Liam HalawithMaroon Echoes Managing Editor On March 11th a band of students filed into two vans in the early morning before school even began. On this chilly morning, in the predawn hours, they began their trek to William Penn University in Oskaloosa. These kids were a ragtag bunch – some modern Hemingways and a few J.K. Rowlings, even a younger Steven King. These kids are young writers interested in learning more about the craft, more on how to slay your enemies with the stroke of the pen, or even subject-preterite agreement.
Guided by their sage middle school Language Arts teacher Gina Dexter, the padawans of pencil and paper were on a journey to the Iowa Young Writers Conference, an event produced and hosted by the local Great Prairie Area Education Agency. There they would share a piece of writing, attend a few workshops, and even listen to a keynote speaker Bob Kann. Bob Khan is an author and storyteller that uses his juggling talent to captivate his audience. He mainly writes historical fiction. “The best part of the conference last week for me was getting to see one of my eighth-grade students, who is pretty solitary at school, making immediate connections with the kids in his group. Girls were saying to him, ‘Oh my gosh that is the most incredible piece. It makes me interested in World War II, and I’ve never really been interested,’” said Mrs. Dexter, the group’s advisor. “He actually had to leave earlier to catch the bus. I was really proud of him. A kid who never speaks, stood up and said ‘Four of you haven’t read yet, can I get copies of what you brought so I can read it?’” When it comes down to who is going to make the cut to attend the event, Mrs. Dexter has only one criterion, “We look for kids who are absolutely passionate about writing, but they may not necessarily be good at it. They are just passionate about it.” This allows kids to share their voice through their writing, teaching them ways of becoming better people and better writers. “We are told what to write so often. Even as English teachers we are told that we have to have kids write an argumentative [essay], a research paper, an informative [essay], you are told what to write. Really writing at its core is getting out the bones on paper of what is inside your head. So this encourages kids to get that creative outlet. Whether it’s total creativity or what’s going on in their world, or whatever combination of the two: to get it out,” said Mrs. Dexter. In the end, the conference is geared to teach kids how to write better, but it also teaches the students the importance of creative writing. That the best way to vent is through a piece of paper and a pen or in the digital age, a computer and a keyboard.
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