Creative writing, the step child of English departments

My Mom keeps these huge storage containers in our basement that are marked with my siblings' names and in them you’ll find relics of our childhoods. In mine you’ll find avant-garde drawings and sheep with cotton balls glued on and you’ll also see hilarious attempts at creative writing. I used to write these crazy stories complete with illustrations about everything from my pets to aliens. I loved writing; couldn’t get enough! So while reading this week’s articles I started to wonder, what happened to that love and is it too late to start again??

I attended Catholic school my entire life until college. Our curriculum was pretty strict and we rarely strayed from the formulaic structure of the five-paragraph essay. Plug in thesis statement, supportive fact, supportive fact and out comes a 4 on the AP test! Creative writing wasn’t even offered at my high school. Sure, one time we spent a week writing poetry in my English 5 AP class but we were given the types of poems we could write–I wrote one mean villanelle. The fact that creative writing wasn’t offered as a course or even in the confines of a traditional English class shows you how little my school valued creative writing. Everything revolved around test scores and getting into a good college, but where does that leave kids who need a creative outlet?

I feel a twinge of jealous when observing my CT’s class because I never had a teacher like her in a course like Reading. Reading was created to help students who did not pass the STAR test; but what I really like is that this class isn’t just a formulaic fix-all so that they can pass the test. They are really learning how to become life long readers and writers. All of the students have their own writers’ notebooks they write in at home and at school. They are expected to write every night for homework and during the allotted writing time in class. A lot of students start the year writing about things like what they ate for dinner and what they watched on TV that night but the goal is that as the year progresses, they start to write about other things that matter to them.  They are evolving from note takers to writers, people who observe and recount with feeling how they see the world.

Tomorrow I am teaching a mini lesson about literary circles and I am excited about it, but to be honest what I’m mostly excited about is our publication celebration. The students have been working on stories they want to publish for everyone to read for the past month and tomorrow we are going to have snacks and drinks and do a gallery walk of everyone’s stories. They started a few weeks ago with just thinking of a topic and free writing and as the weeks have progressed they have used different skills my CT has taught them to grow their topic and start with the “juicy” part. From what I’ve seen so far these students have so much to be proud of in their stories. They are writing like true authors. The stories range from how much they love their boyfriends, their shoes and music to stories of loss, murder and absence. This class is a chance for kids who are usually forced to go through the motions of learning about comma splices and writing five paragraphs compare and contrast essays to having an opportunity to really see how writing can be relevant in their lives outside of the classroom.