Context

Joseph Leckie Community Technology College is a multi-cultural secondary school in Walsall.

Aims & principles

• To improve poetry writing and creative writing skills
• To address the underachievement of ethnic minority pupils
• To explore issues of identity and culture with British-Asian pupils
• To encourage respect for diversity and understanding of other cultures
• To boost pupils’ confidence in their own ability and improve self-esteem

In Practice

Writer Simon Fletcher led a four-day project with small groups of pupils from all secondary year groups. The first three days were spent in general writing workshops, and the last day was used for extending and polishing the work of the students who had shown the most enthusiasm and potential.

Simon began his project by looking at a range of published work by writers such as Debjani Chatterjee, Tariq Latif, Ishrat Aafreen and Moniza Alvi and exploring the variety around a single theme, such as food, or animals. The idea was to give the students a clear license to celebrate the special features of their own culture by introducing subjects they could easily relate to. He then worked through a set of questions, bringing all the pupils into the discussion. From here, the pupils moved into individual writing, with Simon giving each of them his personal attention.

The second session was focused less on poetry and more on persuasive writing and effective use of formal sentence structures. The final session returned to poetry, using examples of work by many different writers such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Vikram Seth, and Shenaz Ali. The poems brought up some challenging issues and led to conversations about identity and culture. Again Simon used simple but testing questions designed to lead naturally into discussion and writing. For example, the students were asked to think about a photo from their own family albums and to describe what it reveals.

Finally, the pupils were asked to write their own ‘ghazal’ – a complex poetic form originally derived from Persia- using a single example from poet Basir Sultan Kazmi as a guideline.

Attitudes and attainment after the project

Teachers were impressed by the quality of the work produced. Pupils were quick to feel comfortable writing about a world they understand, rather than having to write from a European perspective.

Legacy

Ahmed is keen to organise similar projects in the future. There is an ongoing commitment in the school to create more of a writing culture. There is also a ‘mushaira’ (poetry reading) planned at which pupils will read their work to their peers and parents.

Resources

Poems that were used in the project include: Usha Kishore (‘Tiger’), Spike Milligan (‘Hello Mr Python’), Zulfikar Ghose (‘The Crows’), Buddhadeva Bose (from ‘Fogs’) and Sujata Bhatt (‘Maninagar Days’) ,Benjamin Zephaniah (‘White Comedy’), Vikram Seth (‘Homeless’), Shenaz Ali (‘So Where Are We?’) John Siddique (‘neckgrip’), Shamshad Khan (‘Oppressed Coverage’) and Saleem Peeradina (‘Sisters’).

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