Exploring the potential of poetry in preservice teacher training for becoming teacher-writers

This workshop explores initial findings from a university-school
partnership in which preservice teachers were prepared to teach
poetry to primary students in years 1 to 6 in four ACT and NSW
primary schools over a semester. Through a narrative timeline
presentation, workshop participants will experience creative writing
activities undertaken, while gaining insights into the experiences of
children, preservice teachers, classroom teachers and tutors.
Creative writing is an artform that can be powerfully personal
and expressive and involves the development of writerly identities.
It is also a critical skill for success in schooling and in the workplace.
Yet, preservice teachers often feel ill-equipped to teach writing
due to the sometimes limited preparation provided in university
training. Preservice teachers may also have a ‘jaded’ view of writing
formed in their own education and which can be difficult to
overcome and may be inadvertently perpetuated.
This workshop draws on Grant Snider’s (2024) Poetry Comics
and Maxine Beneba Clarke’s (2023) It’s the Sound of the Thing,
which were used in the school-based clinics to explore free verse,
shape poetry, haiku, line poetry, found poetry and SLAM poetry
forms. It emphasises multimodal forms including sound, music,
gesture and visual image.
Initial findings suggest that poetry provided preservice teachers
and students with the opportunity to rediscover expressive and
playful approaches to writing, and that the breaking of conventions
often found in poetry only served to highlight conventions of more
formal writing.
This workshop seeks to prompt a conversation between
preservice teachers, school teachers and university training
providers about the preparation of preservice teacher training for
teaching writing.