Supporting authors will support children
For many years authors have visited schools and worked with children to help them see to why reading is so good for them and, most importantly, why it’s so fun! However, there have been proposals that anyone who works with children needs to have a certificate that places them in a similar position to a teacher.
We live in an age where more and more children are falling out of love with books and in love with their games consoles so we need to do all we can to show them the value of a good book. If a school is lucky enough to have an author visit them and work with their pupils they should be able to do everything they can to make it as easy as possible for the author to attend the school and conduct an effective workshop. How many authors will have time to undertake such a qualification and keep on top of their work?
The opportunity to get an insight in to how an author works and seeks inspiration is an experience that so many would cherish so why make it unnecessarily awkward for this to happen? Surely this is a step, if not a leap, backwards.
We have teachers for a reason; to teach and to undertake the responsibilities of the classroom. A visiting author is just another teaching tool that would be the responsibility of the teacher to utilise effectively for their class; the author should only be there to focus on how they can use their expertise to help. It is, of course, important that they have the proper checks before working with children but to take time out of their busy days to try and gain a certificate is a complete waste of time.
We need to be encouraging more schemes like this if we want our children to get the most out of their school days and in order to do that we must make authors feel like they are helping and not being tested. After all, they didn’t choose to go in to teaching so why force them to?
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Iseult Murphy