Being a gifted/learning-disabled child has afforded me
unexpected privilege of discovering new regions of my brain that few have ever explored. Because of this, I've come to look at things upside down and backwards. This tendency comes in handy while teaching Language Arts at Brideun School for Exceptional children. Brideun kids are unique learners who have blockages in their input or output capabilities. Our job as teachers at Brideun is to find alternative pathways in order to get to same knowledge destination.Creative writing is my favorite thing to do and my favorite thing to teach. And it was my favorite activity when I was a young child too, though god only knows why. I was a terrible speller. I couldn't sequence to save my life, and with my poor memory, I tended to lose track of where my story was supposed to be going. On top of this, my teachers dwelled endlessly on importance of good grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and how to spot a verb, but never taught me how to tell a good story that would keep my audience interested. I was never taught how exciting written word can be when presented in a thoughtful way.
My greatest barrier of all was that I was a poor reader to boot, so I couldn't learn by example of other authors either.
Writing for me was feeling around in dark with no guidance, other than how to put properly spelled words in a proper order on paper and make sure periods were in right places. I couldn't make my readers care about what it was that my words were saying. I had incredible stories with realistic characters going on in my head all time, but no idea how to make them real on paper how to make other people see what I saw in my mind's eye.
Despite all of these disadvantages, I continued to write for my own pleasure all through my school years. No thanks to some of my Language Arts teachers, who, if I hadn't had such an internal drive to write, would have quickly driven all interest in writing out of me in first year, with their aimless rantings about proper grammar. I learned my grammar all right, which came in quite handy when writing technical papers, but until just recently, I didn't know how to put two words together that had an emotional effect on my readers. How could I know? I was never taught this. I was never taught how to create a character that other people could relate to, or what elements went in to making an exciting page-turning story. I was never taught that concepts such as foreshadowing, symbolism and metaphor add depth to a story and give it an artistic edge.
A mechanically perfect paper devoid of decent content is nothing but a showcase of surface knowledge.
Now I know these things, but only because I've had adult writing mentors who have instructed me in concepts. My sheer drive to write has guided me toward finding help I need.
Most children aren't so lucky as to have an internal drive to write. When they have a writing disability and all they are taught is horribly dry and seemingly pointless method of mechanically correct writing, they lose their creativity and imagination; they lose joy of just telling a good story. For some of these kids it becomes mind-numbing just to lift a pen.
I'm not saying that grammar and spelling aren't important. Of course they are, but writing, just like math or science, has to be taught with application of skill being just as important as skill itself.
At Brideun School, I teach creative writing backwards, way I wish it had been taught to me. Backwards, meaning application of skill before perfection of skill.
In ancient times, stories weren't written down at all. Spelling and grammar didn't exist. What was important was story itself. The characters, plot, setting, drama with which story was relayed to a captive audience. In my family, Sunday nights were reserved for read-aloud. My mother read to family from a cherished novel, and we were carried away by amazing fantasy worlds that unfolded for us. I was always so surprised by how different experience was for me when Mom finished a book and I loved it so much that I read it again to myself. It never sounded or looked same. The process of decoding words on paper when reading a story can diminish narrative in so many ways. Just as focusing on mechanics in writing, especially in first draft, can cause a writer to lose sight of story and characters things that matter most.
So, to get back to roots, essence of story and character - things that matter most to kids - I have created a game. I call it Legends of Druidawn, based on a science fiction/fantasy world developed by my writing club kids. The game is so different from typical process of writing that kids are used to trudging through in school, that they don't even know I've tricked them into writing. The interaction and sheer fun of game is a wonderful disguise. It frees them from mechanics of putting words on paper and allows them to create stories that live in their imaginations a place where words are heard and scenes are visualized, but little is actually written at first.
