Personal and professional vulnerability in sharing practice

The ‘distinct fear of comparison’ (Grainger, 2005) felt by teachers in sharing writing experiences was, as outlined above, a feature of initial engagement in the Post Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing in the Classroom course. Teachers frequently referenced writing poetry as connected to the personal sense of self, both for themselves and their pupils. They recognised ‘the intensely personal nature of language and poetry’ (T12, Essay) and its capacity to ‘explore personal emotions’ (T10, Essay). This is evident in the following remark:

I think I feel more confident now about actually correct...not correcting but

speaking to people about poetry, because any other work that my students do, I’d say ‘the beginning’s weak’ or ‘this bit needs this’ or ‘the tenses here are all wrong’ but when we do poetry I don’t like giving it marks. (T1, Focus Group 2)

The issues to do with assessment of poetry in this exchange are significant. T1’s assertion that she feels ‘more confident now’, and her suggestion that this confidence is connected to her ability to engage in dialogue about the writing of poetry, implies that the experience gained through the Post Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing in the Classroom course has influenced the way she thinks about assessment of pupils’ poetry. Her sense that assessing pupils’ writing of poetry is somehow different from other kinds of writing is explored as the discussion continues:

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T1: I think as if I feel almost as if poetry is like, it’s like criticising their appearance.

T4: It’s very personal.

T1: Yes, and some people, I don’t know about your schools, are in uniform but I’ll say to someone ‘that’s not a uniform jumper’ but I won’t say ‘your hair is a mess’ whereas some people will, because I think the one is a fact and the other is my opinion - if the hair is a mess - and with poetry I always feel like it’s so personal even if it isn’t about a personal thing…

(Focus Group 2, July 2011)

Here, the focus on the teachers’ role in assessing poetry is centred on an understanding that ‘poetry is so personal even if it isn’t about a personal thing’. This perhaps recalls Bullock’s assertion that, while personal vulnerability and fear of value judgements may exist in all classroom activity, engagement with literature is high stakes, and poetry the highest stakes of all. Bullock notes:

In a very real sense a pupil is himself being judged each time he responds in class to a piece of literature, particularly a poem. More is at stake than his knowledge of the text. Is the value judgement he forms the one the teacher finds acceptable? Is he betraying himself, he may well ask, as one who lacks discrimination? In no other area of classroom operations is there quite the same degree of vulnerability, with poetry the most exposing element of all. (DES, 1975: p.131)

Although the teachers’ discussion quoted above is about pupils’ poetry, the sense of personal vulnerability is relevant to teachers’ own writing practice. The analogy that is made with criticising someone’s appearance - the factual truth of not wearing uniform as against the ‘opinion’ that someone looks a mess – is useful in considering that when teachers’ assess poetry they feel ‘obliged to make a value judgment, and value judgments make everyone uneasy, especially those who make them, because they are, in essence, indefinable’ (Weldon, 2009: p.171). The anxieties that teachers feel in responding to pupils’ writing is a recognition that the negotiation and ambiguity of meaning expressed in writing poetry is deeply connected to ‘the self’, a theme which is explored in some detail in

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the next chapter (6.3.1 below). In this context, the sharing of teachers’ practice with peers extends beyond knowledge, skill and craft, and implies a disclosure of the self, and a sense that judgements may be made not only about their writing, but about themselves.

The evidence suggests, then, that the sharing of creative writing practice presents

considerable personal challenges, since teachers may feel, as they do of their pupils, that ‘when they write poetry….it’s not just words on a page’ (T2, Seminar 1). Here, and in the discussion quoted above, teachers’ engagement in responding to pupils’ poetry is

inhibited by their conception of poetry as deeply bound up in expression of the inner self. For teachers, the sense of self is often closely connected to teacher identity (Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009). The case study revealed anxieties about sharing creative writing practice that were directly concerned with teachers’ sense of their professional identities.

We have seen that the teachers had preconceived expectations that teachers with some specialism in English Literature would be better equipped to engage in creative writing. Literature specialists, on the other hand, pointed out that they felt that their background afforded them no such position (see 5.4 above). However, all teachers tend to be positioned as holding ‘considerable skill mastery’ in writing by their pupils and perhaps wider society (Cremin and Myhill, 2011: p.129). The sharing of writing practice, then, may foster anxieties that lack of expertise, mastery and knowledge could be discovered, with a consequent sense that teacher identity may be compromised through creative writing practice.

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