The First Year of Teaching Creative Writing: Lessons Learned

On the first day of school I lost two seniors to Chemistry. Down to 24 students and I was set to go. Within the first three weeks, Emily had missed nearly ten days of school. She soon left for homebound and then dropped out of school. I began to wonder if this trend was a bad omen.

In the first days of class, we wrote together. The first big assignment was for the students to pair up with a partner to create a PowerPoint Presentation about his/her partner. Some was more skilled at the program and the assignment streamed along for them. Others struggled, but all of them learned about each other very quickly. At the end of the presentations (which the Principal and Assistant Principal came as visitors), the students wrote an evaluations of their own presentation and of the assignment overall. End result, a hit.

Author's Chair was set for Fridays. Every other Friday was an A-day on the block schedule so we read about 3 or 4 Fridays each grading period. At first the students were shy. I read, then I asked one of my students who I had taught the previous year to read, then another, and soon the routine set in. Within the first three reading sessions, they lost all shyness and quickly volunteered to read.

The writing was going well. We're using exercises from Kim Stafford's Muses Among Us as well as the Writer's Notebook techniques from Ralph Fletcher's Breathing In, Breathing Out. One very successful exercise from Kim's book is Sentence as River/Sentence as Drum. Next big assignment is a photo essay. Lots of neat themes emerge: city streets, concerts, solitude, shadows, and being Goth.

Writing was improving. The products are coming in. There's more intensity. The students are slowly gelling with each other and me. Then it's Homecoming. The future Queen suddenly decides that my class is too difficult for her, takes too much of her time, and gee, she has to write! She wants out. Only problem is she signed a contract. The Principal says no, you can't drop the class. She gets a Doctor's excuse and Presto; she's gone. Amazingly, the class came together very quickly after her departure. An air of lightness filled the room and the writing grew. I'm down to 22 students and it's not Christmas yet.

Onward Ho! We survived the holidays and the submission to our first Writing contest. By mid-January the good news came. Jalissa, who aspires to be a journalist, won first place in non-fiction for her piece entitled, "A Bear Story," in the Writer's Guild contest here in Lafayette. Her story is centered on her nephew who is B-A-D all the way. She tells of his many trips to the office at school and ends with her wish that he stay out of jail and become a "bear" of a man. Our first tangible success. And money too!

Steven has to leave just after we return from the holidays. Dad's got a new job in Texas and our Rhyme Master, owner of the little black book, will be leaving us. Another one bites the dust.

And now the darkness of February. On the 12th one of my students, Jessica Lyons, was killed (along with her mother) by a drunk driver. She was on her way home from working on a Biology project, the DD lost control, flew in the air and landed on Jessie and her mom, killing them instantly. Our class was devastated. Three of Jessie's closest friends were in my class. I taught Jessie the year before and asked her to take my class because I saw what she could do with writing. Adults think that young folks don't think about death and how it will affect them. But I'm here to say that Jessica's death affected each one of us dramatically.

The first day of class after her death, I read, with tears flowing nonstop, Jessica's writing. I had her portfolio in class. At the end of the year, I gave Jessica's writing to her sister. She had her journals. Then the funeral. So much sadness in my students' eyes. And their writing from then on was more serious, they guarded their portfolios, and instinctively they knew that if anything happened to them, I would protect and save their writing.

Twenty left. The Core. My Students. They joined an after school Poetry Jam and for the first time they realized that they were good writers. Now comes the disappointment. The next writing contest deadline approaches. We've collected all our best entries. Some students have entered in all categories. They're pumped and excited. Easter break is over and now the bad news. Not a single student has placed. Not a single entry was chosen. They were devastated, disappointed and angry. I had built them up and now they were plummeting down. They didn't understand what had happened. And I still don't understand. But they learned a lesson. What they write for themselves is always better then what they write for others. Students are resilient. They bounced back and proved to me that they are writers. Their first rejection!

A week passed and they were back on track writing, critiquing, working in groups, finishing projects, editing longer pieces, and we were having fun in class. Guest speaker, Dr. Darrell Bourque visits on April 6. I buy copies of his last book, The Blue Boat for all my students. We listen to Schbert and write, we discuss poetry and they ask questions. One student, Kim asks him a question that seems to take him by surprise: "What is more important to you as a writer, the image or the words?" After pausing for what seems like a very long minute, he responds to her with the following: "Both." He explained that both the image and the words, the music of the words were vitally important to his work. And the story. Most of his work is based on remembrances of his family and his extensive work in the arts and his appreciation of the arts, both visual and performing. I think they learned much that day from Dr. Bourque.

One fun activity that we used several times was called "Write a line." I handed out colorful pieces of paper about half the size of a regular sheet. Each of us wrote a line. Then we passed the sheet to another person. They added a line. We continued until there was no more space on the sheet. And then we read them. What imaginations. Out of this activity there was one line that became the class mantra. Having fed my students on apples all year (instead of candy), their favorite was green apples. This line written by a drama student, Joshua Krieg, reads: "Green apples remind me of days on the farm when Father used to beat the slave children." This line was written on my card, no less, and from there, the story started. One of the slave children was named Eva and Father would beat her because she was playing with the slave children. Lots of laughs. But that's not the end of the line.

Another student, Melissa, picks up the line and uses it as a basis of a longer story that she writes. The story evolves and uses flashbacks. The main character who is now an adult flashes back to days on the farm when her father, the slave master, beat the slaves. All would cringe and buckle with the hurt and indignity. All except one who did not cry or bend under her father's beatings. And the little girl notices. Years later as a mother, she watches her son bite into a green apple and the memory is bitter and her appetite fades. All of this writing out of one line that most teachers would have edited. Did I mention that Melisa is black and the technique of writing from another's perspective is something she worked on all year. There was the Christmas story about her crazy family and how she didn't believe in Christmas. I bought that one hook, line and all. Thought it was true. Her voice is so real that she fooled me on another piece about a girl having regrets about having sex with a guy who is of course no longer interested in her. True story? Not for this girl, who was voted by the Senior class "Most Likely to Become a Nun." How's that for writing fiction?

Overall, by the end of the year, the readings are done, the portfolios are ready, including their own philosophy of writing, and I wasn't surprised by the amount of work that they have completed. Nor by the quality. I think they were surprised. The prose writer had found a voice for poetry and the script writer knew that short stories were working for him. The poet is bound and determined to get published. She's already in conversation with a published poet and getting mentoring. The artist and photographer in the group learned to blend their art work with their writing to produce genuine works they are proud of. And the would-be Goth has shed her black nail polish, put on some red and has become one of my bright stars. She will be with me next year in class surprising me again.

A lesson learned

My students learned another lesson this year in class. Always stand by your words. Defend them if they are what you believe to be true.Case in point.Josh, the clown, the prose writer, always the dramatist, wrote a highly controversial editorial that he wanted printed in the school's newspaper. All of what he had to say about the Senior class and student council was true--how inept they were, how horrible the choices were for class song, and the ultimate goof up with the Senior T-shirt--misspelling shcool. His essay was sound; the only problem was the tone. Harsh, exacting words that cut and bit into those responsible for all the fiascos. But the truth.Show down. Principal's office. I am trying to defend my student's work and save my a** at the same time. Josh won't budge on editing. I talked to him about managing editors, and publishers and how the real world works. He did some cutting and changes in language but the essence was there.He even managed to read his essay in front of an audience. We did readings for a freshman class and a sophomore class (practice at reading in public) and the tension was there. They chuckled (just like he wanted) but the teachers and principal in the audience were not smiling.Bottom line, Josh's essay was never published in the school newpaper. He did include it in his portfolio and he did manage to circulate various versions of the ediorial to key seniors and senior teachers.The lesson he learned is that if your language is too harsh you may not be able to see publication. But if you stand behind what you write and believe it to be the truth, then at least you've stood for something.