Creative Writing Portfolios in Literature Classes
William M. Ramsey
Francis Marion University
William Ramsey is an Associate Professor of English. His
publications are in 19th Century American literature, African-
American literature, and reader response pedagogy. He also
writes poetry.
There is a special joy in teaching literature. It comes
when students who have immersed themselves privately in a
literary work come to class willing to share that pleasure with
others. On these days, class discussion extends the private
immersive experience into an enriching communal activity. On
these days, too, our pedagogy seems well matched with the core
reading experience that we so cherish. Of course, the joy ends
with the next exam. Here, as students knuckle down to serious
business, the discrepancy between enjoying literature and testing
for competencies is dramatic. It is also unnecessary.
The conventional exam requirement lays bare a strange
occupational bifurcation in literature teachers. On one hand, we
try hard in class discussions to stimulate "appreciation" for
literature; on the other, our assessing devices measure a far
narrower set of cognitive competencies. Students find too often
the conventional exam process is of negative value--a one or two-
night cram session, then a torturous testing session, then a
prompt forgetting of almost everything crammed. In short, we
betray their love of literature with a testing apparatus poorly
designed to measure that appreciation.
That is why I have begun to replace exam requirements with
creative writing portfolios. My portfolio approach differs from
more widely known ones, in which a student's various academic
papers--composition essays, literary analyses, reports, test
essays, and so forth--are collected in a portfolio for a final
grade. Rooted in a holistic learning rationale, my creative
exercises aim at minimizing the discrepancy between reading
literature and testing a knowledge of it.
The initial reading of a text is a complex "immersion
experience." In it, a text we read interacts with us uniquely,
powerfully, and on many levels--with our perceptions, emotions,
experiences, and values, subtly expanding our perspectives. As we
finish reading a story, poem, or play, we feel we have been
immersed temporarily in a world that somehow has changed us.
Similarly, creative exercises can be designed to elicit
experiences that operate holistically on many levels of the
person. The result, I have found, is work that replicates more
richly and compatibly than test answers the competencies students
develop in literary study.
Writing Mark Twain
In teaching Huckleberry Finn in an American literature
survey, I ask students to write just as Mark Twain would if he
were alive today. One exercise (of four Twain exercises offered)
improvises on Pap Finn's infamously drunken tirade in Chapter 6.
In class I have elicited remarks on whether Pap's racist and
anti-government attitudes persist and intertwine in the South
today. The portfolio exercise instructions are as follows: "Pap
gives a fiercely regionalist oration on 'the nigger and the
govment' before passing out dead drunk. Bring Pap into a
contemporary setting and a narrative situation, rewriting this
speech for some of today's issues."
Here are excerpts from a portfolio entry, achieved after the
two re-draftings allowed per entry:
He was almost drunk. I could tell 'cause he was
starting to stare at the TV and poke his bottom lip out. He
propped his elbow on his knee and dropped his chin in his hand
for a minute between drinks; and I thought proudly that if he
didn't have no clothes on he'd look exactly like that statue-
fellow that just sets there and thinks.
I always hated it when he watched the news and got to
drinkin' and cussin' 'bout the govement and all. . . . Course Pap
never voted, but he said that was only 'cause he was smart
enough to know that all them politicians is crooks. When the
news was over, Pap jumped up, turned off the TV with a slap, and
started pacing.
"Call this a govement! You see that nigger doctor talkin'
on there? A goddam nigger that ain't even learned to speak the
English language and she's the Surgeon General! A woman,
first of all! and a queer lover. and she wants to give out
condoms to little kids in schools and legalize drugs." Pap
paused at the table to take a long drink from his bottle. Then
he started pacing again, carrying the bottle.
"Clinton ain't 'pointed nothing but niggers and spics and
queers and split-tails--oh, excuse me!" He threw his free hand
in the air and made a face like he was 'bout to cry and kind of
whined, "I ain't bein' politically correct! I'm bein'
insensitive. Lord, don't strike me down, please!
". . . I hear they's trying to teach little kids in school
'bout what a queer is and how to be nice to 'em and all. . . .
Lemme give you some advice, boy. Don't never even be nice to a
queer. He'll take advantage of you while you still smilin'. I
tell you what this country needs is a govement that reads the
Bible, that knows about how God wiped out a whole fuckin' city of
queers. . . ." He was breathing hard and had to slow down to
keep from trippin' over his own feet.
"Them people in Washington sittin' 'round in white shirts
and air-conditioned offices ain't never had a callus on their
hands. Not one of 'em. . . . They'll give out money to the
niggers so they can lay around and smoke crack and have nineteen
kids, and working men--white working men, that is--can pay
for 'em. But they don't give a thing to a man who tries to take
care of his own. Look at me. I been fired for no reason, twice
in one year. and I still can't git no govement help. But you
betcha if I was a nigger they'd come running out here in their
white shirts. . . ."
Pap fell into his chair. He lit a cigarette and took a
couple of drags 'fore he started sinking and slumping till his
shoulders swallered up his neck and his chin landed on his chest.
The cigarette slid from 'tween his fingers and landed on the
newspaper 'side the chair. I jumped up and grabbed it and
stamped on the paper 'fore the little smoking hole could git any
bigger.
As Huck's "thinker" slides into drunken oblivion, how
accurately repellent seems this distillation of redneck bigotry.
This student learned Twain well, and the learning goes deeper
than cramming instructional notes. True, those materials are
here, for I have lectured on satire, stressing Twain's dissection
of American culture. I have explained deadpan humor, noting
Twain's mastery of it in the naive persona of Huck. Likewise I
have discussed literary regionalism, relishing with students the
book's regional vernacular. In such matters this writer shows
"learning" not by test essay regurgitation--but by getting into
Mark Twain's skin. While requiring mastery of course material,
this exercise also is, I believe, a holistic and "immersive"
experience.
Going Puritan
For many students, in both theology and expression, the
Puritans are forbidding. Edward Taylor's poetry is especially
hard to teach. Its metaphysical wit, theological rigor, and
antiquated English inspire boredom rather than delight. Imagine
the initial resistance to writing a contemporary, unrimed poem
modeled on Taylor's "Huswifery." Yet the following poem captures
well Taylor's theology, ministerial fervor, and humble
reverence:
Make me, O Lord, Your temple complete,
for worship services showing
a humbleness of heart and mind,
that joyful praises will be lifted
for Your honor and glory.
Make me Your choir stands
for singing Your praises
all the day long.
May the songs touch hearts
and let Your Holy Spirit fill them.
Make me Your altar
for kneeling and praying
for Your guidance.
May I tarry and be anointed
by Your holy oil, so that
my heart and mind may be healed.
The unpretentious earnestness of this voice is unusual for
novice poetry. The writer's humble, sincere aspiration rings
true to the Puritan temper. This student captures Taylor's
concern with innate depravity and redemptive grace, reflecting
also his ardent desire for purity of heart during worship
service. Written by a black female, the poem crosses immense
cultural divides of race, gender, and historical context, finding
in black church experience enduring debts to the Puritan
outlook.
The following poem, titled "Tilling the Soul," reflects a
Southern white male's agrarian roots. It too connects with
Taylor's theology and sensibility:
Make me, O Lord, Your plow complete.
Your Word, as handles of hickory straight,
is for guidance sure and never weak.
Dear Heavenly Father, like a plowman You'll
give direction through the fields of life.
Give me, dear Lord, a plow blade of steel,
to turn the sod of my soul, making me fine tilth.
With furrows straight and deep
Your saving grace I will reap.
My life, though a field of Satan's keep,
through You may be harrowed and sweet.
God's glorious harvest my soul will reap.
Creative exercises such as these may not indicate how strong
a formal essay students can write about literature. They may not
measure students' objective mastery of historical material. But
haven't these students demonstrated considerable literary
knowledge?
Holistic Growth and Grading
To privilege academic tests over these creative immersions
is to slight a central aim of literature instruction. That aim
is growth of the total individual through imaginative interaction
with powerful texts. Indeed, literary study as a humanistic
discipline has this as a unique point of focus.
Yet our traditional assessing devices--such as objective
questions and essay exams--are common to many disciplines and are
not uniquely expressive of literary endeavor. In measuring so
little of a student's complex interaction with text, they dismiss
vital areas of growth as peripheral. From a holistic
perspective, such tests fail to measure the full course
content, that is to say the reader's deeply complex engagement
with literature.
In my experience, creative exercises help "teach" literature
because holistically they assume students' personal perspectives,
values, beliefs, backgrounds and even spiritual presuppositions
are academically relevant.
Conventional hour exams, in their pursuit of limited
cognitive measurements, suppress these areas of development as
inappropriate to the so-called "real" business of academic
development. Yet the student who brings Pap Finn into
contemporary relevance will have for years a vivid identification
with Twain. Students imitating Taylor find that Puritan culture
is more than musty antiquarian matter--its legacy still animates
the personal values of many American students. In such ways
creative portfolios are revealing measures of literature's "real"
value to them as whole persons.
"But how can you grade creative exercises?" I am
often asked. "Aren't you grading very personal dimensions of
students, things that should not be judged by grades?"
My response is that I grade creative exercises little
differently than formal essays. Students that read superficially
will write superficially. Lazy writers will write underdeveloped
pieces, and they will correct rather than revise entries
substantively. Indeed those that listen poorly in class will miss
the point of the exercises. Thus students failing to take notes
often write the Huck Finn piece in standard English, failing
altogether to apply my instructional material on regional
vernacular. Likewise, students who think a poem is a series of
run-on sentence fragments dashed off without effort--a holiday
from sentence grammar--must relearn the complete sentence and
sentence boundaries.
The fact is that creative portfolios are no flight from
academic rigor, and creative work sorts itself naturally into
definable grading categories. When exercises are designed to
reflect clear teaching emphases, they will extract a committed
response to instruction. Indeed the ongoing process of drafting
and redrafting portfolio entries requires serious academic
effort, and will lure students into more sustained, personally
relevant work than occasional exam preparations. When students
make that effort with creative exercises, the fulfillment they
attain is compatible with the rich, personally complex experience
of literature.
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