Every so often I find myself reflecting on the most basic pedagogical questions: What is this course for? What do I hope my students will walk away with? (Apparently my reflections tend to end in prepositions.)
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) recently came out with its 2011 Director’s Handbook, which contains a document that helped me think through some of these questions: “AWP Recommendations on the Teaching of Creative Writing to Undergraduates.” The document covers an array of key issues in the teaching of creative writing.
While I wasn’t sold on 100% of its recommendations, I was nodding my head a lot as I read—particularly when reading the part about the different aims of a graduate workshop versus an undergraduate one:
Whereas the general goal for a graduate program in creative writing is to nurture and expedite the development of a literary artist, the goal for an undergraduate program is mainly to develop a well-rounded student in the liberal arts and humanities, a student who develops a general expertise in literature, in critical reading, and in persuasive writing.
These different aims, the document argues, necessitate different pedagogies:
The pedagogy with which most new teachers of creative writing are familiar, the graduate workshop, presupposes an understanding of literary tradition, an extensive critical vocabulary, and the capacity to incorporate feedback and self-criticism in revision. Because undergraduates have yet to acquire such a background, the undergraduate curriculum requires extensive reading at each level of instruction, even for advanced undergraduate workshops.
I studied music as an undergrad; my first writing workshop wasn’t until graduate school. That, therefore, became my initial conception of a creative writing class. I soon learned, however, that the undergrad workshop can’t merely be taught as a younger version of the graduate workshop. Over time, the “workshopping” part of the undergrad workshop has become—for me, anyway—only one (and not necessarily the most important) element of a course that includes plenty of assigned reading, focused exercises, introduction of key terms and concepts, and even—(gulp!)—a mechanics exam.
Most of my undergrads won’t go on to grad school in creative writing. They all, however, will go on to do something, and that something—whatever it is—will only be enhanced by having developed an appreciation for the ways that people transform experience and imagination into precise language.