Teacher / Poet #23

Washing Some Dishes

Washing Some Dishes

“Everyone wants a revolution but no one wants to do the dishes.” -Dorothy Day (I think?). A poster of this quote resides above the sink in our school’s faculty lounge.

“A central goal of creative writing pedagogy in secondary schools should be to break down barriers between literature and creative writing, both of which are focused on understanding constructed texts…Unfortunately this natural alliance between disciplines has largely been lost, especially at the secondary level. As mentioned earlier, my English Teaching students were generally taught poetry by reading the greats–Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Poe–and even when they were taught meter and rhythm, it was nearly always taught as an observable phenomenon, not as a craft they could practice. On the rare occasion they were taught poetry beyond reading selections, it was usually as a sort of cultural study or appropriation. Almost none of them were taught how to write poetry, or any other genre, because their teachers either didn’t see room for it in their yearly schedules or they weren’t comfortable teaching it.” - Chris Drew, “Minding the Pedagogical Gap” (2016)

---

A good deal of the education / teaching themed issues on this Substack are of the ‘burn it down’ variety. That is, I’ve come out, in a number of places, guns blazing, at many elements of conventional schooling and standardized testing. I do stand by those critiques. Conventional teaching is not reaching many, many students, and the system of conventional schooling is damaging many, many young people. 

That said, the “dishes,” to live in Dorothy Day’s quote from above, remain to be washed. For those of us who teach in high schools or middle schools, we may have some power to alter structures in our own classrooms, but so often the power to affect bigger structural change lies elsewhere. And yet, we still need to be ready for the students we teach on Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. Etc.

Which means that if you’re a teacher in a fairly conventional school system, and you want (or need) to stay in that position, it makes sense to avail yourself of smaller-scale ‘moves’ you can make, that can work toward a less ‘schoolish’ school (to use Susan Blum’s wonderful phrase. Check out her great book, Schoolishness, for more on that. I’m meaning to write more on that book myself soon). 

In my case, I’m a high school English teacher. And a poet, who studied in an MFA program, in the workshop model. In my experience, incorporating creative writing assignments into daily work, treating high school students to a workshop environment in which they create the same forms they study, is deeply rewarding. Students start to see writing as a process by which they can learn more and more about themselves, their classmates, and the world around them. At the same time, it can sometimes be tricky, with the omnipresence of standards and standardization in our educational system, to find a way to maintain this commitment to “process over product.” 

Enter the work of folks like Chris Drew, whose brilliant, “Minding the Pedagogical Gap: Creative Writing Studies, Common Core Standards, and the Secondary Creative Writing Moment,” I read and re-read and underlined a bunch of times, over the past month. (And definitely plan on implementing in my classes next fall.) Rather than inciting teachers like me to ‘burn down’ the system of standards, he encourages us to USE them to teach the creative writing we know will benefit our students. 

He points out that there are MANY WAYS to interpret these standards, and if we interpret them through a creative writing / workshop lens, we can bring so many authentic and fruitful writing experiences to the students we teach. Let me “wash a few more dishes” with you, give you some practical examples, and tempt you to read more of his work:

-You could address Writing Standard 3 (“Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences”) through teaching students how to write skillful short stories or poetry–in addition to the ubiquitous personal narrative that many teachers already assign.

-You could address Language Standard 5 (“Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings”) by having students create their own examples of those literary elements in work of their own, or by ‘tinkering’ with the work and word choices of a text they’re studying.

-You could address Writing Standard 9 (“Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research”) by having students read each others’ creative writing (poem, story, personal narrative) and then have them write a thoughtful and specific “workshop letter,” that hallmark of the creative writing college course. I have used Matthew Salesses’ letter assignment from his wonderful Craft in the Real World and it’s helped my students do some careful and thoughtful analysis. As Drew points out in this essay “a student-written story or poem is also literary and often more approachable for secondary students than published texts.” And if you give the students real instructions in moving beyond the “I liked it” kind of feedback, this writing assignment is a gateway into authentic, student-to-student audience literary analysis.

You get the picture. If you’re an English / ELA teacher like me, and you want to do some (or a lot) of creative writing in your classes, this essay itself is an amazing resource. And Drew, and many friends, have collected others like it, in a terrific book I’m reading as well. (More on that below). 

But I also want to anticipate those critics who might see leaning into the creative work as ‘fluffier’ (very technical term, I know) than the more “rigorous” type of instruction happening maybe, I don’t know, down the hall from you, in your school. I would discourage this binary, and maybe those words from our conversations. I want to use the “slash” in my “Teacher / Poet” in the both / and rather than either / or sense. As I hope this brief intro to Chris Drew’s work shows, a good English class can BOTH fire a student’s imagination AND give them entry into critical conversations about craft and the larger world around them. Studying literature can be socially and emotionally nourishing AND it can support students in gaining valuable skills for whatever their next step is when they leave your classroom. 

But I also want to say that teaching creative writing “outside of the MFA program,” whether that’s in a community class, high school class, or college class, can help spark more art. And, in my view, that’s a good thing. 

Yes, let’s have that (educational) revolution. And as teachers, maybe we can help bring it into being by creatively interpreting the standards, one by one. So fire up a good tune, get the soap and water going. Let’s wash some dishes.

---

 

Text-to-Text Connections

-Chris Drew’s essay, I believe in slightly modified form, is included in the book, Imaginative Teaching Through Creative Writing: A Guide for Secondary Classrooms. There are numerous contributors who are actively (actually!) working in high schools and putting this theory into practice, as well as inspiring professors like Drew with ELA secondary experience dropping knowledge and rationale on us all. I’m only part-way through the book and already loving every page. Check it out!

-To surface another creative writing example from my own undergraduate experience: in my junior year at University of Dallas, I took a course called “Junior Poet.” In that class we studied intensively the work of one poet for an entire semester, and then presented our research before a panel of professors. What a transformative experience! And in case you’re wondering, the poet I chose to study for four months was Seamus Heaney. What a great gateway into poetry, right? Anyway, as part of this course, my professor, Dr. Scott Crider, a reader and supporter of this Substack (shout-out, Scott!) gave the assignment of writing our own poems in imitation of the poet we were studying, and then reflecting on choices we made in our imitations in a kind of process statement. I still remember reading and re-reading Heaney’s long poem “Station Island” and noticing how it was influenced by and utilized the terza rima stanza form of Dante’s Commedia. What this did for me was bring the “untouchable” Dante down to contemporary level. I too could get my poetic hands dirty with the same tool Dante used, and Heaney used. I continue to be grateful for this assignment you gave, Scott. Creative, fun, and “rigorous,” to boot. 

-What about you, dear reader? What is work that has both challenged you AND nourished you or inspired you creatively? Feel free to think beyond the classroom, too, please. No need to be “schoolish” in your responses!