Times Interview with Kate Clanchy - shared article in post

I don't understand the hostility of your response.

I'm curious what this means in practise:

'students are supervised and protected by ethical frameworks to protect them when working creatively on something, such as a traumatic experience, which might cause them undue harm. They are discouraged from doing so'

Are students discouraged from working creatively on 'traumatic experience'?

alrighty!

Why are you so sure that the other teacher was right and that KC was wrong?

You are so determined to paint KC as the wicked white witch that you can't see your own bias.

You don’t know what’s in the book because you haven’t read it.

I think you’ve proved repeatedly that whatever it is you do in education is pretty worthless. Certainly nothing to the good Kate Clanchy did during her 30 yers of teaching.

Ok cool

What a funny way to simplify what I’m saying.

yeah go on then - we don’t let them write about their feeling at all.

Like I've said, you have absolutely no idea what else was going on in the background and who else was involved. Why would you? It wouldnt be relevant or appropriate to the story being told and you dont know any of these people personally,

Yes - I know what is in the book, the child’s tutor told her to stop - she knew better! She even says she knew she would be in trouble, but carried on. If this did happen in real life, a safeguarding lead would need to be involved- so hopefully they were.

You may have training. It doesn't mean you have sound judgement, especially when it comes to a case you know almost nothing about.

Well yes. Of course. There are trained professionals who deal closely with this.

You have no idea how it was handled in the background, which of course wouldn't be relayed in the book.

I work at a university in the arts - even the level 6 students are supervised and protected by ethical frameworks to protect them when working creatively on something, such as a traumatic experience, which might cause them undue harm. They are discouraged from doing so and have to provide paperwork to acknowledge this, it’s basic safeguarding.

So an arts education is now actively and explicitly discouraging people from reflecting on or working on artwork that might access their feelings/emotions?

i work in education, I’m trained to spot safeguarding flags.

enjoy!

If you know a student has a trauma background, do you then refer that on to someone?

Her coworker did - the child’s form teacher, who warned Kate twice to back off?

I work at a university in the arts - even the level 6 students are supervised and protected by ethical frameworks to protect them when working creatively on something, such as a traumatic experience, which might cause them undue harm. They are discouraged from doing so and have to provide paperwork to acknowledge this, it’s basic safeguarding.

How you can read that beautiful piece and come to the conclusion that KC is an awful person who should be stopped from teaching or writing I can’t think, but it says more about you than her.

But it’s made me want to read the book even more so thank you for that.

She was running poetry workshops. The child wrote a poem. Which professional bodies out there would deem that a risk?

I do agree that safeguarding needs to be prioritised, but this book seems to be more about poetry, how that might help, what use it is, how it can work and the issues it may cause in an educational setting. Drawing on the author's experiences to set up and pose questions.

It's not sharing precise, detailed, accurate contemporaneous notes on individual children's stories and histories. Because that really would be unethical.

She asked a child to join her poetry class, the child turned up.

And again, the author of this book and all the children in it are characters. They are perhaps based on real events/people, but this is a non-fiction book, it's not a journalist's report.

The incident described above as ‘forcing’ a traumatised Syrian girl to write poems is in front of me now. The girl , whom KC calls Heya, is indeed traumatised. An Arabic poet comes in to run a workshop for the day. Heya attends and writes a poem for the workshop, not for KC. Another girl, Shakila, admires the poem and shows it to KC. Shakila and KC think that Heya would benefit from Poetry Club and invite her ( not force her) to come. At first she doesn’t. Then eventually she does, and writes a poem about her lost country which makes her cry. How could it not? Her form tutor thinks this isn’t good for her and that it’s ’opening wounds’. At one point KC questions herself, as to whether she knows what she’s doing. Maybe the form tutor is right. But Shakila, who comes from Afghanistan, and knows a bit about trauma, persists. So does KC. And Heya writes more poems, often unprompted. Some of them are included in a book KC is making as part of a translation project. And when the book is published Heya ‘couldn’t be more proud’ . She invites her whole family to the launch.

Now you can disagree with KC’s approach if you like . But you do need to read it in context. And to describe Heya as being forced or compelled is to deny her agency.

No. There are many poets making beautiful work with children. Joseph Fasano for example. What is different here is the determination to dig into trauma with children, causing unnecessary risk.

So what? She can't tell these children's stories, is that what you are saying?

But that is a material reality. It might be inconvenient but that is real life.

A good writer provokes questions in the reader and makes one think. A shit writer produces work that satisfies everyone with no risk of upsetting anyone.

Also one must bear in mind that this is a book; a story that has been told. Clanchy is a writer, and we can't really know for sure that any of these children exist in exactly the way described, or whether the events were exactly as described.