King of his Castle

This week I’ve spent a lot of time in Wakefield primary schools…I’ve met a lot of lovely children and had some wonderful experiences encouraging the pupils of them to think creatively.  Of all the delightful faces I’ve seen one particular little boy stands out and I’d like to tell you about him…

The particular workshop I met him in was on a hot afternoon.  The children, from the outset, were a little fussy – partly due to the heat and partly due to the imminent and yearned for end of term.  The boy was one of the few children not demanding attention…small, dark with alert, bright eyes…he sat quietly, listened carefully and gently drank in the stimulus for writing I was presenting to the group.  He was easy to overlook amongst the clamour of the louder, brasher children.  Also he gave the impression of needing sustenance and nurturing physically, emotionally and creatively…the initial writing games we started with showed that literacy skills did not come entirely easy to him...

We came to the time in the workshop where pupils were encouraged  to write a substantial piece of writing…some children wrote in pairs, others like the boy at the centre of this story chose to write individually.  As pupils got to the end of their piece of writing…a description of their Castle of Dreams…I read through their words, congratulated them and thanked them for their contribution then letting them go back to their classroom so those still writing could continue to concentrate.

Gradually the group diminished until our small dark haired, dark eyed boy was the only one remaining…he looked up fearfully from his writing at which point I assured him he was fine to write for as long as he wanted to and so he did…he wrote and wrote for another twenty minutes after the rest of his classmates and left.  Then he read back over his work, altered it, improved it with absolute focus and only when he was ready did he look up again… asking permission to read it I drank in his labour of love…it was a lovely piece of fantasy writing where for a while that little boy had literally been king of his castle. 

Now I know how important time and space to be creative is…I’m a champion of it…but sometimes it take an unexpected incident like that to remind you just how lovely it is in action…the boy reminded me beautifully of what can happen when you steal a quiet moment or so out of the rigidity of curriculum and timetabling…I’m determined to steal more whenever I can…