Working with other teachers who love to write has been one of the greatest pleasures in my career. After several years of leading workshops for teachers with the Greater New Orleans Writing Project and for the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, and thinking about some old and new challenges in the classroom, I now think that more teachers should have the opportunity to practice creative writing. Here are some of my thoughts about why this is something schools should encourage and offer not only for the English/ELA faculty, but for teachers across the curriculum. [Note: this is very much a draft, and I welcome any constructive feedback.]
Creative thinking is critical thinking. Creative thinking entails a willingness to be surprised, which itself requires a capacity to embrace not-knowing. As Donald Barthelme puts it in his essay, “Not-Knowing,” “The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do.” When we begin drafting a poem or story, it will only turn out as something original, something truly our own, if we don’t know where it will lead. Genuine critical thinking is no different: it requires a willingness to follow analysis and interpretation in directions that may not only be unexpected, but that change the premises and assumptions we may have had when we embarked. All of this is true even when writing about ourselves. The guiding question for Michel de Montaigne, the 16th-century writer who created what we now call the personal essay, was, “What do I know?”
Creative writing and thinking rewards what AI cannot. Widely reported results from a University of Pennsylvania study (see, for instance, “Kids Who Use ChatGPT as a Study Assistant Do Worse on Tests,” Jill Barshay, Hechinger Report, 9/2/24) make clear that AI poses real and immediate risks to learning, especially among young people. AI rewards the desire to complete a task with minimal effort—not unreasonable, but not a starting place for learning. In fact, students who rely on AI to write a paper are using it to replace learning altogether. The fact that that’s even possible makes AI different from other tools. A calculator, for instance, requires some understanding of mathematical concepts in order to use it effectively. Creative writing rewards learning by giving immediate satisfaction for making something fun and interesting with language. It can also be approached as a game, which offers not just the rewards of winning but of enjoying play and imagination. If students can find those kinds of rewards through writing, they are more likely to value other kinds of original thinking—and to appreciate the learning that comes with it.
Teachers who model writing for their students are highly effective. Nothing makes me sadder than hearing someone say, “I can’t write.” Likewise, few things make me happier than setting someone up with a writing activity and seeing their excitement and satisfaction when they realize that yes, they can write—even if they’ve never written a poem or story before. As a teacher, I’ve always done the same writing activities I give my students and workshop participants, and I share my work with them. Seeing that I take the work seriously encourages them to do the same. In fact, that usually makes more of an impression than if I rattle off all my publication credits. Being genuinely receptive to their feedback on what I’ve written is also a great way to encourage them to take my feedback and that of their peers more seriously. In the best case, you end up with a room of mutually supportive writers—in short, a writing community. And that is a powerful thing.
Creative writing makes writing pleasurable, as it should be. I believe most people who don’t think they can write have never had a reason to enjoy writing. Writing should be fun. Even when we’re writing about difficult material, or writing in a challenging form such as a sonnet, if the process itself does not offer some kind of pleasure (from an imaginative discovery, from finding the right word, from shaping a sentence so it says what you want in the way you want), then why wouldn’t it seem like a chore? If we want students to find pleasure in writing, I firmly believe we need to have authentic experiences of enjoying writing for ourselves.
Brad Richard 