Oh, and we all giggled a lot. In an ideal world, all children would have access to books and writing materials and boundless encouragement to explore their own creativity. I read passages from my own and other writers' work to help an idea or project along - always stopping at an exciting point, of course, to encourage the children to read the rest of the story or book themselves. I try to end each visit with a short session in which I tell the children about my own writing, and answer the questions that invariably bubble up throughout the day. These are usually intelligent, funny, rewarding and occasionally mind-boggling, and I answer as honestly as I can.
Some schools do everything right.
Some seem to do everything wrong, so that I pitch up on the first morning to be confronted by a class of kids who think I am a supply teacher because no one has bothered to tell them otherwise. Sometimes a teacher will disappear the instant my session starts, making follow-up work difficult. You're always under our feet. The huge majority of visits are rewarding and exciting. A list of participating writers is now being updated.