English 409: Creative Writing in the Community
English 409: Creative Writing in the Community is a required course for creative writing majors. It is also an opportunity for creative writing students to make personal connections with members of the community and to experiment with new content and techniques in writing.
Barbara Bogue, who first taught the course in 2001, remembers her initial conception for the course, “I designed and developed the project so that creative writing majors would have the opportunity to go out into the community and meet individuals who have stories to tell but are not often heard, and/or whose voices are ignored or misunderstood.”
Throughout this immersive learning experience, students partner with individuals from four participating social service agencies in
Muncie: Big Brothers Big Sisters,
CrownPointe Communities (a retirement community),
Motivate Our Minds (an after-school tutoring program for elementary and middle school students), and
Hillcroft Services Inc. (an organization that provides services for persons with mental and physical disabilities).
Students are required to spend several hours with their partners and complete a variety of writing assignments with and about these individuals from the community. Bogue notes, “Many students express (at the end of the semester) that the course has taken them out of their comfort zones as writers and as citizens of the community and they have improved in their performances and skills in both.”
The course has personal significance for Bogue. She says that her work as a case manager for the severely mentally ill, her experiences with her niece, who is developmentally disabled, and her “respect for the elderly and for children who need role models inspired [her] to design and implement the project.” Bogue also enjoys witnessing her students as they develop as citizens and writers, “Seeing the personal connections that result for students and their partners and the students’ newfound considerations of future civic engagement projects and participation in social activism are two of the most rewarding aspects of the project for me.”
Bogue published "Writing Out of the Margins,” which describes Creative Writing in the Community, in a 2008 issue of
Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Disability Experience through Literature and Art. Copies of the article are available to anyone interested in the project by contacting Bogue.