Students get creative at LBHS, and the results speak for themselves
By LYNETTE BRASFIELD
“This is how school should be,” a student says of Mrs. Dawn Hunnicutt’s popular Creative Writing classes, offered to juniors and seniors for the first time this year at LBHS. And that statement is typical of the sentiments I heard when l observed one of the workshop sessions last week.
“We’re learning from the inside out, creating for ourselves, rather than analyzing or studying someone else’s work,” students told me. “That makes it so much fun and so interesting. We love the freedom to use our imaginations without having to follow strict guidelines, the way it is in all our other classes.”
Developed by Mrs. Hunnicutt based on college courses, the creative writing curriculum is meant to foster writing in a creative and meaningful way, through exploration and experimentation and the use of mentor texts.
“At the end of the day, I want my students to have not only a love for writing, but a command and confidence, a marketable skill, that they can take with them no matter which path they choose,” the English teacher and department head says.
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Photo by Lynette Brasfield
Department head and English teacher Dawn Hunnicutt, whose brilliant creative writing curriculum is bringing books alive in class
“We start off the year with creative nonfiction, and I spend the first couple of weeks acclimating the students to the tools writers use to generate ideas: notebooks, observation walks, brainstorming techniques, and so on. We begin the year also with a book club, where students get to choose a nonfiction title from a selection of eight books.
“One day for the next three weeks, they meet in their book clubs, and we as a class discuss moves made by authors that we may want to mimic. It’s your story, I tell them; you decide which techniques you might want to use. From there, we are off and running creating our own pieces, and I try as best I can to write beside them.
“We are currently in our fiction unit, and students are working on short stories and will begin a fiction book club in about a week or so. We will then progress to drama, and students will create a 10-minute play while reading a play together as our mentor text.
“The capstone to the class is a multi-genre project that weaves together several pieces with a similar thread.”
Challenging, but exciting
Students have plenty of leeway to choose which subjects they’d like to focus on in their writing. They agree that this freedom is both one of the biggest challenges and yet also their favorite aspect of the class.
“The writing prompts are so broad and we’re not given specific guidelines, so it’s hard sometimes to come up with new ideas for all the different assignments,” one teen says. “We’re so used to being told exactly what the expectations are for getting certain grades. Sometimes that’s scary, not knowing what direction to take.”
Another student tells me, echoing many others, “I love that we aren’t restricted to a certain rubric to get a grade. We can truly write about who we are in the way we want to write about ourselves and things we care about.”
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Photo by Dawn Hunnicutt
The atmosphere in the classes is celebratory as students find joy in studying writing from the inside out
Mrs. Hunnicutt has told the class that the important thing is to be able to see “a couple of feet ahead of your headlights.”
“One of the kids came up to me looking quite glum,” she says. “He said to me, ‘Mrs. Hunnicutt, I’m afraid my headlights are off and the car is stopped.’ I thought that was funny, and also a really good way to describe how plenty of writers feel at times.”
She advised the blocked writer to take an offramp for a while until he felt ready to continue.
Much of the enthusiasm for the class is a result of the collegial approach exemplified by the writing groups.
Writing groups raise comfort levels
“We get into writing groups, bounce around ideas, and go over drafts,” Mrs Hunnicutt says. “I tell them to be kind to each other but not to be afraid of getting or giving feedback. Of course, I give feedback too.”
The strategy is working well. Wandering from group to group as the students read their work aloud, I heard suggestions including, “You might want to get further into the head of your character, tell us about his emotions” and “Perhaps include more details about the setting” along with accolades for descriptions or plot devices that were working well.
A student shared with me that being in a writing group where he could trust the people and feel a level of comfort made him more confident about himself as a person and more willing to share “personal stuff.”
Quite a few of the students have written personal, emotional stories, for example about a grandfather’s stroke, or a father’s upbringing, or a parent’s death. Some wrote about their own battles with anxiety or depression.
“No one has to share anything with the class unless they want to,” the teacher emphasizes. “Sometimes they find they can’t write about the subjects that they are most emotional about. I reassure them that often writers need the perspective of time before they can tackle difficult subjects.”
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Photo by Lynette Brasfield
Workshops and readings take place in a relaxed environment as student writers gather in circles on the football field
Many of the writing samples are funny. The odes, in particular, seem to have brought out the students’ sense of humor. A cross-country runner wrote an Ode to her Running Shoes. Another penned an Ode to her Bed, and another Ode to Blue Gatorade (nectar of the gods).
Other narratives tell of moments of insight, for example wisdom gained during a tennis match that didn’t turn out the way the student would have liked, or from a beloved grandparent.
A popular assignment was the charge to tell a story in just 34 words.
“We watched a Visa Gold commercial about Dan Jansen, a speed skater who was expected to win the gold just after his sister passed away, but he fell and shocked the world. He returned years later, won the gold, and took his victory lap with baby daughter Jane,” Mrs Hunnicutt explains.
“The whole story is told beautifully in 34 words, so I asked the students to write about a defining moment in their lives in 34 words. With concision comes power, and that exercise exemplifies that.”
Assessing success
Creative writing is very hard to assess and assign a grade, so participation, daily writing and reading, timeliness, and revision are huge components of the class.
Interestingly, Mrs Hunnicutt turned to the science department for help.
“In chemistry, during labs, you’re experimenting, you’re hands-on, just like writing,” she says. “Your work isn’t judged against a singular set of guidelines, which is similar to the way I have to assess students’ writing. The science department was super-helpful.”
Even some the most reluctant writers among the students have found themselves caring passionately about their work. I encounter just such a lad in one of the workshops, which are held on the football field, a relaxed setting that calms any nerves students might have about sharing their work.
The teen is quite frank. “I thought this would be a really easy class. I didn’t plan to put much effort into it. But now I’m finding I do want to write, I do want to do well, I do care. And I’ve been reading so much.”
A parent agrees with his assessment. “Prior to taking Creative Writing, [my teen] dreaded writing. In fact, she choose to take this class in hopes of learning how to write without it being a burden, as well as the fact that Mrs. Hunnicutt was the one that would be teaching the class,” the parent says.
“Over the course of this year she has actually started to enjoy writing, and with that her writing has improved immensely. We are so grateful to Mrs Hunnicutt for sharing her gift of teaching, connecting so well with her students, and inspiring them to learn.”
Certainly the students I spoke to are passionate about her classes – 163 juniors and seniors signed up, and there was a waiting list to register.
Writing and reading become joyful for the kids
“The feedback from kids and parents has been amazing,” Dawn Hunnicutt says. “For the vast majority, the class has been a welcome respite from the structured writing imposed on them for so many years. Many of them have discovered that they actually enjoy writing and reading now, and that has given me so much joy.”
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Photo by Lynette Brasfield
Students take their critiquing seriously and listen carefully to each other’s work
One mother writes to Stu News: “Our daughter loves Mrs. Hunnicutt’s creative writing class. It has inspired a new love of reading for pleasure and we spent hours over the holidays sitting together by the fire and reading.
“The different writing genres that the students are exposed to in the course fosters their creativity. Mrs Hunnicutt’s teaching style, attitude, humor, and general aura are such a positive influence in our daughter’s life. She looks forward to her class every day.”
The class is UC approved and counts toward one year of the required four for high school graduation and college admission.
“It took a bit of persuading and a lot of research to get the class approved,” Mrs Hunnicutt says. “I am thankful I work in a district that supports innovative curriculum. The fall semester was the most rewarding semester of my teaching career. I am living the dream by teaching this subject.”
LBHS principal Dr. Jason Alleman can’t speak highly enough of Mrs Hunnicutt and her initiative in developing the Creative Writing program.
“She is one of many remarkable educators on the LBHS campus and the perfect person to develop and lead this coursework. I am proud of the efforts she has made and the work she has taken on. It has resulted in students building skills and confidence in their writing, speaking, and articulating their ideas and points more effectively and, most importantly, growing a lifelong passion for reading literature and writing.”
Before I left, Dawn Hunnicutt and I discussed the importance of “story.”
“Story matters,” she says. “I explain it to the students by having them read a notice about the dangers of vaping. Then I have them read a personal story about the impact that addiction to vaping had on a young man. They understand the difference it makes to hear a first-hand account, and the power of writing.”
Next up? A literary journal, showcasing the students’ work – and, I’m convinced, in years to come, the publication of many short stories, novels, and poems written by the talented kids in this most wonderful of classes.
