Publication Day: Imaginative Teaching Through Creative Writing

Here it is! You can find it here online.

You ever hear the story about the book that started as some loose thoughts penned on a coffee shop or bar napkin because someone said, “Yeah, we should do this…”? Somewhat of a common origin tale in writing circles. A metaphor of sorts as well.

And, as publication day has arrived for my co-editors and me, it actually happened. Today, Imaginative Teaching Through Creative Writing is available. In the fall of 2018, the book was literally a conversation at a BBQ joint in North Carolina and a couple of napkins full of maybes. 

The primary topic of that discussion—other than whether or not the brisket was the best thing on the menu—was the following question: Why isn’t there a book that connects solid, accessible creative writing theory with the best practices already happening in standards-driven secondary language arts classrooms?

Before grad school and teaching at the college level, Chris, Amy, and I all taught at the secondary level. And, in some ways, we’ve remained connected to those experiences even as we’ve pursued our creative and post-secondary work. 

So, we sketched those napkin notes, reconvened a little later for a fire-side continuation of the conversation, and then left the conference we were at with a rough plan. Then we wrote a call for chapter proposals, reached out to some folks in Creative Writing studies circles who had useful pieces of the theory puzzle they could bring to the book, and started the long process of pulling a proposal together (twice, actually). 

And now, it’s here, and it is fantastic. Part collection of excellent, tested models for teaching creative writing in ways that better explore educational standards than many currently preferred approaches. Part foundational theory that aims to broaden the perception of creative writing as a pedagogical tool and offer a variety of ways to establish its necessity in secondary cultures that privilege functional-literacy. And all written by people committed to establishing a truth we all hold as unappreciated: creative writing should be central to the language arts classroom experience, not merely an add-on or “break” from more serious subjects.      

Imaginative Teaching came together more seamlessly than we had any right expecting. Much of that is due to the work of my co-editors who were an absolute joy to work with, even as we shoehorned the majority of the work into pandemic schedules turned upside down and morning Zoom meetings half editorial in nature and half group therapy. This process was by no means easy, but I appreciate the way we shared the burdens and also the process. 

I’m also happy to be working with Bloomsbury Academic again, particularly with our commissioning editor Lucy Brown. This is my third collection with them, and I have felt supported and thoroughly understood each time. Also, working with the chapters of this book has felt particularly fulfilling (including getting to publish an essay from one of my former students as well as one from the most talented educator I know personally). 

If I’m being honest, Imaginative Teaching completes a thought I had almost 20 years ago when I came up with a lesson one Sunday night I called Novel in a Week and then, on that following Monday, taught my ninth-grade students (more on that in the book and in a blog post to come). I wondered then—as I do now—why so many English classes teach creative writing as an object rather than an action. Something to read and respond to rather than write and release. 

Fortunately, others have wondered the same thing and doing something about it. It’s truly my hope that this book will encourage more teachers to engage the work of creative writing with their students and support their efforts along the way.   

20-15-10

Photo by Carli Jeen on Unsplash

I filed grades for my last class of the year this past Friday and it occurred to me that this is a season of professional round numbers for me. 

The end of that summer course marks the completion of my 10th year as a full-time professor of writing, my 15th teaching in higher education, and my 20th as an educator. 

Not bad for a job I initially avoided and then took on as a two-year stop-gap to “see what I actually wanted to do” after I left daily journalism. 

Before you get the wrong impression, this is more a commentary on how my not seeing the significance of this year was the result of a very different realization. I’ll save the sloppy nostalgic tour of my career for 30-25-20.

I really didn’t consider the numeric synergy of this year until just before it ended. Can’t imagine what I was so preoccupied with...

What I think I have felt most in the past few months is the strain of standing in the middle of two forces the pandemic has laid bare in education. That fault line runs directly under the intersection of what I appreciate most and least about my job.

The reason I love teaching—like all good teachers I know—is the students. It’s a cliched answer because is so consistently true. 

Over the years, I have worked with now thousands (in the plural) of students from elementary kids to doctoral candidates. And I don’t teach large seminars at the college level, so when I say I’ve worked with them, I really have. I have mentored writers, coached basketball players and runners, spent weekends and summers helping some students remediate their grades and others get their books ready for publication. 

The headaches in all of this are numerous, but the sense of purpose I gain from helping people engage their work and their lives in ways that push them toward expecting more of themselves is why I do this. 

I guess my motivations are pretty basic: tending their growth is what makes me happy. It’s also a site of much learning on my part.

At the same time, the charge toward re-opening schools in the fall despite many strong reasons to resist such plans highlights the thing I can’t find a way to reconcile about my profession. 

We’ve made schools a business and it’s wrecked them. And in the process, teachers from Kindergarten to graduate studies have been saddled with duties and expectations that take us from the things we should be focused on: teaching students and partnering with them in the ways they most need.

I know of no other profession that caters more to the desires of people who come from outside of it with no expertise in what makes it work best. Everybody went to school, which apparently makes them an expert, or so the tone of their advice would seem to indicate. 

And I get it: there are many stories of schools from tiny districts to large universities failing at their charter. But where that should mean correcting via best practices and the research that exists on the subject, American schools have done what all American institutions do: they’ve applied the thinking of corporate efficiency and capitalistic incentives through resource scarcity to look for ways to “improve” education. 

Only to achieve the opposite effect. 

We defund higher education. We saddle students with crushing debt. We make teachers perform administrative duties while increasing administrative bloat at every turn. We increase class sizes and demand more work from teachers already overloaded. We pay less and expect more. 

We test students into the ground, measuring abstract notions of “development” and “performance” that tell us little more than how well the system was designed to embrace or erase where those students come from. 

We spend on campus police and stadiums while cutting back on counselors and support staff. We say we offer a free education in our country without really counting the costs associated with it. 

We fund schools by their zip code, thus ensuring those in the wealthiest neighborhoods remain one more source of privilege for the minority of students who can attend them. 

And in all of this, we prefer only the stories of the exceptional educators. The ones who teach math in the inner city and suffer a heart attack from the stress. The ones who help students find their own voice in writing, showing their dedication by going bankrupt in the process. The ones who seem heroic by simply learning that it takes more than good intentions to be a good teacher and it was never their job to save these kids in the first place. 

We love these teachers because they feed the narrative of exceptionalism. They are also myths. 

The reason I love teaching doesn’t come with a casting announcement for who will play me in the movie version of my time in the classroom (though we all know it will be Liev Schreiber). It doesn’t carry cash incentives like selling steak knives. And in most cases, it does not come with the overt recognition of the people around me.

It’s the small moments when students allow us in enough to learn that they are not destined to fail. That they are not invisible. That they are, in fact, capable of more than people have given them credit for, themselves included. 

Good teachers make a life’s study of how they can become more human and approachable rather than how they can be more “rigorous” (generally a euphemism for how they can make their preferred style of learning the definition of difficulty in the classroom). 

They train for seeing the smallest signs of growth or openness and they press into them rather than seeking to flatten out all the students into one homogeneous set drones who can perform equally under the same expectations. 

They don’t work at being popular so much as trustworthy and fair. And they don’t care as much about grades as they do about gradual improvement, even when the system pushes them—hard—to do just the opposite. 

And that’s what hit me about my workiversary. I didn’t see it coming because I’m perpetually too busy with that course of study. I’m not perfect. Hell, I’m not even exceptional. 

I’m merely reaching for effective. That’s enough, contrary to what the “experts” in everything other than education contend.