A New Creative Outlet

A new creative writing class has been added to Fair Grove High School’s master schedule for next year’s students; it is a semester-long class that will be taught by Joseph Florez. 

“This year we decided to add Creative Writing to the list of English electives that are offered. Our core English classes are great, but they are mostly literature classes with tests, papers, etc., and I always wish we had more room in my core classes for creativity and more fun writing projects, so I am hoping that this Creative Writing class will give students that opportunity,” stated Florez. 

The main goal of this class will be for students to compose a short novella or group of short stories that will hopefully be put together and printed onto a hard-copy book at the end of the semester. “I hope to give students the opportunity to actually print their book using a website called lulu.com. We’ve used lulu.com in the past to print our Poetry Club books and they have turned out awesome,” Florez expressed. Not much else is known about the plan for the Creative Writing class next year, but Florez will be planning the rest of the course throughout the summer to make sure students accomplish all things needed for the class.

As far as adding a new class to the master schedule, the process is somewhat of a mystery for students. Florez explained, “The process of adding a new course on my end is simply to suggest to Mrs. Peck or Mr. Stallings. If we had room for the course in our master schedule they’re always willing to discuss options. I’m not sure exactly what the approval process is on their end, but on my end it’s just simply to discuss it within our department and then discuss the idea to Coach Peck.”

The Creative Writing class will be a new experience for the many students that have scheduled it for next year. Students are expected to come ready to write, as Florez stated, “I’ve been around long enough to know that a few kids might have taken this class because they are hoping it won’t be as hard as some of the other options, and that’s totally fine, but those students will still be required to write over 100 pages throughout the semester, so it’ll be great for those kids too.” 

As far as advice goes for the students coming in next year, Florez suggests, “I would say come ready to write, and I don’t mean just be willing to write, but start thinking about, if you got to choose any school appropriate that you could think of to write about, what would it be? If you got the opportunity to make up any story from scratch, where would you start? The great thing about creative writing is the amount of freedom you have to tell stories, to craft characters, and even to create worlds.”