Yesterday I finished another fifteen week creative writing course, this time with students mainly in grade seven and eight.
Each group is unique and one never knows what dynamic they will collectively develop. Individually they were a mixed bag of skill levels, some high, some struggling, as well as a wide range of comfort with their creativity and their ability to express who they are. This term, we were working towards an anthology of stories, potentially thirteen from each of them, if they kept up. Among the batch of stories submitted were a few that were gems. By that I mean that they encompassed all the elements we looked at over the weeks; good description, meaningful dialogue, a compelling plot that moved forward towards a satisfying ending, and a sense afterwards that the young writer was saying something within the words. It just takes a few stories like these to feel positive about how the course went.
This age group is not an easy one to judge how much the students are into the exercises. The insecurities of adolescence can even smother their voices to barely above a whisper when sharing their work among the class. But despite that, I saw them rise to the occasion as I assembled a video of some of their work that I recorded for the last class presentation in front of invited parents and the other classes. Having it already recorded avoided the awkward, too quiet, hesitant live readings that would likely have happened. But it also allowed the students to see themselves, which no doubt made them cringe, but also to assess, even perhaps make choices to try harder next time, take more risks, just go for it, because what really do they have to lose? And at the end of video was a “blooper reel”, a montage of the many takes that were stopped due to them breaking out laughing. A reminder that among all the embarrassment, they were actually having fun.
Dan Bar-el 