Creative Writing Pedagogy: Building Curriculum for High School Students

Authors

Elizabeth Lengel, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

First Advisor

Stacey Waite

Second Advisor

Rachael Shah

Third Advisor

Lauren Gatti

Date of this Version

5-2024

Citation

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Major: English

Under the supervision of Professor Stacey Waite

Lincoln, Nebraska, May 2024

Comments

Copyright 2024, Elizabeth Lengel. Used by permission

Abstract

This thesis serves as a rationale for the creative writing pedagogy I use and how it serves my high school creative writing class. As my school district made the decision to overhaul our English curriculum, the English department decided to add Creative Writing as an English class elective.

The work for planning these new classes was spread around the English Department, and I was assigned to design the curriculum for the new Creative Writing class. Designing an entire class from scratch leaves a lot of room for creativity and innovation. However, as excited for this new course as I was, I also felt intimidated. I wanted to get this right and attempt to create a course that would nurture an environment for students to explore their creativity without trepidation but would also challenge them and allow them to build their writing skills. I needed to be prepared for the variety of students who would enter the class, so I started to research creative writing pedagogy. I set out to learn how I could create the most productive writing classroom while also understanding that many of my students would still have a lot to learn or review about writing before they could feel confident in their skills and willing to actually see where their ideas could take them.

In the first section, I will lay out what I discovered in my research and the reasons for the decisions I made when planning and structuring my units for the class. In the next section, what I might do differently next time I teach the course. And in the final section, I will lay out my unit plans for this semester-long course.

Advisor: Stacey Waite