that the nature of teaching English for GCSEs and A-levels was such that the creative element of the subject is chipped away at by attainment goals, and this was inevitably communicated to the students. We also discussed how teaching is relationship-based - the students need to feel comfortable with the teachers in order to make themselves vulnerable in reading and responding to poetry.
Immediate feedback suggested that the teachers found it really helpful to swap notes on teaching methods and different responses to the poems we looked at - and that they wanted to try to find more time to do this. I hope that I modelled a method of discussion - bringing in other poems to discuss alongside the set poems, and talking about how I responded to the poems (in addition to their responses) - which could be done again, without me as a facilitator. The most meaningful value of the workshop was giving the teachers the time and space to talk to each other.
I was delighted to hear, several weeks later, that: "The Department were all extremely positive about the session and I know it actually led to a few changes we're making to our year 9 poetry Scheme of Work and A-level poetry delivery too."
