Cheers to My Students: Ending the Quarter with Creative Writing Cups

At the end of the quarter, my students are always asking for extra credit. I love extra credit. As a student, I always appreciate it. As a teacher, I think it gives students an opportunity to make up a few missed points.

This past week, I told students to write a personal story in 200 words. The topic could be anything related to their lives, as long as it was a significant event or memory. I offered 2 extra credit points for the typed story and 1 extra point if they wrote their story onto a cup.

The cup idea came from the current controversy with Chipotle Mexican Grill's Cultivating Thought campaign. Last month, Chipotle announced it would be featuring excerpts from 10 famous authors and famous personalities on its cups and paper bags. The idea is to give customers a little literature while they munch on their burritos. The idea, although essentially a great one, angered many Latinos however. When Chipotle revealed the 10 chosen authors, not one of them was Mexican, Mexican-American, or Latino. For many Latinos, this was pretty insulting. Are there no good Mexican writers? Also, since the restaurant is a "Mexican" grill, shouldn't at least one of their featured authors be Mexican? Much has been written in response to Chipotle's Cultivating Thought  blunder in the last weeks. Some Chicano professors even started a Facebook page entitled Cultivating Invisibility.

The extra credit assignment I gave my students allowed me to share the Chipotle controversy with them. More importantly, the act of writing on a cup really seemed to spark something creative in them. They wrote about parents sacrificing so much to come to this country. They wrote about their educational dreams. They wrote poetic pieces about growing up with a single mom. Overall, I was really moved with their stories and their artistic cups. Some of them really went all out for that one extra point. In regards to grammar and sentence structure, their stories were more well-written than anything else they've submitted all quarter. This really blew me away. Something about the creative process (outside of the pressure of writing an official "essay" perhaps) seemed to free them. Their ideas flowed. They used effective transitions. They used concrete details. The writing wasn't void of errors, of course, but I got to see another side of their writing capabilities. This last impromptu assignment I gave my students was a reminder of how powerful and important creative writing assignments can be. Academic writing is another animal, but when students are able to let down their fears of writing and effectively communicate their ideas, then I think we are on the right track.

Here Comes The Sun

Currently, my favorite "fun" reading material consist of The Sun Magazine. My friend Greg introduced me to the The Sun a couple of years ago by gifting me a year-long subscription for my birthday. It was the best gift ever.

There are many things I like about this magazine. For starters, it has no corporate advertisements. Just great black and white photos. Although a literary magazine, it is also void of information for literary contests, residencies, calls for submissions, etc. Just a primary interview in each issue, fiction, memoir, poetry, and sunbeams (memorable short quotes).

I don't always love every single poem or entry in The Sun, and as always I want more authors of color, that could be improved, but overall I find the magazine engaging, relevant, and insightful. It's good quality publishing and I feel I've learned many things (implicitly) about the craft of writing from this magazine.

This month's issue has an interview with Noam Chomsky, one of my favorite "dissident intellectuals."

The Chomsky interview, conducted by David Barsamian and entitled "Undermining Democracy: On How The U.S. Breeds Inequality At Home and Instability Abroad," was my Sunday midday break from grading and graduate homework. It was a treat to hold a real magazine in my hands (versus an electronic device) and read the piece. The topics discussed weren't by any means "light," but perhaps I enjoyed it so much because I was also indulging in an iced-coffee and two Cuban stuffed potato balls. This is my idea of a party--good words, good food.

Although Chomsky's linguistic theories are still a bit elusive to me, I really appreciate Chomsky's work. I like that he's constantly questioning assumptions. And when it comes to the political socio-economic realities of the world, Chomsky really knows how to break things down in concrete terms. Talk about someone "unpacking" meaning. This might sound corny, but I also love reading and listening to Chomsky because I believe him to be a decent human being who genuinely cares about the world. That definitely emanates from his words and his life's work, and I have a lot of respect for that.

For more info on The Sun Magazine: http://thesunmagazine.org/