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Baltimore, Maryland
2008
Patrice Hutton's first-grade teacher in Wichita turned her on to creative writing, and the little girl spent hours inventing characters and polishing her stories. For as long as she can remember, she wanted to study creative writing in college, a passion that led her to Johns Hopkins University.
Hutton, 22, who graduated from Johns Hopkins in May 2008 with a bachelor's degree in writing seminars, will use her fellowship to implement Writers in Baltimore Schools to introduce middle school students at Margaret Brent Elementary to the joy of creative writing.
Staffed by Johns Hopkins undergraduates, WBS will provide in-class, after-school, and summer creative writing workshops to at least 150 students a year in the Greater Charles Village neighborhood. About 96 percent of the students at Margaret Brent receive free or reduced price lunch; more than half failed to make proficient progress in reading.
"Middle school is a last chance to offer creative writing and nab their interest," says Hutton. "If you don't catch these kids before they move to high school, it might be too late."
As an undergrad, Hutton taught creative writing in another Baltimore school, where she saw first-hand the dearth of creative writing in classrooms in low-income neighborhoods. She recalls students who confused a five-paragraph, factual essay with fiction writing. Other kids told her that previous creative writing assignments consisted of filling in person, place, and verb blanks on a pre-written document.
Margaret Brent is only blocks away from Hopkins's first-rate creative writing program, and the college students will expose youngsters to a whole new world of writing poetry, fiction, and dramatic scripts.
"When I was in elementary school more than a decade ago, teachers had much more flexibility," says Hutton. "Recent education policy forces teachers to focus only on reading. The writing teachers will have more freedom." Working with the National Center for Summer Learning at Hopkins, Hutton hopes her creative writing summer camp will boost skills that typically slide during summer break.
How will Hutton hook kids on writing? She'll likely try the inventive approach that worked with resistant kids last summer in a tough Wichita neighborhood: The whole class would create one story together. One kid introduced a character. Another dreamed up setting. Someone else concocted conflict. Suddenly, writing was fun.
"They got so involved they wanted to take the story home and rewrite drafts," Hutton recalls. "Creative work is something through which you can really express yourself."
