Memo 3

My primary sources will be students 7-12 and teachers who teach 7 through 12. So far I’ve gotten a few teachers to agree to let me interview them, but interviewing students has proved to be more difficult. I can manage two students so far but it looks like both my sources in middle school and high school require very permission slips from parents in order to interview students. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do that as that would involve a sizeable involvement with the schools that I don’t think I have the pull to request. I’m going to have to figure something else out, but as I said for now I can secure at least two interviews.

I’m also working to get the okay to interview a teacher I met at the high school I’m doing practicum in. He teachers an actual creative writing class which given my prompt I think would be invaluable as a source.

I’ve worked with a middle school teacher during practicum a lot so I have a good relationship with her. I have already asked her if I could interview her and she said yes, now I just have to find the time. Same thing with my high school practicum teacher, the only issue will be time.

The questions I’m thinking of asking them are:

                Teachers:

                                Do you notice any change in student participation in regards to academic writing vs creative writing?

                                Are students more apt to share work that is academic or creative? Why do you think that might be?

                                In your opinion when should creative writing be utilized in the classroom?

               

                Students:

                                What are you more likely to work harder on, academic writing or creative writing?

                                What do you enjoy writing more?

                                How do you feel about writing for creative expression?

                                Do you think you’d enjoy writing more if you had more input in it/more creativity?

               

                I’m definitely going to use the article “The place of Creative writing in Composition studies” as I think it says a lot about how creative writing can teach students how to write and I think there is something to be said about how that can engage students in writing. I think this article makes a good point that I haven’t thought of which is that in some ways other subjects can envy creative writing because of its inherent ability to invoke the imagination. One quote that has been sticking to my ribs that I pulled from it was: “No one asks ‘Why can’t students coming from your course develop even a single character?’”  I think that speaks a lot to how little the act of creating is regarded in the academic field. We look at literature and we have our students study and analyze the text, we tell them to rip it apart and search for clues, but never do we ask them to try and replicate it. We never tell them “okay now you try.” One thing I know from taking so many creative writing classes is that one of the best ways to learn how to write is to study good writing, and sure enough study that writing to learn how to do it helps further ones understanding of the writing itself. It’s a richer experience all together.

                Another source I’m considering is “The positive effects of Cohesion on the creativity of small groups.” It’s not explicitly about creative writing but it has some interesting things to say about how creativity creates a positive group dynamic which I think might be interesting to look into.

                I’m also considering looking at the common core and the high school and middle school graduation requirements as I think It might prove interesting to see what purpose creative writing has in the schools currently. After looking at the graduation requirements the high school I’m doing practicum in I’ve noticed there are some definite opportunities to use creative writing. One such example is that writing poetry is an option for one of the students’ graduation requirements. It might prove beneficial to discuss why that is in there with the principal of this school. 

Memo 2

I found a few useful ideas while researching my topic on Creative writing and Engagement. In one article by Douglas Hesse titled “The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies he starts out by saying: “The two fields’ common interest should link them in a richer, more coherent view of writing for each other, for students, and for policymakers.” I think this articulately gets at what I’ve been trying to say. I believe that writing skills are universal and one skill can carry over to another with little backlash. If you learn how to construct a sentence and articulate a point why should it matter if it’s in an essay or a student made fairy tale?

That being said I’ve noticed a lot of the articles I’ve been coming across are more academic based. They seem to focus on how creative writing builds skills rather than how creative writing can engage students in a love for writing. This is a valuable path to go down as well and I wonder if I’d have a better go at this project if I changed to skill building rather than engagement.

Though I must say that could change because I feel like when I start interviewing teachers my assumption is that they’ll be more inclined to tell me about engagement rather than skill building. I think that something like student involvement is more readily apparent than data on how students write and so I think in that sense my first path might seem more plausible.

Memo 1

Writing has always been a huge part of my life. I’ve been writing weird little stories since I could remember. There is something strangely therapeutic about creating something and getting lost in it. I’ve often equated writing to being like a God, you create a world filled with characters and cities and anything you could ever want and then you let it breathe. As a writer you have complete control over what you make. Writing has power.

                I hated writing in school and mostly I think that was because I had no control over it. I’d get into class and the teacher would tell us specifically what to write and in what way. There was no creativity. The few times I got to write creatively I had a lot of fun and I actually worked hard on those assignments. I wondered then what purpose could creative writing have in the classroom? Surely engagement is important to breeding strong thoughtful writers. I have to believe that the first step to making a good writer is making a student who loves writing. Through engaging the student with creative writing could we not move them into the more academic side of writing? Or, forgetting ‘academic’ writing for a moment could we not use creative writing to help sharpen the tools of writing anyway? I often wonder what the point of teaching writing is if the methods we use don’t create writers. More often than not I hear people say the hate writing, that they’ll never do it once they get out of school. So my question is what are we really teaching students? Isn’t knowledge supposed to spring board the student into further inquiry? If, as a teacher, you’re teaching your student to hate writing than what is the difference between that and teaching a brick wall? The end process is the same: someone who won’t write.

                So my burning question: can we create lovers of writing through creative writing stems from my belief that putting the power of writing into the hands of students will make them love writing. 

RIWP reflection

               After spending a few days thinking about the conference I started to think about what I actually experienced. Did I have fun? Yes, surprisingly so, I usually don’t enjoy these types of conferences but this one was actually very informative. I guess that’s what I think I’d been trying to get at: what did I learn?

                I learned in my first seminar that you don’t have to be ‘ready’ to write poetry, you can simply sit down and start. The first seminar was by far my favorite event of the day. We were presented with five different types of poems, and some student made examples of them (which were excellent!) and a short time limit of ten minutes to read the directions and write a poem. After ten minutes we’d move on to the next poem and the clock would start again. I was shocked, ten minutes is not enough, I thought but sure enough each time I was able to spit out a rough (very rough) draft of a poem. Now will I use these poems in the future? Maybe, I’m taking a poetry writing class right now and I could always use them there, but I’m not sure that was the point of the exercise. I think what I learned is that sometimes it’s okay to just sit down and spill out a very rough draft of something and now worry about what comes out. In the much of badly written words I might be able to find a few diamonds. That seminar really showed me that writing doesn’t always have to have a final purpose in mind.

                The other seminar I went to involved making up characters and acting them out. I liked that one but ended up enjoying the first one more. I’m not much for acting, I don’t particularly enjoy it, but it was fun enough. I learned that you can make a funny sketch in a matter of minutes. I really enjoyed watching everyone’s characters, they were so weird and funny. Christopher’s character was particularly fun to watch, especially when he freaked out over getting his pen stolen. It was definitely an interesting experience.

                I would definitely use the poetry one in a classroom someday. I think it is important to show students that writing is a process and sometimes it’s good to get over the fear of writing, as Professor Cook would say, a shitty first draft. I’m not sure about the acting one though. It was fun but I think it would have to be edited heavily depending on the age group that was in my class.

Intro movie

Sooo I have a terrible memory but I'm pretty sure we're supposed to post the video to our blog. Anyway here it is. Enjoy :]


I'm not sure how to embed it so I'll just give you a link....Anyone know how to post the actual video here?

http://animoto.com/play/MrwlY0001ZfPh6bamlKFPA

Creative Writing and Engagement