New Year’s Resolutions–NOT ME

New Year’s resolutions are for the birds. No, birds don’t even make New Year’s resolutions. I guess they know how temporary this world is, or maybe they just live for the day.

My only resolution I might make if I had one of those lists would be to teach more by teaching less. I have had the privilege of teaching a creative writing class this year for teenage students. Today is the last day of the semester and we are celebrating by writing at Starbucks. Their assignment today–write a book blurb to go on the back of their soon-to-be published novella they wrote in the month of November. Several of the students finished that task quickly because they know their book so well. Others start their time with a game of solitaire on their laptops–a game that is soon ended when I see it.

Finally, they are all into their writing. Another assignment they receive from me is to greet the new year. They are to personify 2015 and ponder what she/he has in store for this student. I look around the coffee house at my ten students—five seniors, three juniors and two sophomores. First, I find myself amazed that high school teens would even choose a writing elective. Don’t all teens hate anything having to do with writing? Perhaps it was the creative part of the course title that encouraged them to sign
up. And every one of these students has surpassed my expectations.

I have read the first two or three chapters of each student’s novella and find encouragement in their creativeness. One student wrote her novella in second person with the focus on “you.” I shared an article with her written by a published author who did the same thing and found how to work around the challenges of that viewpoint. Another student wrote close to 30,000 words of a futuristic sci-fi and is still going strong. One student wrote a fictionalized story of a real teen problem that many students face. Sometimes it’s through the words of one who has lived the problem that helps others to overcome.

Back to New Year’s resolutions—I have achieved my one and only resolution. All I have to do with these students is to give them a writing prompt and let them go. If I did have one of those true inferno New Year’s resolution lists, my peppermint mocha latte has tarbucksmade me quickly forget any weight loss resolve I might ever have considered.