CPD for teachers

Here you will learn more about continuous professional development for teachers and educators!

(CPD) Continuous Professional Development Programmes

Supporting teachers in their professional practice is important to Fighting Words. We provide CPD in student-centred creative writing methodologies and in integrating creativity further into classroom practice.

We have collaborated with Oide Creativity and the DCU Partnership for Learning programme to provide online and in-person CPD opportunities.

Join our CPD mailing list below to find out about our CPD opportunities!

Teacher Write Club

Teacher Write Club, run in collaboration with Oide Creativity, invites teachers to explore and develop their own creative writing, while meeting like-minded educators, over the course of six virtual workshops throughout the year. It is for both Primary and Post-Primary teachers of any subject and no previous experience of creative writing is needed.

For more information, please contact Nora Nic Con Ultaigh, Education Director at nora@fightingwords.ie.

Teacher logo

'Writing Our Place' – A Collaboration with Arts in Junior Cycle

In 2022 Fighting Words and Junior Cycle for Teachers, Arts in Junior Cycle team collaborated to publish Writing Our Place.  

Twenty of us came together at the Royal Canal in Dublin for a walk where we reflected on place, people, history, nature, and much more. The result is another wonderful volume of creative writing, with stories and poems that are gripping and captivating.

This joint programme between Junior Cycle for Teachers, Arts in Junior Cycle team and Fighting Words offers teachers the time and space to explore their own creativity as writers, while also providing opportunities for consideration of the impact that the creative process has on their professional classroom practice.

Roddy at DCU

Fighting Words Talks

Fighting Words has been involved with various teacher education programmes for many years, including drama and maths, as well as writing. The positive impact of teachers on creativity has been part of who we are from the very beginning.

Roddy Doyle: Fighting Words Lecture at Newcastle University

Fighting Words co-founder Roddy Doyle delivered a lecture about Fighting Words at Newcastle University in 2010.

In 2010, one year after Fighting Words opened its doors in Dublin, Roddy Doyle delivered a lecture at Newcastle University covering themes such as the influence of teachers on his own development as a writer, the joy of writing, the lack of encouragement for creative writing in the formal school system, the methodologies used by Fighting Words to encourage young children to write, and how the non-formal Fighting Words workshops with young writers unfold. The attached transcript of Roddy's presentation gives teachers a real insight into the approaches and methods that can be used to encourage creative writing in the classroom. 

Click here to read the full text of the lecture.

Colm Ó Cuanacháin: Finding Words with Fighting Words, August 2021

Colm Ó Cuanacháin, Fighting Words’ Director, explains the Fighting Words model – based on the idea of writing as a creative skill in its own right, a teaching tool and a force for social change – and how it can be deployed in education at all levels and in all disciplines to unlock the potential of creativity.

Click here for podcast

Roddy Doyle at the Creative Youth Conference, May 2021

Here Roddy gives an account of how the Fighting Words approach to creative writing with young people works, using examples from projects with young women in inner city Dublin, and talks about his own time as a teacher and the importance of the school for creativity and creative writing.

You can see Roddy 1:18-1:28.

Further Resources, More Information & Links