Neil Nixon from NW Kent College has asked us to pass this on;

We really need someone at NW Kent College, Dartford to take four and a half hours of - fairly - easy classes dealing with basic skills of getting started in writing, pitching work and behaving like a professional. It pays a steady £130-00 for every Tuesday - bar holidays - until the end of June. We've even got the assignments written and ready. Nlnxn@aol.com

so do get in touch if you think you're suitable.

There are some days when you really wish you lived in Kent.

There are some days when you may live near Kent, but you really wish you had the time...

Emma

Ah...yes, there is that...but do forward it on anyone you think might have the time, or the skills, or the geographical handiness, or better still, all three..I did wonder about you, Emma, but I know you've got a teaching load this term.

What qualifications would you need for a post like that? Not that I could do it at the moment, but... it's an interesting opportunity.

It might sound a bit convoluted, but this kind of thing is one of the major reasons I decided to do a PhD (the other was getting support for the new novel). And, as I hoped, having picked up a bit of teaching as a post-grad at Goldsmiths, I've been able to join their PGCert in teaching HE course, and I feel much more capable of applying for this kind of thing.

In fact... Hmm, let's see...

Others on WW must know more than me, but I don't think you automatically would need a teaching qualification for this, though I've heard institutions are getting much more inclined to ask for one - even if you've got some experience. But there is a City and Guilds in HE Teaching which I was looking at at one stage. There's even one version of the first module where you don't need to have any teaching hours to do it, though in the main it seems to be a real chicken-and-egg: you can't do the qualification without the hours, and you can't get the hours without the qualification.

Emma

Re qualifications: to some extent it would depend on whether it's FE or HE. It says college, so it might be FE, in which case, some kind of teaching or training qualification and/or experience would be a definite advantage but might not be essential. You'd need to be a published writer, I would have thought, but wouldn't need that brilliant a track record. If it's HE then the teaching qualification will be even less of an issue but how much you've had published will be more important.

I'm a full-time lecturer, Emma, at a post-1992 and everyone is being encouraged to do a PgCert in HE. New staff have to do one as part of their contract of employment. Fortunately I did a teaching qualification after I did my undergrad degree, and although it was yonks ago now it means I don't have to do another one.

I'm working on a PhD too. Well, at the moment I'm doing sod all work towards it but I AM registered!

That's really interesting, Daisy. What's your PhD in? Mine's pausing for breath rather too, at the moment.

New staff have to do one as part of their contract of employment.

It's quite cheering that they don't have to have one already, though. I realised when I first started looking into all this that an awful lot of writers do have a PGCE or something in their background, but I don't, and I was getting very disheartened...

Emma

My PhD is currently titled 'Locating the skill of copywriting within the academic discourse of marketing communications' and I'm taking a poststructuralist theoretical stance. Well, you did ask!!!

The reason for the odd mixture is I teach marketing communications and branding (i.e. advertising) but my MA is in literary theory, so I'm trying to straddle a fence, so to speak.

What's yours? And are you teaching Creative Writing?

Daisy, that sounds very interesting - no, honestly, I mean it. Where are you doing it? Goldsmiths is full of people studying that sort of thing.

My PhD is Creative Writing - novel II for Headline, and a dissertation, which is on how and why writers of different periods from Walter Scott to Rose Tremain have chosen to write hist fic about the Restoration: the theory base, such as it is, is mostly narratology and historiography, but I'm determined to focus it through the lens of my own and others' practice. As you say, you did ask!

You might be amused by my recent blog post here: http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/ If you scroll down to 'Being a snow-leopard' it's about inhabiting the liminal spaces between creative practice and academic research.

My teaching is actually reading for writers - a course on the short story, for the English with CW undergrads.

Emma

Thanks for the answers, Emma and Daisy.

At present, I'm spectacularly unqualified to do anything like this. I'm not even sure I'm cut out for it temperamentally!

If (and it's a whopping big if) I did ever give up the day job (which is also as a copywriter, Daisy!) then being able to slot in things like this part time is very appealing. But that doesn't mean I'd be any good at it, of course. Doing the training, then discovering you don't have any aptitude/talent for it might be a bit demoralising, especially if the training cost a lot of money.

In the future (after Feb 2008) I would have three published novels to my name, so that might count as some kind of qualification. However, there are many many published authors out there (you only have to wander into any branch of Waterstones to have this confirmed) so there's lots of competition.

There are two other (rhetorical) questions that occur to me:
1) Would I really be able to help the students in any way?
2) What effect would doing something like that have on my own writing?

The more I think about it, the more I realise I'm not cut out for it!

Sounds good. I taught in Thurrock for a year once, and that's further from here than Dartford- straight down the A2 for twenty minutes or so, against the flow.

They like you to have teaching qualifications in FE .That usually means you agree to do teacher training whilst you are on the job if you're not already qualified. It's free but requires attendance for an extra day.

I imagine the students will need a lot of help with punctuation and grammar but it will be in some kind of vocational framework. They may be younger or older, depending on the course.

Sheila

Speaking from experience, Neil's assignments are very well thought out, and easy for another teacher to use. So you'd have a good head start.

I used media studies lessons of Neil's for GCSE Media when I was in my first year of teaching in FE, after my Cert Ed. You can learn a lot about planning and pacing etc from them, so if you want to learn about teaching, Neil Nixon's your man.

Jim

I would think being a published author would trump any teaching qualifications; students like tutors who are authors, and it helps to attract more to the course.

students like tutors who are authors, and it helps to attract more to the course.

I'm sure that's right, but I'm not sure it overrides the need for a teaching track-record, and/or a qualification, and I don't think it should, either.

Emma