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