For those who don’t know, I’m a teacher by day and I was recently invited to be interviewed by the extraordinarily prolific blogger and author, Trudy Graham. We discussed the reality of teaching, time management and, of course, my daily blog! Below is an extract so I encourage you to click below and check out the post in its entirety and say hi to Trudy for me!
By day, Gregg Savage is Head of Special Education Services (H.O.S.E.S.) at a Queensland State School, by night he turns his masterful talent for storytelling into short stories for children. Gregg is currently challenging himself to create, write, edit and publish a story each day for 365 days. In this interview, he shares some of his career experiences as an educator as well as some insights into his creative work.
How did you get to where you are now?
An argument broke out in the compact disc distribution warehouse where I was working. The frustration of the event stayed with me until 5:00pm and, on the drive home, I listened with envy to the journalists covering the horrific events of the second Iraq War. I wanted more out of life. So, I went home and applied to enrol at the Queensland University of Technology. The plan was to complete one year of an education degree and then switch courses to journalism. The university took a chance on me and, by the end of my first lecture on teaching literacy, I no longer wanted to be a journalist; I wanted to be a teacher. Since then, I have had the pleasure of teaching two grade-five classes and a year two class before completing two small-school principal gigs and five years as Head of Special Education at a Queensland state school.
Why do you do what you do?
Witnessing the impact powerful storytellers such as Margaret Wild and Shan Tan have on the students – as well as my partner Rachel’s three awesome children – I started telling stories of my own. I thought it might be a decent idea to document the stories so, one night, I fired up a website and typed one out. I then did the same thing the next night with a different story. The kids at home and, consequently, a few of the students at school jumped on the website and read the stories which I thought was really cool. So, I wrote another story the night after that and the night after that. I have now written a unique story every day for the past 200 days and uploaded them to my website, dailytales.com.au. I regularly receive motivating messages from countries including India, Singapore and South Africa. Teachers have incorporated my stories into their unit plans and I regularly get to debrief about the previous nights’ story with the students where I work.
Continue reading: http://teachersthriving.com/gregg-savage-head-special-education-services-childrens-author/
My name is Gregg Savage and, every night when the house is quiet, I write and publish a free children’s story at dailytales.com.au for you to share and enjoy.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The atmospheres portrayed in my favourite films heavily influence the stories I write. It
Without question, Australian children’s author and illustrator, Shaun Tan. Shaun’s unorthodox storytelling is what initially got me hooked on wanting to write children’s stories. I am in awe of his ability to craft narratives that border on poetry while telling an alternative, yet parallel story with the accompanying pictures. Although hope is a recurring theme in his stories, I also admire the courage Shaun has to explore some darker topics such as grief (Tales from Outer Suburbia), depression (The Red Tree) and displaced people (The Rabbits (illustrator) & Eric), subjects not usually associated with your typical children’s picture books. As a teacher, it’s refreshing to delve into these relatable and often ignored themes through Shaun’s compelling storytelling. Shaun’s style involves using words and phrases that can be taken both literally and metaphorically, so it’s a great feeling watching the students have a lightbulb moment when they figure out the “actual” plot to the story. 
I was introduced to the mesmerising stories of children’s picture book author, Margaret Wild, by my English lecturer in my first year at university. As a group of students in our late teens and early twenties, we thought we weren’t too unreasonable when we let out a collective groan after the lecturer informed us she was going to read a children’s storybook before each of her presentations. Without hesitation, the lecturer projected a copy Margaret Wild’s, Woolves in the Sitee, on the screen at the front of the auditorium and proceeded to read an illustrated children’s storybook focussing on the struggles a young boy attempting to survive in a post-apocalyptic world…
I am excited to announce that, over the past view months, I have been collaborating with artist, Alisha Towers, to produce illustrations for my tales. Based in South-West Victoria, Alisha has been working tirelessly behind-the-scenes to create wonderful artwork for a selection of the more popular tales with the goal of producing illustrations for all of them in due course. To introduce herself to you, Alisha has submitted a beautifully handwritten bio below. I have also included hyperlinks further down so you can check out some of the illustrations in context.![Alisha Handwritten Bio [Smaller jpg]](https://i0.wp.com/firsteverythingnowthis.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/alisha-handwritten-bio-smaller-jpg.jpg?resize=3456%2C4608&ssl=1)
