CLASSROOM teachers took a backseat as Katherine High School students received special lessons on May 10 from guest writers visiting town as part of the Top End Writers’ Workshop Tours.
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Laurel May, Zohab Khan, Leisl Egan and Eleri Harris spent last Tuesday sharing their expertise with students.
Ms May is a former journalist and a spoken word poet and educator, and was asked to put together a team to host workshops across the Northern Territory, following the Wordstorm Writers’ Festival.
“They got some funding to do the workshop series and they asked me to do it,” she said.
“I’m from Alice Springs and I’ve been running workshops in the Northern Territory and driving out bush for many years, so I was the go-to for that.”
Ms May said she wanted to make sure her team would appeal to young people and knew having different creative skills available would be crucial.
“I’ve known Zohab since 2012 and he was my go-to there,” she said.
“Then Leisl and Eleri, I put calls out through my networks to find the right people.”
Mr Khan’s background in spoken word and education made him a good fit for the program, Ms May said, and when selecting the others, she chose based on their skills and background, but also how they would work in their roles.
Ms Egan has a background in short story writing and writing for television, while Ms Harris has a background as a journalist, cartoonist and experience in zine making.
The four split up throughout the day and either helped assist to run the class or run their own workshops, drawing influence from their own unique experiences.
English and humanities co-ordinator Ash Duggan said having people with such diverse experience and background was a win for the school.
“This is so special for our students, and even for the teachers to learn from some of the things the professional writers have done,” he told the Katherine Times.
“Things like this are critical in all schools.
“To have the opportunity and access to [people with these skills] in a regional or remote school is so important.”
Many teachers took advantage of the visiting writers and invited them into their classrooms to either build on the lessons they were teaching or provide a workshop separate to the normal curriculum.
With the annual National Assessment Plan – Literacy and Numeracy test happening at the same time as the visit, the workshops involving Year 7 and 9 students were more verbal and game-based, in order to engage the students and help them relax once the testing had finished.
