ABSTRACT
A teacher may meet a new class, simply ask them to write a poem, and the same evening be reading impressive pieces of children’s writing, without having done any ‘teaching’: the request itself is a ‘stimulus’ of a kind, and it is sometimes effective. An anxiety settles on teachers when their best efforts seem to run into the sand; it also seems tempting to try something less risky. A sense of having failed may of course be experienced against a background of recollections of successfully encouraging good writing. Perhaps some clearing of the ground has been done when the teacher has begun to discard the exploitative stance and set of expectations connoted by expressions like ‘get them’ to write. The chapter aims to describe the way in which these impinge despite and even during the attempt to discard them.
