What Can English Teachers Do?
There’s a sense that right now the world is particularly dark. We often hear the unlovely word ‘polycrisis’. I don’t need to list the many elements: you know what they are.
At such a time, English teaching might seem irrelevant and ineffectual. What can we do?
We can …
… re-assert and keep promoting the value of literature. Literature is full of pleasure, joy, knowledge, insights into our fellow humans. It expands our ability to empathise. We need these things so much right now. Listen to Katherine Rundell in her recent BBC Radio series The Lion, the Witch and the Wonder for her fabulous advocacy of children’s fiction. Oh, and we should all read my choice as Book of 2022, Rundell’s exhilarating account Super-Infinite: the transformations of John Donne. That shows us how enduringly thrilling and ‘relevant’ poems from 400 years ago can be.
… make our classroom a retreat from the deafening noisiness of contemporary public life. In this space we can talk and share fruitfully and with respect. Our discourse can be utterly different from the frenetic and aggressive arena out there. Our classrooms need to be places of attention in a world where attention is constantly being fractured, and reading can do this too: see what Maryanne Wolf says in this piece on ‘cognitive patience’. Adriaen Coorte’s still life of asparagus started off an intermittent series on attention.
… through literature, give our pupils a broader historical and cultural perspective. They are wrapped up in the present, and their historical awareness can be very shallow. I have been reading Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England: he is brilliant in describing the texture of everyday life, and boy what an horrific life it was for almost everyone when Shakespeare was alive. How lucky we are to live at this time in human history.
… show how them how literature opens up an understanding of diverse cultures, peoples and experiences. Here’s my piece on eclectic reading. We should be showing them how human experience can be universal, and that ‘old’ texts can speak to them as much as ones written recently (see Rundell on Donne, above). Story-telling is truly universal. Kazuo Ishiguro in his Nobel Lecture (Happy 70th Birthday today!): in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?
… persuade them that there are few more vital and consoling things than poetry, despite its ‘irrelevant’ image. Here’s my slightly tongue-in-cheek piece on why poetry is the most ‘important’ and ‘useful’ subject in school.
… read poetry out loud in class: a poem at the start of a lesson takes 30 seconds. You never know what impact it will have. They may not experience anything as beautiful or thought-provoking all day. We can introduce them to writers like Victoria Kennefick, Roger Robinson, Molly Twomey, Anthony Joseph.
… also read short stories to them in class. They are never too old to enjoy being read to. Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote about this in her book The Enchanted Hour: the miraculous power of reading aloud in the age of distraction. That deep human instinct, story-telling, is one of the privileges of our subject. Here’s my Personal Anthology list of stories in Jonathan Gibbs’s series that I’ve read out loud in the classroom over the years. The other day a pupil from 30 years ago got in touch saying how much impact one story had had on him, and where could he find a copy? I’d forgotten I’d ever read it out.
… never compromise our principles of quality. If we have choices of texts, we must not diminish our professional integrity or reduce the pupils’ experience. And they will soon sense our lack of enthusiasm. I said this in a webinar on Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These at the start of this week: if you can, choose that book that you believe in, and help pupils discover how powerfully shaped it is, how a writer can create a beautiful work of art.
… on which note, model enthusiasm, make explicit our belief in the importance of our subject and, as important, how it is crucial. Read Conor Murphy on Why I Love Teaching.
… encourage reading as much as possible. We’re all aware of the erosion of reading in the smartphone era. Children can spend hours lying on their beds scrolling. We have the privileged opportunity of introducing them to stories in which they can immerse themselves. Recommend books, give them ‘trailers’, make sure they can access a library - if we don’t have ones in our own schools, then look to the public system: my piece on libraries in Ireland, where we are lucky. Personal recommendations are the most powerful: enable the readers in our classes to recommend books to their mates: that works.
… give them as many opportunities as possible to write creatively, to express themselves. Yet more important in the world of GenAI: I collated this, about the threat that technology poses to the development of the thinking and writing muscles of our children. Reading muscles, too.
… help them become hyper-aware of the way language is used publicly, and show them the presumptions behind the language of politicians. There has surely never been more widespread dishonest and inaccurate language in the public domain, and it may become increasingly harder to challenge or even discern this.
… make sure we are connecting fruitfully and respectfully with our colleagues via subject associations and online. I think of INOTE in Ireland, but there are such positive communities in every country. We learn and gain from each other; we can help each other.
… read Carol Atherton’s recent book: Reading Lessons: the books we read at school, the conversations they spark and why they matter. She expresses better than I have here why discussing books continues to be the most profound and important thing in our classrooms. My comments on her book.
…re-read Geoff Barton’s oldie but goodie, 12 Things That Great English Teachers Do:
Great English teachers are more important than they realise. They teach the most important skills within the most important subject. They remind us of the power of language and the delights of literature. They help students to mediate a bewilderingly complex world, standing for certain values - for the confidence to ask questions, for the security of knowing there aren't always simple answers, for being prepared to argue your case, and doing so in a style that is powerfully appropriate. Great English teachers do all this and more. They have an impact beyond their knowledge, influencing generations of young people. They're the reason many of us are ourselves English teachers.
All of this matters. We can do all this. Yes, we can.