Dr. Jess Moriarty researches in the field of pedagogy in writing practice, especially in auto-ethnographical academic writing and in creative writing with undergraduates. Jess is the Course Leader for English Language and Literature at the University of Brighton, and the co-founder of Work Write Live, which provides a range of writing short courses and volunteering opportunities for students in the Faculty of Arts to develop the vocational and academic skills they are acquiring on their degree program. Here’s her approach to teaching:
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How I like to teach
My Dark Material
3:35 York to King’s Cross,
going home to Brighton and you.
I am an alien in the North,
exhausted, sweaty from the effort
of being so cut off.
Heart muscles stretch,
sinew and tendon reaching out,
not quite getting through.
You are everywhere –
your face in the £1.80 cup of tea,
your laugh in the chugging and clacking
of train on track,
racing the wires linking pylon to pylon,
all pointing South, all leading back
cross country to you.
I will the train on, navigating past
Doncaster, Peterborough, Potter’s Bar,
needing the dent of you on my chest,
needing more than just love
to join us through the air.
Moriarty, J. (2014).
Leaving the blood in: Experiences with an autoethnographic doctoral thesis. In N. Short, Zeeman, L., & Grant, A. (Ed.), British Contemporary Autoethnography. Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense.
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The above poem featured in my doctorate, which looked at the triangulation between research, autobiographical experiences and creative outputs. I am interested in academic writing that breaks with tradition and in the teaching that is essential to such practice.
When teaching Creative Writing I use a mixture of writing workshops, master classes with local guest speakers and community projects to help my students develop skills in a variety of genres and to build confidence with their creative processes.
My students are expected to engage in a writing community and to share their ideas and their writing with their peers and with me. It is my job to ensure the workshop space is challenging but that they feel safe and supported when reading their work aloud and discussing any feedback. Working in a range of genres, I ask students to take risks and experiment with prose, poetry, script, autobiography and graphic novel writing so that they understand concepts of ‘good’ storytelling and can apply this to all practices of writing. Students who take part in my modules can expect to work with local school children, residents of a retirement village, professional writers and performance artists in order to enhance their awareness of the craft, apply their writing and creativity to real life scenarios and push themselves academically, vocationally and personally.
I expect my students to read, read, read and write, write, write and in return for their commitment to honing and expanding their practice, I offer them the assurance that they will be better writers by the end of the module. Sometimes students choose to study creative writing because they think it will be the soft option but they soon realise that writing is personal, it is difficult and it is important. By equipping students with the techniques and skills that can help them improve as writers and by engaging them with a creative group, working on community projects and talking to professional writers, students see a noticeable difference in their writing and also feel able to articulate themselves and their discipline in relation to the world beyond the classroom.
Students are expected to attend every workshop and to also share their work on-line via the class blog. This means that students who feel less confident reading aloud have a space to share their work that is potentially less exposing and it also means that they can get in-depth feedback on their writing ad develop and on-line community which can enrich their writing and their experience of the module. workshops are often held in the creativity centre where the students can use the beanbags, write on the walls and own the space in order to feel more empowered in the workshop environment. It means that the tutor is less privileged and this helps to build trust and provides a stimulating place to work in.
I have been nominated by my students for several teaching excellence awards and in 2013 I was commended for being an inspirational teacher although this is a reciprocal process as it is my students who continue to inspire and motivate me.
Related: Richard Jacobs on his approach to teaching literature.