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28 South Woodford Village Gazette<br />
The magic of teaching<br />
Are you sitting comfortably? Former teacher and<br />
Woodford Green resident Jessica Norrie has a story to<br />
tell. Her novel – The Magic Carpet – was inspired by<br />
her experiences of teaching and living locally<br />
I’ve lived since 1988 in<br />
Walthamstow or Woodford,<br />
and taught Redbridge<br />
pupils and adults until 2016.<br />
Teaching’s a two-way process;<br />
we learn from students<br />
while they learn from us. I<br />
liked and celebrated them,<br />
but by retirement, my head<br />
was crowded with three<br />
decades of lives brought into<br />
my classrooms. Thousands<br />
passed through, from all<br />
income levels, speaking over<br />
50 languages, practising at<br />
least 10 religions or none, with<br />
single parents, step-parents,<br />
carers…<br />
It’s a teacher’s job to help pupils<br />
organise their thoughts by<br />
telling or writing news or stories<br />
(much like a therapist, but with<br />
spellings). I decided to make<br />
sense of my experience by doing<br />
the same, and began writing The<br />
Magic Carpet.<br />
It’s a story for grown-ups,<br />
involving three generations<br />
in a multicultural community<br />
from a street very like some<br />
in Redbridge. The target<br />
readership is aimed at parents,<br />
grandparents, anyone who’s<br />
worked with children… human<br />
beings.<br />
Various memorable ex-pupils<br />
clamoured to be main characters,<br />
but the ones I describe are<br />
completely fictional and ‘Home<br />
Farm Primary’ is invented<br />
(though it could easily be a<br />
Redbridge school).<br />
In my novel, a Year 3 teacher<br />
throws away the phonics in<br />
favour of an imaginative project<br />
for all the family, inviting the<br />
generations to perform a<br />
traditional tale together at<br />
a storytelling festival. As the<br />
project unfolds, I tell of the lives<br />
of different family members<br />
too, including a grandmother<br />
born in Punjab, a Hong Kongborn<br />
widower father, single<br />
mums from Essex and of Somali<br />
heritage, and Alka, aged seven,<br />
who’s cared for by Gujaratispeaking<br />
grandparents – all<br />
backgrounds I worked with<br />
locally.<br />
Some parents welcome the<br />
project and enjoy creating rich,<br />
funny, moving stories. Others<br />
find it a nuisance. One poor child<br />
may end up with no story at all.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Over six weeks in autumn 2016,<br />
my families get to know each<br />
other. (They all live on ‘Ditchfield<br />
Close’ after the Leyton toy shop<br />
my own children loved.) My<br />
initial aim was to celebrate the<br />
magic of storytelling, but I found<br />
I was also exploring whether,<br />
when more serious issues<br />
threaten the peace, my small<br />
fictional community would prove<br />
as resilient as most real ones in<br />
Redbridge and Walthamstow.<br />
Why not find out if there is a<br />
happy ending?<br />
For more information on Jessica’s novel, which is available in paper<br />
back and on Kindle, visit swvg.co.uk/norrie<br />
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