Student Population

Creative Writing is open to all students in grades 9-12. Creative Writing Workshop, the second year of the course, is open to any student who was successful in Creative Writing and wishes to deepen his/her relationship with writing. While they are academic electives, they are also open to all ability levels (Special Education, General, College Prep. B, College Prep. A, Honors, and AP). I usually have most of these levels represented in each class, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I am also amazed at the diversity of students on another, less school-sanctioned level: the class attracts track runners, student council representatives, football players, community service enthusiasts, artists, actors, the technologically inclined, the technologically dis-inclined, class presidents, students who exist under the radar of popularity, academic whizzes, awful spellers, and everyone in between. I think this diversity speaks to an important idea: contrary to popular belief, kids like to write. In a high school where they could opt to take any number of interesting electives, so many of them choose to explore the written word.

I few years ago, I had a student for two years in a row (when she was a freshman and a sophomore). The first year, I caught her cheating at least three times. The second year, though the cheating stopped, she consistently earned Ds in my American Literature class. She rarely completed homework, was an atrocious speller, and was much more concerned with improving her skills as an athlete than as a student. She was a relatively constant source of frustration for me. Imagine my surprise when, before her senior year, her name showed up on my Creative Writing roster. Throughout our time together in this forum, she emerged in a way that I never would have imagined, developing into one of the best student writers I have ever had - in terms of growth, openness, and sensitivity (all qualities that, from my perspective, matter most). Below are some lines from two of her poems, published in our literary magazine:

...Acoustic chords strum in darkness,
friendships glide to love,
Autumn's poetry ends in stillness,
and the deep sea gathers stars in its waves...

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I am from the front door swinging open:
two steps - a leap,
and little legs off racing
through early-morning dew.

I am from sopping wet:
from shoes and blue jeans left outside
to dry on the deck...
Those frogs didn't stand a chance...

I am from weeping willows -
the enchanted forest of my backyard
where the trees were warped, silent sentinels...
hiding secrets of childhood...

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I think this student made me realize - as so many before her had and so many after her will - that our students are never just one thing, that they are never just the first layer that we happen to notice, that they embody such great possibility. Sometimes, they just need the proper environment in which to tap into it. I think that creative writing allows students from all different backgrounds, students will all different ability levels (academic, social, and otherwise), to explore their own voices and those of others in a way that heightens their sensitivity to and their awareness of the worlds around them and within them.

Which students are involved in your creative writing program? Is it open to everyone? Is there a wide variety of participants?