My Eng 319 Blog

Unstructured Creativity in the Classroom (Final Draft)

Unstructured Creativity in the Classroom

           When I was a junior in high school my English teacher asked the class to write a creation story, seeing as we had just read one. And for the first time during my high school career there were no structural requirements, just to simply write a creation story. Our story had to include a creation of a people with elements that explained how people came about, but there were no length requirements, no format requirements, no structural rules at all. Years before I would have been overjoyed at the opportunity to use creativity and imagination in my writing. Unfortunately by the time I was a junior in high school, I hadn't done unstructured creative writing in so long that I seldom even knew what it was anymore.

          I don't remember exactly when the creative writing stopped, but I'm estimating that it was sometime during middle school. From then on out it was five-paragraph-essay, after five-paragraph-essay, after five-paragraph-essay. There were a few research papers in high school that were structured a little differently due to length, but even then there had to be an introduction, a thesis statement, the main points, the examples to back them up, and a conclusion. By the time I reached my freshmen year of college I realized that I no longer knew how to write creatively. All the creativity had been suppressed and replaced by structure. I literally didn't know how to just write any more. When I sat down to express myself in writing, there it was, the instinct to get a good thesis, to get a good introduction, to map out my main points. Why couldn't I just write to write without worrying about the structure of my writing?

            It's because in our education system today, unstructured creative writing is almost non-existent. Students are continuously taught structure, which most often is not a bad thing. But when the five paragraph essay becomes what is expected and is consistently pounded into students' minds, it leaves little room for creativity or variety in style and structure. Throughout the middle school years, students are taught the five paragraph essay as the only acceptable structure of writing, and by the time they reach high school the only difference in what is expected, is the length of their essays. So when the students reach the college and university level, all creativity as far as writing is concerned has gone out the window.

            Not to be misconstrued, structure is incredibly important and should be taught in the classroom. My concern is that structured writing is the only thing taught in the classroom due to the fact that the focus of education today is on measuring student achievement through standardized testing, which leaves little time or opportunity for creative writing. When I originally decided to become an English teacher it was because I wanted to change the way things were done and reintroduce creativity back into the subject. I don't want to get rid of critical thinking or analysis and I believe that students' success on standardized tests is important, but at what costs?

            My junior and senior years of high school English were devoted to answering prompts correctly so that I would do well when the Advanced Placement test rolled around in May. But when asked to create my own prompt and write on it, I was completely lost. That wasn't what I had been taught to do. I had been taught to answer prompts, not create them. The constant focus on preparing students for standardized tests and placement tests cripples students' abilities because it doesn't allow them to think outside the box. Students are learning how to sufficiently answer prompts and how to abide by guidelines, but not how to generate new ideas.

            Even Peter Elbow's so called "free" writing exercises have structure. There are rules to exactly how a person should freewrite. It's recommended to write for at least ten minutes possibly later increasing the time. Along with that, the writing can never stop even if the writer has essentially nothing to say and nothing can be crossed out. Yes the rules contribute to the point of the freewriting exercise, which according to Elbow is to free the writer of the constant editing and reviewing during the writing that is instinct to our thought process. But maybe if there was more unstructured creative writing in our education system, editing while we wrote wouldn't get in the way as much.

            As I stated before, structured writing is incredibly important in the academics, however due to this there is a complete lack of unstructured creative writing. More creative writing needs to be implemented in the classroom along side of structured writing. Unfortunately this itself creates another problem, what's the right balance between structured and unstructured writing? In general, it would appear that the majority of emphasis should be put on structured writing, but still with adequate emphasis on creative writing as well. Then again, many times it could be situational with the environment of the students.

             For example, look at the Freedom Writers. Here were kids that were not expected to do well academically and therefore were not taught the traditional structured writing or any kind of writing for that matter, at all. But when one teacher decided to ask the students to just write with no structure imposed on them, the students blossomed into writers with incredible stories. If their teacher had asked them to write about a certain topic every day with a certain structure, yes maybe some of the students would have written something decently acceptable. But it can also be assumed within reason that many of the students would have written some thing "unacceptable" and then probably would have given up writing all together. Because there were no boundaries for the students, they ended up becoming not only interested in writing but also fairly decent writers. Hence in this case, more emphasis on unstructured writing proved to be beneficial. Why? Because structure often equals limitation. And while limitation can be a good thing and is necessary at times, it hinders creativity. These students weren't focused on doing well on tests or answering prompts correctly, they were just focused on getting their ideas down on paper. They had nothing to lose, but plenty to gain. And by not being limited to answering prompts or following guidelines, the Freedom Writers were given the opportunity to create; create whatever they wanted in writing.

            So it's important for educators to include in the curriculum unstructured writing, at least occasionally. Because while I'm grateful for being taught and having the knowledge of how to write a good solid research paper and a good solid five-paragraph-essay, I'm disappointed that creative writing now comes as a struggle for me. I'd like to think that if unstructured creative writing was implemented more while I was a student in high school, my writing skills today would be much better and quite possibly I would be able to think more creatively and be able to be more inventive when it came to my writing.