for teachers

Here I post a variety of material for teachers. You can reorder the table to aid your search by clicking any of the headings.

  • 📎 CUT + COPY + TEACH: 5 Ways Uncreative Writing Will Turbocharge Your Teaching

    As a writer and educator, I’ve long been fascinated by how creativity works in the classroom. In this blog, I explore Uncreative Writing, a radical teaching approach developed by Dr Cath Clover. Drawing on her powerful workshop at Goldsmiths, I show how copying, remixing, and reframing existing texts can spark critical thinking, accessibility, and genuine creative joy. Whether you’re teaching English, media, or any subject, this inclusive method helps students find their voice through found words.

  • 5 Ways Creative Writing Can Fuel Creativity

    I’ve long believed that creative writing isn’t just for the English classroom—it’s a radical, transformative practice that can fuel creativity across the curriculum. In my new chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Creativity and Education, I explore how freewriting, diagrarting, critical literacy, and compassionate feedback can empower learners of all ages. Drawing on decades of teaching experience and recent research, I show how creative writing can heal, liberate, and inspire. This piece is for educators, writers, and anyone interested in reimagining how we learn and grow through words.

  • Publishing as Pedagogy: Why Creative Writers and Teachers Need to Understand the Industry

    In this article, I explore why knowledge of the publishing industry is essential for both creative writers and educators. Drawing on my experience teaching publishing to MA students, I argue that understanding how books are produced, marketed, and circulated can empower writers and transform the way we teach creative writing. This piece is both a call to action and a practical guide for integrating publishing literacy into the creative writing classroom.

  • Five Ways to Decolonise the Teaching of Creative Writing

    In April 2025, I had the joy of welcoming back Carinya Sharples—a former student of mine from the MA in Creative Writing and Education I lead at Goldsmiths—for an unforgettable session on Decolonising Creative Writing Pedagogies. Carinya held the space with grace, rigour and radical care, sparking vital conversations about power, voice, and language. In this blog, I share five key strategies that emerged from her talk and my own experience—practical, powerful ways to rethink how we teach creative writing. If you’re ready to challenge norms and embrace liberatory practice, come explore more with me by reading the blog.

  • Using publishing tools to create thriving creative writing communities and cultures

    Publishing isn’t just about books—it’s about shaping identity, community, and activism. This blog explores how the MA Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths uses publishing as a pedagogical tool, from internal dialogues between the Writer, Publisher, and Healer within us, to global projects like GlobalGRACE and Creative Voices, which use storytelling, theatre, and art to amplify marginalised voices. Discover how publishing extends beyond the page to empower writers, challenge dominant narratives, and foster creative communities. Read more about how publishing can be a process of transformation, resistance, and education.

  • Five key lessons about S.E. Hinton’s ‘The Outsiders’ and publishing

    This article explores how and why outsiders, in the form of writers, readers and texts, came to shape the publishing industry, particularly Young Adult novels.

  • Entering Viola’s Room: four key lessons I’ve learnt from Punchdrunk’s Immersive Theatre

    An article which explores 4 key things I’ve learnt from experiencing Punchdrunk’s Immersive Theatre events.

  • Two reasons why school trips go wrong

    This blog explores the issues involved with school trips, considering the reasons why problems happen. It follows an interview I did about the matter on Talk TV, December 2024.

  • Of Note- Four Ways Taking Notes have Enriched My Life

    Notes have helped me remember; they’re my safe space; they’re therapeutic; and they’ve liberated my imagination

  • Freeing Creative Voice

    An anthology investigating how educators, creatives, and learners can liberate and uplift their voices through writing, teaching, investigating, and intentional everyday living.

  • Creative Power: Investigating Creative Writing & Its Value

    An instructive and inspiring collection written by Masters’ students at Goldsmiths’ university, and pupils from South London schools. Essential reading for anyone interested in finding ways of thriving in a fractured world.

  • Diversity and Inspiration: a fantastic anthology for creative writers & teachers

    This book contains many tips for helping teachers of creative writing, written by my students on the MA Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths.

  • Four ways education can make the world more socially just

    Abstract or Description This article enumerates four ways that education can make the world more socially just, drawing upon the expertise of the educationalist in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths. Reference: Gilbert, Francis. 2024. Four ways education can make the world more socially just. Educational Studies blog, [Article] TextSocial Justice Feb 2024.pdf – Accepted VersionAvailable […]

  • A Century of Teaching Creative Writing in Schools: the Newbolt Report and teaching creative writing

    Newbolt strongly advocates imaginative ways of teaching writing, championing self-expression above rote-learning.

  • The Haunted House: Teaching Creative Writing Through Collaborative Learning to 9-13 year olds

    Many teachers of creative writing find teaching 9-13-year-olds tricky. What exactly should you teach? And how? I might have discovered an answer…

  • Becoming the falconer: productive feedback for the redrafting of creative writing

    Aspects of the neoliberal education system can preclude the development of young writers. Feedback can be unempathetic, but it can also be productive, creating an internal dialogue that develops the writer over time.

  • ‘I need you to jump out of your seat and go plant more flowers!’

    What do primary school children in Lambeth want for their local parks? It’s February 2024, and a cold, rainy morning outside Hillmead Primary School, but inside their assembly hall, the Year 3/4 (8-9 year olds) pupils are happy and engaged. Some of their classmates are delivering speeches about what they want from their local parks […]

  • Teaching Mindfulness in an Unmindful System

    A case study of a mindfulness teacher, Beth, and her experiences of teaching mindfulness to 11- to 16-year-olds in several English schools

  • Angela Kreeger: Subject of the miracle of modern medicine and psychoanalysis

    It is a cold January Sunday afternoon in 2022, but Angela Kreeger’s living room feels gorgeous, and I’m eating far too many slices of a delicious almond cake.

  • Review of Out of Time: Poetry From the Climate Emergency

    A review of ‘Out of Time: Poetry From the Climate Emergency’