Before the 2022-2023 school year, creative writing stood as a creative hub for students who took the class, and helped further their development in English and writing in general. Despite this, the class hasn’t been offered in the past few years, and the chances of it returning appear to be low.
Administration should soon offer the class again as it would offer an effective medium for students to express their creativity through essays, poems and works of fiction.
In creative writing classes, students are encouraged to explore another path of creativity apart from more visual mediums of art, which allows students to make more empowered class and career choices going forward.
McNeil already offers the aforementioned mediums of art and others, yet no class for students with a passion for writing. Allowing students to reach their potential in a creative writing class will not only serve as a haven for individuality, but as one that informs students about college level reading and writing and possible career options within the liberal arts.
Fostering creativity in the written medium is essential now more than ever with the advent of generative AI and the structure of the modern English classroom.
The majority of English classes primarily focus on the structure of literature they are reading and how to analyze it. While successful in preparing students for AP tests and high school level reading and writing, these classes do not give students the ability to apply the concepts they are learning in physical practice. If every piece students produce in school is to fit a prompt, to analyze, to fit a rubric, the next generation of great writers will lose their passions for writing going forward.
With a creative writing class, the school could later offer a literary magazine which would allow these pieces to be published in print or online.
Literary magazines typically present student poetry, essay writing, drawings and other works of art. In an article by the National Council of Teachers of English, a student recalled that writing for their school’s literary magazine gave them more confidence in their own writing, and helped them give themselves more credit for their work. With the confidence in writing gained from the class, and the pleasure of having one’s name in print can not only create great college readers and writers, but create the great authors, poets and essayists of the future.
The solution to the lack of creative writing opportunities is clear, to find a teacher passionate about it, advertise it and make the class less of a dream for some students, and more of a reality.
