This past year, IB English pulled a rug out from under me. As part of a larger unit designed to allow students to analyze a book partially of their choosing, my English teacher created a type of assignment I had almost forgotten about, as I had not taken a traditional English class that covered the assignment’s focus since my middle school years. We were tasked with creative writing assignments. When I learned of this opportunity, I became very excited to do these assignments, as creative writing is an outlet that I hold very near and dear to my heart. However, these assignments were lying to me.

Each “creative writing” assignment focused on very similar learning targets to the average English assignment. Instead of doing much of any actual creative expression, these prompts asked students to identify themes, to draw connections between chosen texts and previously read ones, and other ways of analyzing the texts we had been reading. While there might have been a level of creativity in some of the prompts we were asked to choose from, none of the prompts did much to push us to create something new for ourselves. 

It is not the job of an English teacher, especially of an IB English teacher, to make their students invested in creative writing. Almost always, a teacher’s job is to teach a provided curriculum so that their students can learn to write essays and analyze texts. Especially in the context of an IB class, where a teacher is under the pressure of preparing students for a specific and rigorous exam, a detour into the realm of creative writing might seem distracting and inefficient. However, as a student who has taken AP or IB English classes since my sophomore year, I forgot how much I missed these types of creative writing units.

I have always loved English. Since I was a toddler, I have been obsessed with stories, manifesting in many different phases I went through as a child. I had my Pirates of the Caribbean phase, my Star Wars phase, my James Bond phase, my Lord of the Rings phase. Some have yet to end. The allure of English for me, as I suspect for many of my peers as well, has always centered around creative writing. I have grown to love some essayists and academic authors over the years, but I would be lying to myself if I were to say I have an incredible trouble connecting to anything that I don’t feel has a good amount of heart in it. While essays are sometimes filled with soul and emotion, these types of academic papers are few and far between. 

I am not arguing for English classes to entirely shift their focus. I still believe that skills developed in analysis and essay structure are incredibly important, and should be the primary focus of virtually every English class. I am also well aware that the curriculum guidelines for advanced placement classes are strict and demanding. I’m certain that creative writing is much more prevalent in classes not beholden to some organization’s mandate on what a student must learn to prove their proficiency. The English teachers at Hellgate are so passionate about what they teach, and it would be foolish of me to express any disdain for a teacher not delving into an entire creative writing lesson. In the current way that these classes operate, such a diversion from what a student must learn would be disruptive and unrealistic. I only stress the importance of creative writing assignments because of the way many students look at English.

For many Hellgate students, the study of English is inseparable from meaningless analysis. By not building an understanding of what it is to write a story, when a student analyzes a text, they will have no frame of reference to what the experience entails. The idea that “the curtains are sometimes just blue” is a result of this barrier of understanding. I would argue that the average high school student today has difficulty understanding metaphor because they might have never been asked to create one for themselves. One can analyze a poem, but the passion that an excellent poem exudes from its every line is lost when the medium seems so alien to a viewer. It is not sane to write for hundreds of pages on end, spending hours of time on a craft that yields no material service to yourself. To be an artist is to be insane, ravaged by emotions over your senses, to take a one in a million shot for success, because to live by any other means is unimaginably bleak. For those who do not understand the reason why writing is not only wonderful, but unimaginably necessary, English seems useless when compared to math and science. 

However, when the vile blows and buffets of the world have corrupted the draw of morning dew, or the beauty of this world is made apparent by the smile of a friend, the only thing that might mean anything is art. More so than our intelligence and opposable thumbs, the greatest gift offered to humanity is our mandate to suffer and to soar. Love binds us all so sweetly together, and our hearts are full so completely with the annals of emotion that we must let them escape through the keyboard or we shall die.

Until a teacher prompts a student to write with their hearts rather than their heads, the door to a true appreciation of writing will be sealed shut. While the demands of English curriculums are nothing to be scoffed at, the same cannot be said for a reality where students are given no reason to care about the texts they analyze. There is never a level of intelligence or age that silences our desire to express ourselves. While time is precious in a school year, time must be found more regularly to allow students to make sense of what makes an understanding of writing inseparable from our understanding of the world.