Description: A practical, pedagogy-based exploration of how and why creative writing can and should be taught in secondary schools.
Brief description: Chris Drew is an Associate Professor of English at Indiana State University, USA, where he supervises the English Teaching program and teaches creative writing and teaching methods courses. He previously taught ELA and theatre at Heritage Hills Middle School and Mater Dei High School, both in Indiana. His work has appeared in publications that include English Leadership Quarterly, The Journal of Creative Writing Studies, Minnesota English Journal, Wisconsin English Journal, Mad River Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and Quarterly West. He is a co-editor of Dispatches from the Classroom: Graduate Students on Creative Writing Pedagogy (Bloomsbury).
Review Quotes:
"The authors of this book are highly cognizant of the pressures of standardization and utilitarianism in today's educational scene. They make compelling arguments about how creative writing addresses required state standards, and not just in the realm of writing." --Journal of Creative Writing Studies
"Contributors to this volume prove beyond any doubt that creative writing belongs in the secondary classroom, offering research-based conceptual groundwork and mapping standards for inspiring activities and practices, presented by the teachers who developed them ... Secondary teachers will find both inspiration for developing assignments and a solid theoretical framework for scaffolding, assessing, and reporting about them to administrators." --CHOICE "Imaginative Teaching is a teacher's book. It is for and about teaching and learning led by voices both dynamic and inspired. I dare you to read it. Because you can't just read it; you will write and think beside it for days. Your classroom will be upended by the smart thinking here. And that's important, because sometimes changing students' learning outcomes requires a major shift in teacher culture-our culture. But that is the gift of this book: an invitation to experience the joy and expansive thinking that these classroom teachers have realized in courses labeled AP to remedial. As poet and teacher Tim Staley says in a chapter I wish I had written, "Poetry should be a break from the typical horrors of high school." Reading, writing, and teaching can be. Imaginative Teaching shows us the moves that will create a home for creative writing in our plans, our notebooks, and forever, in our students." --Penny Kittle, Plymouth State University, USA