Mission Statement

I'm having mainstream and Pre-AP English students do a multigenre writing project that has them write creatively across multiple genres about a common topic / theme. They have to create! Write things! Come up with stuff! So, I'm making them, as a class, follow this quotation, taken from the novel that Pre-AP studnets are currently reading, the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. In it, two cousins write comic books as an act of escape from their lives during WWII-era America. The novel encompasses many different genres and eras, themes and motifs, but the characters create! here is the quotation, edited down from a big ol' paragraph:
"The shaping of a golem, to him, was a gesture of hope, offered against hope, in a time of desperation. It was the expression of a yearning that a few magic words and an artful hand might produce something-- one poor, dumb, powerful thing-- exempt from the crushing strictures, from the ills, cruelties, and inevitable failures of the greater Creation. It was the voicing of a vain wish, when you got down to it, to escape...[some] cite "escapism" among the litany of injurious consequences of their reading, and dwelled on the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life" (Chabon 591-592).
Now, this is a big ol' quote, but I think that it sums up the desire to create, the necessity of it in our current age, and a target for them in the creation in their own origins. It's highminded, slightly pretentious, and grandiose, and that's just the way I like it.

-It was easy to come up with this, as it was in our reading, and I was making them adopt it! Also, it was in the great novel that we're reading, so it was naturally occurring and organic.
-I learned, well, not much from this process, other than the fact that I really like this novel, the ideas behind it, and attempt to get students to adopt pretentiousness and creativity with a vigorous sense of excitement.
-I learned that students are closeminded about certain things, but if you show them what it can be like when done well, you can convince them of the virtue of your mission.
- No missed opportunities yet.
- I would think about giving the students a voice in the process, but sometimes a teacher must guide a students to knowledge that they are initially unwilling to adopt, and may miss upon initial inspection.