Weatherford High School has several opportunities to help students express themselves in the form of various creative electives, except the obvious; creative writing. Creative writing is a class that would help students express themselves in various forms, whether it be poetry, short stories, or working on a full-length book.
A creative writing class would be one that several students would enjoy yet it is not available to them. To my surprise, Weatherford High School did in fact used to have a creative writing course. The course was last taught in 2013 by Mrs. Tharp and after that year, students seemed to lose interest in the class and it was dropped from the schedule. I saw this as a tragedy, so I interviewed some students who would’ve been interested in seeing this class start back up again if they had the chance.
Senior Sydney Wolfenberger said, “I would’ve been interested in creative writing because it’s a class to encourage creativity and self-expression.” Self-expression is a wonderful part of a creative writing course, with the ability to write whatever and however you want, creative writing is a valuable course. The reason self-expression is important is because it helps people discover who they are, the inner workings of their minds. Without self-expression, people couldn’t be that spark of light, just a dull robot.
Senior Caleb Kehrman says that he would’ve been interested because “it would allow me to explore a style of writing that is not taught in school otherwise.” Sometimes English courses do have students write their own poems and of course essays, but they don’t provide this on a regular basis so that students can truly express themselves, just every once and a while so they don’t get tired of the bland and generic essay prompts.
Senior Mya Ordones says not only would she have been interested, but “creative writing classes should be a necessary course, not only could students have an outlet from the stress of day to day life, but we could learn from each other and have different ways of being heard.”
These responses stood out the most to me, but other students I interviewed, ranging from sophomores to seniors, had an interest in a creative writing course as well, posing the question, why don’t we have one? The answer, unfortunately, is still unknown to me. With a little more than a dozen students being interested, it’s interesting that we don’t have this course. After talking to an administrator, I found that the next step would be making a case for this course in front of Mr. Kidd, students will have to fight for their right to be creative.