🖋️ “It didn’t have to be clever. It just had to be true.” At a recent MA Creative Writing and Education sharing day, alumna Maryam Ahmadi led a powerful storytelling session exploring how fables can carry emotional and moral truths that essays and arguments often can’t. The bold linocut-style image here captures the spirit of the session: a teacher and group of students surrounded by symbols of learning and connection—a heart, a lightbulb, a book, and leaves. A chalkboard shows the simplest of equations: 1 + 1, reminding us that real learning is reciprocal. When we share stories, we’re not just transmitting knowledge—we’re transforming one another. Maryam began by reading Patrick and Flippa, a deceptively gentle children’s book about a lonely polar bear and a persistent penguin. The group then wrote their own fables, revealing themes of exile, regeneration, defiance, and hope. One participant wrote about a deer who could only speak in questions. Another told of a fish who forgot how to swim in clean water. These were not writing exercises. They were acts of quiet truth-telling. 💡 As one attendee put it: “It’s easier to say something difficult through the story of a fox. You get closer without flinching.” 📚 This workshop was part of the MA in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths, University of London—a unique programme where writers become educators, and educators deepen their creative practice. 🔗 Find out about the MA: www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-creative-writing-education/ #MACreativeWritingAndEducation #GoldsmithsUniversity #StorytellingAsPedagogy #MindfulTeaching #Fables #CreativeWritingWorkshop #WritingToHeal #WritingToLearn #RadicalPedagogy #TeacherWriter #ReciprocalLearning
This blog introduces The Mindful Creative Writing Teacher—my book for anyone teaching or facilitating creative writing, whether in schools, universities, prisons, or community spaces. Drawing on decades of experience, I offer a fresh, practical, and compassionate approach to teaching writing that blends mindfulness, creativity, and social justice. In the blog, I explain why I wrote the book: to move beyond rigid workshop models and embrace a more humane, dynamic, and inclusive pedagogy. The book is filled with real-life case studies, poems, hands-on activities, and reflective prompts designed to help you cultivate creativity, wellbeing, and critical thinking in your classroom. It’s for English teachers, creative writing tutors, and writers alike—especially those looking to empower diverse voices, support reluctant or neurodiverse learners, and find joy in their own writing again. You’ll find strategies for teaching storytelling, feedback, decolonisation, and multimodal writing, as well as guidance on developing your own mindful teaching identity. This blog offers a glimpse into the book’s ethos: writing not just as a craft to be perfected, but as a transformative act of attention, empathy, and expression. If you’re looking to teach writing in a way that’s more authentic, creative, and connected, this book—and blog—are for you.