Ms. Tocci reading one of the many stories that will inspire creative writing in students. photo by Emanuel Morales-Gomez
The new Creative Writing English class allows Spartans to explore new ways of writing.
Thomas Jefferson High School has offered similar English classes for many years. Recently, though, some new classes have surfaced at TJ, one of these being a creative writing class called ENG 2021. While the name of this class does not give very much insight into how special and unique this class is, it really is different from normal English classes at TJ.
The class is taught by Meghan Tocci and Jennifer Stephenson-Steele, who aim to help students learn that they can be creative without necessarily being a creative person. Tocci explained that she wants her students to “come into class each day with a sense of excitement, not knowing what they’re going to expect.” The curriculum is centered around creative writing. The course explores multiple creative writing genres in order to gain techniques to help students’ writing. These genres include fiction stories, screenplays, poetry, and many other forms of writing. This class also comes with multiple learning objectives in order to get the most out of the class including analyzing texts in a way that will greatly benefit students’ writing as well as working with creative writing in multiple different forms. “I hope they develop some stronger habits around incorporating creative writing techniques,” Stephenson-Steele says. While this English class is different from others, it still aims to teach students essential writing skills.
One of the main aspects of this class that sets it apart from other English classes offered is that it’s a Concurrent Enrollment (CE) English class. This means that if a student gets a C or above in the class, they can receive college credit for taking it. This can be such a big deal due to how expensive college is, while these CE courses at TJ are free. As well as getting college credit for taking this class, there are also other benefits, such as giving students experience with writing more freely, which is not usually one of the main goals of other classes.
Tocci’s goal in teaching this course is to teach students how to write creatively which for some is new and unfamiliar. Since she and Stephenson-Steele are teaching a genre of writing that many students may not be comfortable with, they want students to go out of their comfort zones to explore this type of writing and hopefully have fun with it. Senior Jazia Bendjebbar stated, “my favorite thing about this class is probably how we have free creative rein to write whatever we want.” While Tocci and Stephenson-Steele do want students to have fun and explore, they also want their students to learn how to write creatively for many different scenarios. “I want them to learn how to tell stories,” Tocci said, “whether it’s their own story, someone else’s story, whether they’re marketing, or whether they’re explaining something technical.” She wants students to come out of this class knowing how to write in many different ways that could come to be useful in any type of situation.
Overall, while this course is unique, the teachers as well as the students are looking forward to this new adventure in creative writing. Tocci and Stephenson-Steele hope to inspire a new way of writing for students and give them the tools that they need to be successful. English 2021 is just one of the many great English offerings at TJ.
