dream writing: a new creative writing technique for secondary schools?

Dream Writing: A newcreative writing technique forsecondary schools?

Gilly SmithUniversity of Brighton

AbstractWriter and academic Gilly Smith examines the use of a new creative writingtechnique for school children inspired by the Automatic Writing of the Surreal-ists and the Free Writing of novelists and poets. Set within the discourse of SirKen Robinson, her argument is that Dream Writing can free expression, raisingmorale and standards in creative writing in schools while enabling children tosee the originality of their own imaginations on the page. Analysing the resultsof a year-long trial with Year 7 students, she finds evidence of significantimpact on creative writing and a helpful settling exercise for the teacher.

KeywordsDream Writing, creativity, Robinson, schools, original, imagination

IntroductionThis article examines the use of a creative writing technique I have developedfor secondary school children. Honed from the Automatic Writing of the Surre-alists (Breton, 1924) and the Free Writing of Elbow (1973) which in turn wasborrowed by Goldberg (1986) and reinterpreted by Cameron (1992), DreamWriting aims to teach children the power of their own dreams by harnessingthe idleness of their day dreams and showing them the fragments of theirimaginations.

This article looks at the results of a trial in one of the three secondary schoolsI worked with over the last year, in which Dream Writing was used as a set-tling exercise at the beginning of English lessons and to encourage creativity inwriting. It focusses on three research questions:

Corresponding author: [email protected]

© 2013 National Association for the Teaching of English 245

English in Education Vol.47 No.3 2013 DOI: 10.1111/eie.12020

• How far does Dream Writing improve creative writing and encourage moreexpression of individual ideas and ‘voice’ among Year 7 students?

• What are the possibilities that Dream Writing could offer secondary schoolteachers in helping children to explore creativity in writing?

• How do Year 7 students perceive the value of Dream Writing as part oftheir English lessons?

BackgroundDream Writing began as a hunch. When I started teaching first year FdA Mediastudents in 2008, I noticed that their writing didn’t display the kind of persua-sive prose that they would need to pitch TV and radio programme ideas,despite some very good creative development work in class. They were guiltyof what Beals and Lensmire called ‘appropriation’ of another’s voice (1994);however useful it may have been in helping them build ideas on to the pagethrough ‘adult-authored text’ or ‘the meanings and values of a stratified localpeer culture’ (ibid), mainstream education had helped them lose their own‘voice’ and their pitch was now stiff and eager to please. Somewhere along theeducational line, this generation had been taught that writing was about copy-ing (modelling) someone else’s style and being tamed into adult conventionsof writing (Kress, 1994) which made the first spluttering of their own creativitylook awkward on the page. I was interested in exploring what ‘voice’ couldbecome when the bridge between imagination and expression is less mediatedby the teacher.

With my students I used the mix of Automatic Writing and Free Writingwhich I was already teaching in adult creative writing classes. It involvesputting pen on paper and writing for five minutes to see what ideas mightemerge from the subconscious. It is neither read by a third party nor editedat the time of writing by the author. It is never assessed. After using it at thebeginning of each weekly lecture for the last four years, the response I col-lected in reflective essays and module evaluation forms has almost alwaysbeen positive.

I decided to find out if such a simple approach could be useful in secondaryschools where creativity tends to ‘ebb away’ by Year 8, according to the Year7 English teacher I would be working with.

Playwright Diane Samuels uses this practice of free writing, normally used byprofessional writers, to create a space in the school day where ‘the emergingwriter is encouraged to liberate whatever voice wants to speak, experimentand play.’ (Samuels, 2008) She asks why creative writing in schools bears ‘solittle resemblance to what creative writers do’ (ibid), which also prompted mypractice with my own students. Their Dream Writing shows them the frag-ments of ideas which, with encouragement, they can build into ideas they canuse for their programme ideas and films as part of their degree.

246 © 2013 National Association for the Teaching of English

English in Education Vol.47 No.3 2013 Dream Writing

My research is clearly located within the discourse led by Sir Ken Robinsonwhose National Commission on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) forthe UK Government in 1998 argued that a national strategy for creative andcultural education is essential if we are to ‘unlock the potential of every youngperson’ as the Government’s White Paper in 1997 suggested. Robinson con-cluded ‘that Britain’s economic prosperity and social cohesion depend on this’.(NACCCE, 1999) It offers evidence of the practical applications of a tool whichmight help to deliver many of Robinson’s recommendations by harnessing theidleness of children’s day dreams and the fragments of their imaginations tobring greater originality to their class work.

The TrialThe term ‘Dream Writing’ emerged from the results of a three month trial at asecondary school rated ‘Outstanding’ by OFSTED. I worked with a middle abil-ity Year 7 English class and their teacher in the first part of 2012, 7CD2 beingthe lower band of Set 2 English, with 7AB1 and 7CD1 above them and 7AB3and 7CD3 below them. It was concerned with the daydream of the child, theprocess of thinking, rather than the revolutionary tool of the Surrealists (Auto-matic Writing) or the freedom of expression found in adult creative writingworkshops (Free Writing). Dream Writing seemed to be a more appropriateterm for a technique which brings unformed ideas into being, as well as thedream of what this might allow the writer to become. It implies individualexpression and potential rather than political or literary freedom.

The data was collected from once-weekly sessions with the class in whichpupils were invited to put pen to paper, writing continuously, eyes open, forfive minutes without stopping to think or edit. They were assured that it wouldnot be assessed although they were told that I would analyse a small selection.They were not informed whose work would be selected, and the teacher wasnot shown any of the work other than the sections analysed in my report. Afterthe trial, eight of the children volunteered for a single face-to-face small-groupinterview. It appears that this lack of assessment was what they liked best:

If you’re not being assessed, you can write what the hell youwant and no-one will see it. And if they do see it, it kind ofchanges what you think inside. If you’re thinking something thatisn’t right to put on paper then you can’t put it down and that’snot (dream) automatic writing. If it’s funny but kind of rude ifyou know what I mean.

When you’re being assessed, it’s more pressure and I rush andyou feel like you can’t put exactly what you (you want to) putdown. (7CD2 interview)

At the end of the trial, the students’ books dedicated to Dream Writing – thencalled Automatic Writing – were collected for analysis. I also collected the class


Gilly Smith English in Education Vol.47 No.3 2013

work of four students selected by the teacher, Mr Stephens(1) to representvarying ability, which would show me the standard of their writing before andafter the trial. With three sets of work from these four students, Lucy, Charlie,Damon and Sarah(1), the conclusions were bound to be limited, but wouldprovide a springboard for further research if it proved to be useful to theschool.

I set this research within what Cousins calls an interpretivist framework whichtackles the inherent subjectivity in my research process by ‘owning up to it’(Cousins, 2009: 8). How to assess creativity is one of the key questions in thisstudy, and one which Robinson also found challenging:

Conventional assessment tends to focus on products or out-comes… Assessing creative development in education has to takeaccount of the value of the process, and of children’s trainingand achievement through it as well as of the inherent qualities ofthe public products that result. (NACCCE, 1999:127)

I was looking for evidence of NACCCE’s definition of creativity as ‘appliedimagination’ (ibid, 29) in the kind of connections the pupils were making intheir writing. Although the teacher had already used APP (Assessing Pupil Pro-gress) criteria to mark the work, I used a more subjective assessment based onmy own responses as a writer to specific use of language. My initial responsesto the first set of data led to the formulation of four indicators of good writingpractice which add to this more general set of criteria. They were:

• engaging use of structure to create feeling

• visual, emotive use of language

• descriptive listing

• emotive but not visual

I adopted a grid system in which I could isolate phrases from examples of thewriting classwork and code them in the following colours:

• Green to denote engaging use of structure to create feeling

• Orange to denote visual, emotive use of language

• Pink to denote descriptive listing

• Blue to denote emotive but not visual Figure 1

The indicators correspond with APP AF1: write imaginative, interesting andthoughtful texts; AF2: produce texts which are appropriate to task, reader andpurpose; AF5: vary sentences for clarity, purpose and effect; and AF7: selectappropriate and effective vocabulary. However, I deliberately looked at thesecriteria after my intuitive responses to the work. I was more interested in howthey were using imagination to engage the reader and tell their stories.



Pre-TrialThe pre-trial classwork, a piece of creative writing prompted by the title ‘ADay I’ll Never Forget’, showed that these young writers were using learnedtechniques such as effective short, sharp sentences; We looked around;

DreamWriting

Code Effect onresearcher

Child 1Lucy

Child 2CharlieNotavailable

Child 3Sarah

Child 4Damon

Green Engaginguse ofstructureto createfeeling

Can seewhat thewritermeans

When Idance…

I wave myarms!

I runaround.

I roll onthe floor.

I fall ontheground.

Orange Visual,emotiveuse oflanguage

Makes youfeel whatthe writeris feeling

When Idance Ifeel as if Ican be adragon

..waking upto thesmell ofburntcookies

She getsup pulls onher 224size dress

When Idance theworld is notcold withsadness, itis warmwith glee.

There is ariver of joygoing roundthe worldspitting andwashingpeople withhappyness.

Pink Descriptivelisting

Lays outthe canvasfor me

Blue Emotivebut notvisual

Addsanotherdimension– anothersense

And thefresh smellof non-cookedlamb

Figure 1: : Analysis Grid: Dream Writing Example.



nothing. Pupils may have acquired these skills through reading by themselvesor in class. Lucy’s longer sentence; My cousin, Sid, kept everyone entertainedby singing funny songs is followed by I wonder if the whales like it, a shortsharp sentence that has the effect of stopping for a moment to pull the focusback from the boat passengers to reveal the big picture. The whales are ‘frol-icking fearlessly’ around them while the party enjoys the company of one ofthe younger members of the family. It is a reflective moment, using the presenttense to consider a memory in hindsight.

Their visual, emotive use of language made me feel what the writers were feel-ing, of being lost in thought/memory; Lucy’s ‘He sat slumped on a bench star-ing at his phone.’ added depth and emotion to her story; Charlie’s ‘The seawas calm and soft as a puppy dog’s fur’ is a beautiful and unusual description.For him, there is a texture to the water that feels warm and enveloping.

In contrast, Sarah’s elegant ‘Sam turned his head slowly to look at thehorizon’ took me with her as she moved my focus with Sam’s to the fardistance to see the vague, grey shapes of dolphins coming towards us.However, Sarah’s work seemed studied in comparison to Charlie’s and Lucy’smore original touches. Her adverb ‘slowly’ is effective, but I noticed manyexamples in this piece of attempts to please the teacher. ‘We stroked them asthey floated, in the light aqua water’, ‘disappearing into the deep blue bowlknown as the sea’; the adjectives ‘light’, ‘aqua’ and the metaphor ‘deep bluebowl’ did not suggest to me the kind of authentic voice that I heard inCharlie’s and Lucy’s work.

Damon is a weaker writer in terms of confidence and marks, but, interestingly,I found his voice to be more authentic; ‘With about a ton of sleep in my eye…Boy was I tired but as always I followed the sergeant’s orders and lugged myselfdownstairs’ both suggest a lazy, ungracious boy doing as he’s told. He isvividly remembering how he felt on the day trip to France which meant gettingup at 4am, and is communicating it effectively to the reader.

The use of descriptive listing laid out the canvas for me; Charlie’s’ The sky wasa deep blue’ and Damon’s ‘It was a nice Friday morning’ invited me to settledown for some imaginative storytelling. The adjectives may not have been par-ticularly exciting, but I could tell that the writer intended to take me to a placeinside his head. It locates the moment in terms of time and place, painting apicture with very little information.

Charlie’s ‘It was strange because it was sunny, hot and cheerful.’ turns a reflec-tive opener ‘I remember one October day.’ into something which has a quizzi-cal feel. The juxtaposition of ‘strange’, ‘sunny’, ‘hot’ and ‘cheerful’ conjured upa mixture of emotions but did not paint a picture for me. The use of the word‘almost’ in Damon’s ‘we were almost jogging to get there’ might not be picked



up on the APP assessment criteria but adds a sense of hesitant urgency thatreflects the earlier reticence about getting up at 4am.

The children seemed to enjoy finding ways of expressing personal memories,adding texture and colour to moments they might otherwise have forgottenand may not have appreciated in this way at the time. The work, which waswritten in October 2011, a month into their first year in secondary schoolshows that creativity is valued by the writers and that there is much potentialfor their English teacher to work with.

Much of this pre-trial writing felt as if it was intended to please the teacher;the use of language may be less about being absorbed in the telling of thestory and more about ticking APP boxes. The students appeared to know whathe/she needs to do to get a good mark, examples of Kress’ suggestion thatchildren learn to write ‘exposition, argument, analysis, report, narrative,’ (Kress,1994:11) within prescriptive forms such as ‘objective historical writing, factual,scientific and technological writing to “creative” writing’. (Kress, 1994: 11)

Post-TrialAfter three months of Dream Writing at the beginning of each English lesson,what I looked for in their post-trial work, a poem inspired by a photograph,was evidence of originality of voice and style, access to their own inner land-scape (Vygotsky, 1978; Piaget, 1932/1965) and connectivity (QCA, 2007), thestuff of Robinson’s applied imagination. (NACCCE, 1999)

Some of the passages were more emotive (Sarah’s The cold spray of death),and highly descriptive sections often show a melancholic, thoughtful tendency,a feeling of being lost in thought or memory. In each piece of work, there waslittle evidence now of teacher-pleasing and plenty of real originality and voice,particularly in Sarah’s work. ‘It marks you with sadness.’

Lucy’s ‘Your paintings were just like a song’, rhymes with her previous line’s‘gone’ but may be a reference to Don McLean’s song ‘Vincent’, connecting twoforms of artistic expression simply by looking at a photograph of Van Gogh’sbed and imagining the tragedy of his life.

Anderson (2006) notes that the development of writing skills in schools focuseson connectivity (QCA, 2007), as well as vocabulary, openings and punctuationbut does not address the creative, compositional, playful and expressiveaspects of writing. I would argue that the influence of Dream Writing here fillsthis gap, although Lucy is an unusually playful writer.

This post-trial data illustrated an ability by the writers to inhabit another space,to imagine what a third party is feeling. There was more empathy in this workthan in the pre-trial work; Lucy’s ‘No-one knew about your life’ could have



evidenced Lucy’s research on Van Gogh but it felt warmer and more melan-cholic than a cynical attempt to please her teacher.

The children had developed into thoughtful empathetic writers who use lan-guage to convey feeling. The use of evocative and original language appearedto come from their imaginations, and they seemed less eager to please thanthe pre-trial material suggested. It gave me an insight into how expression isvalued within this school; the class teacher allowed his class to start each les-son with Dream Writing after the trial had officially ended. It was clear that thedrafting of an idea had been given space. It showed that Robinson’s call for afocus on process was possible here:

Imaginative activity is the process of generating something origi-nal: providing an alternative to the expected, the conventional,or the routine. NACCCE. 1999: 31

It is tempting to say that imagination and original thinking is encouraged inYear 7 as a natural progression from primary school. However, it may be thatthese pupils have been encouraged outside the school environment to believethat imagination and originality have value. The pupils may read more athome; Sarah admitted: ‘When I started Dream Writing, I stole almost everythingI wrote from a book I liked. Damon told me ‘I do stuff to do with writingevery day so this isn’t really anything different. I draw. I do mini comics so it’slike the same kind of ideas. I call it automatic draw-writing.’

Dream WritingAlthough the children started each English lesson with Dream Writing, I analy-sed only one example of each of the four students’ work. Prompted by thestarter, ‘When I dance…’ the writing was analysed in the same way as theassessed pre and post-trial class work.

The sparseness of Damon’s writing voice reflected how he feels when he isdancing, evidence of applied imagination (NACCCE, 1999):

When I dance…I wave my arms!I run around.I roll on the floor.I fall on the ground.

Sarah and Lucy use very descriptive language; Lucy’s When I dance I feel as ifI can be a dragon immediately propels us into her own vivid imagination, butwhat marks the Dream Writing out from the assessed classwork is Lucy’s lackof interest in the reader. Her dragon wakes up to the smell of burnt cookiesand the fresh smell of non-cooked lamb. The juxtaposition of these two visceral



pleasures scribbled in a five minute piece of writing shows a fluency andlucidity of imagination that could be encouraged to produce some highly origi-nal work. Lucy is enjoying this fantasy, imagining her dragon pulling on her224 size dress as she prepares for her prom. Her immersion in her inner worldand clear pleasure in playing with her character could be channelled into asustainable love of writing and use of language.

She believes that DreamWriting enabled her to find form for her rich inner world:

My primary school report said I had a really good imaginationbut I never really used that and then I came here and I’ve justused the automatic writing to make it, like, bigger, to help itcome out more in my writing. I like the freedom to write what-ever you like. You don’t have to be on lines. You don’t have to goonto a subject; you just get to write what’s in your head. It’snothing guided. (Lucy, 7CD2 interview)

Her smell of burnt cookies almost catches the nose as we read it. But I felt thatthe quirky juxtaposition of the two ideas adds another dimension to herwriting; the idea of a dragon baking cookies while preparing for her prom is afantastical image but the fresh smell of non-cooked lamb is left-field andunresolved and shows the random nature of Lucy’s imagination. She is awarethat she is breaking the rules:

Sometimes it’s just random words that you just make intosentences that don’t make sense. (Lucy, 7CD2 interview)

This is evidence of what QCA sees as the definition of creativity:

when they make unexpected connections, use striking andoriginal phrases or images, approach tasks from a variety ofstarting points, or change forms to surprise and engage thereader. Creativity can be encouraged by providing purposefulopportunities for pupils to experiment, build on ideas or followtheir own interests. Creativity in English extends beyondnarrative and poetry to other forms and uses of language. It isessential in allowing pupils to progress to higher levels ofunderstanding and become independent. (QCA, 2007:62)

Sarah’s apparent teacher-pleasing tendency in her pre-trial work is still evi-dent in this post-trial material, but it feels as if she likes it too. Unlike Lucy,Sarah prefers boundaries; in her interview, she says ‘I like it when you’vegot some type of guideline to guide you’. She has a rich imagination butclearly enjoys playing with ideas that she has picked up from her love ofreading and perhaps grammar in school. She uses metaphor easily andcorrectly; ‘When I dance the world is not cold with sadness, it is warm with



glee’. Most 12-year-olds would not use such formal language; ‘glee’ seems tome to be a teacher-pleasing noun, but again, the limitations of this studymean that I may have missed vital information which would tell me moreabout her authentic voice. In her ‘There is a river of joy going round theworld spitting and washing people with happiness’, she may be playing withideas modelled on a favourite author. In a classroom environment in whichDream Writing is part of the lesson, perhaps students like Sarah may beencouraged to reflect on these essential elements of their writing progressand introduced to similar authors to expand her range. School or communitylibrarians might become involved to help students find authors with whomthey feel a connection.

From this data, it looks as if the students enjoy inhabiting their ideas, bringingsmells and textures to their work that add depth and clarity. It seems that they aremore imaginative when the rules are relaxed and when they do not think they arebeing read. This material was not written to be assessed. It reads as if the studentsknew that it wouldn’t be seen and shows a confidence with ideas, words and lan-guage that appears to give the students access to a richness in their creative writingthat they did not display before the trial. This may be a result of their own naturalability rather than the impact of automatic writing, but their teacher is surprised:

They’ve certainly gone up in their levels but how much of thatcan be attributed to automatic (dream) writing and how muchcould be put to their normal increase in intelligence, I wouldn’tbe able to say yet because I don’t have the evidential background.Certainly they are very different from my other Year 7 group.This group is much more creative and confident and they likegoing with their ideas. (Teacher interview)

Dream Writing appears to open a door to the senses which takes the writerdeeper into his/her own ideas, often using the prompt to lead from theeveryday into increasingly random thoughts. It seems that it can give a writerpermission to become immersed in imagination which encourages fluency inlanguage and originality of thought. When asked what they write about, mostof the respondents imposed narratives that were more prosaic than theirDream Writing books illustrate:

What I normally write about is what’s happened in the day so ifI’ve had a big lolly or something like that I’ll write about hownice that was.

I write about my experience, so if I’ve seen a good photo or some-thing from trips so it kind of reminds me of it. (7CD2 interview)

This suggests that they may not value the randomness of their thoughts andthat there is a role for the teacher to endorse this as part of explaining the



process of creativity to pupils. Only one respondent describes a process whichseems to match her Dream Writing:

When I see a picture, I write about it and it kind of leads on tosomething else and something else until it’s nothing to do withthe picture. (7CD2 interview)

She evaluates imaginative activity almost as well as Robinson does:

Imaginative activity in our terms is not the same as fantasisingor imagining, although it may involve both. It is not simply pro-ducing mental representations of things that are not present orhave not been experienced. Imaginative activity is the process ofgenerating something original: providing an alternative to theexpected, the conventional, or the routine. (NACCCE, 1999: 31)

This opportunity for students to see on the page what was in their heads wasevidenced in the results of a Survey Monkey questionnaire. In answer to“Which of the following sentences best match what happens when you doautomatic writing?” 76% of the survey respondents answered: ‘I put my day-dreams on the page’ or ‘I write what’s in my head’ (2) . This is the essence ofDream Writing which is vital to understanding the process of creativity. This isthe ‘voiceness’ or ‘stimmung’ that Gumbrecht (2011) refers to. It is what ToniMorrison (1992) calls ‘being touched inside’.

The Role of the Teacher in Dream WritingIt appears that Dream Writing can give students an opportunity to play withideas that may not be appropriate in assessed work. Although there mayappear to be inherent tensions in a creative practice which encourages psycho-analytic reflection by the students, Dream Writing is not seen by the Englishteacher. It could be argued that some students may access troubling thoughtsthrough this process and talk to an ill-equipped teacher, but all staff are trainedto refer any student needing help through the pastoral system. I saw littleevidence in their Dream Writing books of anything that a teacher might findinappropriate other than presentation and grammar issues, but the students feltthe freedom to write their secret thoughts.

If it’s an assessment, I sort of feel that I have to be careful of what Iwant to say because it’s embarrassing. Like we had to do a piece ofwriting assessment that was about something embarrassing but Ididn’t want to put it down. In Automatic (Dream) Writing I canput it down because they’re not necessarily going to read it.

It’s better when it’s private because you can write stuff that youdon’t want other people to know. (7CD2 interview)



Mr Stephens suggested that it is about giving the students permission to dosomething that is at odds with the school system, which may impact on a longterm implementation of the exercise.

I think they enjoy the fact that it is a phenomenon without rules.They can write about what they want and very often they’re sur-prised by what they’ve written. (Teacher interview)

Sarah is a lone voice in preferring her work to be assessed. She reflects onhow Dream Writing makes her lazy:

I find sometimes it makes you put less effort into it. If you’ve hada really tiring day you’re less excited to do that sort of thing. Butif it’s an assessment you feel that you need to work really hard sothat you get better levels next year. (Sarah, 7CD2 interview)

She admits that she uses ideas from books she has read, and seems to find ithard to access her own. Her work is very imaginative but, without referencesto her reading, we do not know how many of her ideas are her own.

From these findings, Dream Writing does seem to have made a positive impacton the children’s creative writing. Their teacher finds significant improvementin their work, although he admits that they may be an unusually bright group.Although the anonymous Survey Monkey test reveals that 23% did not enjoy itwhile 46% enjoyed it all the time and 30% enjoyed it sometimes, the face-to-face interview with the volunteers shows great enthusiasm. We do not know ifthese eight volunteers were part of the 46% who said that they enjoyed it allthe time; indeed, two of the children in this more informal discussion said thatthey did not enjoy it. ‘However, their unedited survey responses (reproducedbelow) reflect the permission they have been given to relax and write withoutthe fear of assessment:

1 it allows you to get your thoughts in your head onto paper.2 Just to sit and write without thinking.3 You can put random things and you dont have to worry about

puntuation.4 no rules on what to write5 when we watch a unusual clip or listen to a unusual piece of music or a

sound6 Different kind of wriing7 writing ramdom stuff8 time to relax9 you get to relax and not do hard work10 no onw to mark it and tell yuo your spellings and grammar are wrong



Interestingly, what they don’t like about Dream Writing is also the fear ofteacher input;

1 i dont have time to do it because of exams2 it can be difficult to write if you have nothing to think about.3 I forget and sometimes have nothing to write.4 You have to write and it lasted to long5 having to do it all the time6 not being alowed to look up7 worrying about what to write8 that they say you cant stop and think just write it down9 that you cant think before you write you have to write it straight on the

page

Responses 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 suggest that the respondents fear they will bejudged for having nothing to say. They also recognise that it helps to releasetheir imaginations; 69% answered that they thought their Dream Writing camefrom ‘inside my head’.

Robinson recommends that ‘bureaucratic burdens are reduced to increase timefor reflective preparation and experimentation’ (NACCCE, 1999:118); and liter-acy teacher, Jenny Staines (1) says that in the current culture, few teacherswould say that they have time for such an exercise:

Teachers are often bullied by their heads, but that’s becausethe heads are bullied by the local authority which is bulliedby Ofsted which is bullied by Government. There’s a cultureof fear in so many schools that means that teachers arefrightened of trying new things. You do get heads with avision, but it’s rare. (Interview, 2012)

As a result of this study, I am writing an online teacher training programme(www.dreamwriting.co.uk) which focuses on practicalities while addressingtime constraints and teacher morale. Robinson acknowledges the need to boostteacher confidence before change can take place (NACCCE, 1999:110-111). Itwas clear that without the intervention of senior management embeddingDream Writing into the curriculum; it would be hard to encourage other teach-ers to try it themselves:

There are so many constraints on our timetable. You’re going tothink ‘oh they need to be doing their assessment’ or ‘they’d likemore time for their drama’. I was very keen to embed this as anintegral part of their experience. (Teacher interview)



The children made a case for Dream Writing being a legitimate use of theirown time:

I think it’s like in PE, it’s a warm up to your lesson so it worksreally well and it helps you to concentrate.

At the end of the day and you’ve got your English lesson, youcan sort of empty your thoughts out and then start your Englishlesson. It’s really helpful. (7CD2 interview)

Mr Stephens argues the use of automatic writing is more than about creativewriting:

I’d also say that automatic writing is a wonderful settling exer-cise anyway. They come in, they get their automatic writingbooks; a lot of that time could have been dead time anyway.

(Teacher interview)

After reading the results of this study, deputy head, James Jones said,

I do like the idea of getting students “warmed up” to start theirlessons (too often we assume that their brains are in the rightplace, automatically, right from the get-go), and this is a goodexample of a valuable starter to meet that objective.

(Email, 2012)

ConclusionsThis study finds that Dream Writing has improved the creative writing of 7CD2over the three months trial, and that the teacher found it an effective form ofsettling before the lesson, while guardedly acknowledging its creative impacton their classwork. The children described it as a ‘warm-up’ which promptedthe Head of English to accept ‘too often we assume that their brains are in theright place’. It also showed the children and the teacher the value of draftingand the point of process. The children eloquently discussed the ‘random’‘dreamy,’ ‘relaxing’ quality that Dream Writing can bring to the class and inno-cently illustrated many of Robinson’s findings on what creativity is and is for.In the Robinson-led discourse on creativity, it offers valuable data and insightsinto the power of the daydream, the relationship between writing for expres-sion and confidence as a writer and questions what writing in school is for.

Dream Writing begins the process of creating new ideas, shaping them withinthe framework of the curriculum, and allows their originator to progressthrough established educational pathways. It makes very little demands on thesystem but offers enormous potential for expression for the student. With bothstudent and teacher nurturing the roots of the idea, the Vygotsykian mentoringprocess can add a new dimension by acknowledging Piaget’s ‘autistic’ inner



child (1932/1965), adding value to the role of teaching, boosting teacher andpupil morale. It makes the purpose of writing about process, debate, thinkingand expression rather than simply assessment and grade. It is about the child’soriginality rather than those of an education system which, while becomingincreasingly centralised, has lost its way. As educationalists and governmentplot a new path through education for a new era in which originality and crea-tivity are an essential part of industry, writing must be reimagined as a meansof generating original thought and engaging young people and their teachersin maximising human potential.

Notes(1) All names have been changed to protect identity.(2) Compare this with the 23% who answered the same question, ‘I write what

I think will sound good when I read it out afterwards.’

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dream writing: a new creative writing technique for secondary schools?

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