by Vicki Phipps

Created on: March 29, 2008

When it comes to creative writing, I've been blessed with a mother who became my creative writing teacher. Although I've been blessed with her joy of writing, the creative part has always been hard for me to teach. My mother, on the other hand, taught children all over the great state of Texas how to write creatively from a spirit inside, inspired to write, which she exudes, naturally. She can create a creative writer just from her descriptions of small and seemingly insignificant things. She has a way to move the children she taught into another realm of communication by teaching them to paint a story like a painting of the scene they see in their minds. It's hard for me to describe, so I asked her to write down for me an example of a creative writing project that she assigned for elementary students.

This is what she said:

I was given some Native American artifacts by a principal long ago who knew I loved such things. The arrowheads and broken pieces of pottery were almost mystical to me. I wondered who made them, what their life was like, and so on.

One day in a third grade classroom in a small rural community, I told the children about the ancient pieces of history and how I'd obtained them. I played a tape of flute music recorded by a Native American musician which struck a mood. There wasn't a sound in the room.

I went down the isles and gave each child a piece of pottery. The spellbound kids could tell by the way I handled the pieces that they were very lucky to even hold them. Indeed some arrowheads and chars were thousands of years old.

I told each child to hold the artifact in their hands and close their eyes, listen to the music and to allow the clay to tell them who had originally molded it, what their life was like, how old they were. I made suggestions: was it an eight-year-old boy helping his mother make a bowl for the family meals? Was it an old, old woman whose wrinkled hands had slowly engraved in the clay beautiful images of horses, arrows, men running and fighting in war, and other things from her long memory?

I told the silent classroom to take their imagination to their paper. Write what you see in your mind. Write any story that comes. Write everything surrounding you. What colors do you see? Is it cold where you are? Are you surrounded by fear in a dark cave? Or are you in the early sunshine, molding the clay with drops of water, feeling the smoothness of the forming plate or bowl? Are you walking with your friend in the afternoon with swelling

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