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.