Resistance, Transformation, and the

Creative Writing Workshop

Lori Howe

University of Wyoming

Ethnographic Research

• We know that inadequate literacy practice and resources in early childhood can lead to “at-risk” status later in life, but there are often other, unseen influences.

• Based on an ethnographic study of 5 former “at-risk” creative writing students, all reported student Resistance based on lack of motivation and engagement with classroom pedagogies and course content.

The Creative Writing Workshop: Why Does it Work?

• All 5 participants rated workshop and discussion as the most effective classroom pedagogical method

• All 5 participants reported a transformation of identity, self, and engagement with education through the creative writing workshop

• All 5 reported that personal agency and responsibility as community members of the workshop were key factors in their success

• All 5 participants were once “at-risk” and are now successful English majors or English/Language Arts teachers

How Can YOU Implement the Creative Writing Workshop in Your Classroom?

• Students across all disciplines benefit from the chance to write creatively and workshop their work with peers. This generation of millennial students, perhaps more than any generation before them, longs for student-centered pedagogy and the chance to be an important part of something bigger than themselves. By integrating the Creative Writing Workshop into your classrooms, you offer students a unique opportunity for empowerment, improvement, and success in writing of all kinds.

• The Take-away Sample Assignments included in this packet are longitudinally successful, engaging writing prompts that can easily fit into a single class period or be used for take-home writing, reading, and critique—whatever the time constraints of your classroom and curriculum, the Creative Writing Workshop is dynamic and flexible.

It Begins With YOU

• How can YOU teach creative writing workshops?

• I encourage you to follow these prompts yourself and produce a poem, essay and a piece of flash fiction—these prompts are chosen to make it remarkably easy to write good pieces, and in a short sitting. Once you have experienced success with these prompts, it becomes very easy to scaffold student success with them. English and Language Arts teachers are already familiar with the terms and tools of teaching students to read and reflect on literature; teaching Creative Writing is remarkably similar, except that it replaces traditional reading assignments with student-produced pieces of writing, and the workshop format is a round-table student-centered discussion, rather than a teacher-centered lecture and discussion.

In the Classroom

• How is the Workshop structured?

• The workshop can be structured any way you need it to be, based on the size of your class and the time constraints of your curriculum. The standard workshop format for a 50-minute class hour offers two to three students the opportunity to have their written work

thoroughly workshopped by their peers. Here’s a breakdown of the steps to creating a strong, thriving workshop community in your classroom:

• Assign students the poetry, flash-fiction, and non-fiction prompts and allow them to choose.

• Call for volunteers: you’ll need two to three students to volunteer to bring copies of their poem, story, or essay for the rest of the workshop group. In a large class, you may have several workshop groups; 8-10 is a good number of participants in any given group. They need to commit to bringing their poem, story, or essay, so that the copies may be distributed to workshop group members ahead of time, ensuring ample time for reading and written comments.

In the Classroom, Continued

• Explain the two-level nature of workshop commentary and demonstrate it for your students. Level one, which you can refer to as the “nuts and bolts” level, is for sentence-level comments on grammar, punctuation, spelling, word choice, etc. Level two is for more complex, overarching comments on plot, arc, characters, voice, message, and—especially for poetry—the music of the lines. Student peer reviewers should provide comments on both levels.

• Presentation/Critique: On the day of workshop, the student whose writing will be critiqued reads his or her piece aloud to the group, and the group applauds. Next, you, the teacher, will start off the workshop round-table by offering your dual-level comments, making sure to include positive comments on what the student did well with suggestions for revision. Go around the circle and allow each student member of the workshop group to do the same, modeling your dual-level commentary. No one else speaks during individual comments, and the student writer remains silent through the comment period.

In the Classroom, Continued

• Writer Response: After all students in the workshop group have had reasonable opportunity to comment on the poem, story, or essay, the student writer volunteer is given 5 minutes to respond to comments.

• Feedback: All printed copies with peer comments are returned to the student writer volunteer. You may choose to limit individual comment time to 3-4 minutes, to ensure equitable time distribution during workshop.

How Do I Grade Creative Writing?

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• Grading Creative Writing: of course, it can be tricky to grade creative writing, but base your grading on improvement through revision, rather than perceived initial talent. You may opt to work with a portfolio format, offering students the chance to choose a certain number of their pieces to include, so that they feel motivated to produce several finished, polished pieces by the end of your course, and feel some agency regarding their final grade on the portfolio through their own choices and revisions. Students appreciate being graded on their efforts at revision and polishing their pieces, and this removes the inherent imbalance between gifted and struggling writers as you grade them on the same assignment.

Managing Time Constraints

• What if you don’t have time to do workshop in class?

• If you build it, they will come. Even if strict allocations of time prevent you from holding workshop during class, you can scaffold independent effort by offering the assignments and encouraging students to form independent workshop groups—which they often do, even without encouragement or class credit. Workshop groups spring up during study periods, at lunch, and before and after school, so don’t hesitate to offer this great boon of creative self-expression to your students, even if you can’t fit whole workshops into class time. Student creativity is like a river; we only help them channel it.

Beyond the Classroom

• If you want to offer your students the chance to work on a literary magazine and publish their work you can found an online journal for free; see Open Window Review at Wordpress.com and Clerestorypoets.org for examples of free, easy to administer literary journals created by and for students. I founded Open Window Review for exactly this purpose in 2011, and it is now under the direction of a group of my former writing students who have gone on to become successful college English majors and teachers. Clerestory is my own, online-only, poetry-only journal, and it is simple and easy to create and administrate a journal just like it for your students. For further information, contact me via email at lhowe@uwyo.edu. I’m happy to help you build a workshop and publishing opportunity for your students!

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