Here I comment on a wide range of issues from education to politics, the arts and more. I welcome lively and opinionated debate, so please leave your comments.
How and why creative writing can be improved by a multidisciplinary approach including freewriting, drawing and art, writing letters to different audiences (even imaginary ones)
This article explores the research primary school pupils carried out in order to improve their local park in east London. It shows how they produced creative outputs such as pictures, models and poems which enabled them to both research their local park and advocate for change.
A recount of the Green Careers event that I co-ran (with Widening Participation, the Horniman Museum, and Lewisham’s Young People’s Climate Network) in May 2024 at Goldsmiths University.
Notes have helped me remember; they’re my safe space; they’re therapeutic; and they’ve liberated my imagination
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 […]
I appeared on Vanessa Feltz’s Talk TV show discussing the misbehaviour of children in school. I enumerated these reasons: To learn more about this topic, it’s worth reading this BERA blog.
An article which explores the reasons why children are excluded from school.
‘Aesthetic learning’ can be helpful for English teachers, because we are all ‘aesthetic learners’: we learn to appreciate the qualities of the worlds we inhabit, whether actual or virtual.
You can access the PowerPoint for this lecture here. Please do not publish it without first gaining my consent. References •Begum, N., & Saini, R. (2019). Decolonising the Curriculum. Political Studies Review, 17(2), 196-201. •Crinson, M. (2003) Modern Architecture and the End of Empire. (Aldershot: Ashgate 2003) •Evaristo, B. (2020) The Long Form Patriarchs, and […]
A discussion about the creation of my audio book for my best selling study guide on the novel ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’.
As I’ve pointed out in previous blogs, the process of listening to the audiobook of Who Do You Love has been enriching for me, making me return to the text some years after writing it. Christopher James reads the book more slowly than me, taking his time, giving the narrator’s voice a melancholic, deadpan quality. […]
I’m very excited to be working on an audio book version of Who Do You Love, my novel which I published with Blue Door Press in 2017. I have investigated ways of doing this over the years, having a go at reading myself. I found that although I can be an expressive reader — some […]
These suggestions are based on the points raised at the Reading Revolution Conference held at Goldsmiths, University of London on Saturday 23rd September 2017. ONE: Encourage Reading for Pleasure Read for the sake of reading. Read aloud, read in groups, read in pairs, read silently. Read poems, stories, articles, blogs, relevant social media and so […]
This article, in a slightly different form was initially published on the Teachit website. Shakespeare as Cultural Capital by Francis Gilbert on Scribd
Yesterday I spoke at the Guardian Education Centre for a conference on Reading for Pleasure in the secondary classroom. The Guardian’s literary editor, Claire Armistead, kicked off the day by explaining that we need our young people to enjoy reading and to read whole texts which are not part of the curriculum; she pointed out […]
I’ve been working hard at helping Key Stage 3 students in Deptford Green school, a London comprehensive, to develop their reading skills. To that end, I have written a book, The Time Devil, which is set partly in Deptford Green and partly in the National Maritime Museum, whom we are also working with. I have […]
I had a very enjoyable day at Goldsmiths on the summer solstice to celebrate National Writing Day. The summer solstice is: “the time at which the sun is at its northernmost point in the sky (southernmost point in the South hemisphere), appearing at noon at its highest altitude above the horizon.” It is midsummer; the […]
This article is an extract from a forthcoming book, The Long Game: The Lessons We Can Learn From Long-Serving Teachers. The aim was to interview long-serving teachers, listen to their stories and see if I could draw out any lessons from their experiences. Constructive comments are welcome; they will help me make it a better book. […]