I am thrilled to be a part of the English Teachers Association of NSW Annual Conference "Texts Actually." I will be presenting on a panel and also a workshop shortly afterwards.

Details as follows (from the ETA Website):

Annual Conference

Texts Actually

Saturday 26 November 2022

Beverly Hills Girls' High School

Texts are all around us - texts that inform us, move us, inspire us. New texts, old texts, experimental texts – spoken, written, visual, digital and multimodal.

We may be but English teachers, but we are a wonder too. A source of Shakespeare, Churchill, The Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter, The Man from Snowy River, Rachel Perkins, Gwen Harwood’s right hand…Gwen Harwood’s left hand.

Panel: Writing teacher or teacher writer?

Stages 4, 5 & 6

Moderator: Katy Murphy

English teachers don’t just teach creativity, they are also creators of texts. This panel will share the worlds of four published authors who are also English teachers. What can the teacher-writer bring to the class? How does the teacher-writer balance teaching and writing? Kate Murphy talks to Mark Rafidi, David Leys, Michael Marokakis and Peter Ramm about what they bring to the classroom from their writing experiences.

Workshop/Paper: Why You Must Know These Three Poets

Stages 4, 5 & 6

Presenter: Peter Ramm

Poetry is a practice that slows down time, both in its reading and its writing. It forces us to look closer and deeper at things, to think in new ways, to (re)consider the world. As Michelle Taylor wrote, ‘it meets us where we are at’ and it can meet students just the same. Why not introduce them to the likes of Kirli Saunders, Mark Tredinnick, and Charles Wright, and see where wellcrafted images and lines can take their creative writing? This session will look at examples from these three writers and my own experience as a teacher and a poet in challenging students to ‘tell the world slant’ as Emily Dickinson suggested.